The night belongs to accomplished women
ALL OVER TOWN: Accomplished women flourished here Thursday night. At the Bayshore hotel, the YWCA made Women of Distinction awards to 11, including former Sun editor- in- chief Patricia Graham. Violet Goosen’s praises were sung, too, for her quarter- century managing Vancouver Chamber Choir.
At the Four Seasons, CTV News at Six anchor Tamara Taggart chaired the B. C. Centre for Ability Foundation’s Dining For Dreams gala for the third time, with reporter/ anchor Mi- Jung Lee emceeing. Taggart’s role was spurred by the centre’s support for her and husband and 54- 40 band member David Genn’s fouryearold Beckett, who has Down syndrome.
Another CTV anchor, Coleen Christie, emceed Stephanie Carlson, Debra Lykkemark and Jonie Zimmerman’s kickoff for Vancouver Art Gallery’s Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters exhibition. Rare for a VAG event, it included a fashion show staged by Zimmerman’s Ashiamode store.
Also at the Four Seasons, the Minerva Foundation for B. C. Women presented Spirit of Minerva awards to Patricia Borges, Connie Linder, Renee Loman, Larkin Mackenzie- Ast and Cherie Mercer.
Mercer, whose sister Taron Scott won an award in 2011, is a community- health representative to 2,000 Nass Valley Nisga’a around Aiyansh. She was cited for planning 2011’ s first Community Health Fair, this year’s Women’s Wellness Fair and young parents’ program, and initiating mobile mammogram and other cancerscreening services.
Loman, a Slavey Dene from Fort Nelson, presents her own frank case in my life IS my project, a 10- minute video ( http:// bit. ly/ KOGH4I) she made as a tribute to the Minerva Foundation’s Women Leading The Way program. Participating in it, she said, helped her recover from alcohol- and- drug addiction, resolve the challenges of being raised on a first nations reserve, and then quit a job there because “you don’t work for an outfit that doesn’t share the same values as you.”
Minerva “helped me learn what my values were,” she said.
The video has sentimental moments, notably when, her voice breaking, Loman says: “In the end, I’m just an Indian kid trying to make it in this world, too.”
Still her assertion that “change begins with me” puts her in the ranks of kids seeking better lives everywhere.
It is one thing for the Minerva Foundation to make awards to women far outside Vancouver who benefit from its programs. It is another thing entirely when those recipients so eloquently return the honour.
• FIVE TIME OVER: Upset by Don Konantz’s prostatecancer diagnosis, his son Willy recruited pal Taylor Scholtz to bike back to West Van from Ontario with him and raise $ 50,000. All West Insurance couple Paul and Devina Zalesky scrounged up a Ford escort vehicle and put son Mikhail and his friend Yongku Jung in it. So far, the boys have raised $ 127,983.09. A $ 2,000- a- couple dinner at Brian and Tammi Kerzner’s home June 7 will add another $ 100,000 for Vancouver Prostate Centre’s Dr. Larry Goldenberg and Dr. Martin Gleave to accept. Not bad for a couple of young guys getting their butts sore so that older ones needn’t.
• MIXED MEDIA: Visitors to Reno June 14 will see University of Nevada civil- engineering students host the three- day, 22- varsity National Concrete Canoe Competition. That’s right: concrete. Maybe, with the Ocean Cement plant handy, a Granville Island boat builder will produce such canoes while clever U of N engineers design a hotel- casino tower using only birch bark.
• JOYFUL AND TRIUMPHANT: How far will British sports car owners go to coddle their babies? Meet Winnipegger Troy Matusow, who paid $ 3,400 four years ago for a 1959 Triumph TR3 that cost $ 2,700 new. Nothing exceptional there. Now flash forward to last weekend’s 27th annual All British Field Meet at Vandusen Botanical Garden, where organizers Patrick and Jon Stewart handed him a plaque for best restoration over $ 100,000.
The 50th and 60th anniversaries of MGB and Lotus cars were noted, and the 110th of Norton motorcycles. As usual, the sunny- skies event brought out plenty of Morgans. That third- generation boutique automaker’s original three- wheeled vehicles were cheaply licensed as motorcycles from 1910 to 1952, when manufacture ceased. Four- wheelers came in 1936, and a developed version of that wood- frame- bodied model continues today. More remarkably, 60 years after axing them, Morgan again makes three- wheelers — for $ 50,000- plus — although one has yet to grace Vandusen’s greensward.
Matusow, who’ll move to B. C. this summer, will doubtless buy a fading Vancouver Special house, then win a Georgie award for renovation over $ 10 million.
• SETTING IT STRAIGHT: Mixed- voice Enchor, not male- voice Chor Leoni, sang at Christopher Gaze’s recent birthday bash. Enchor’s 55- and- older choristers’ next gig will be a Vancouver International Song Institute concert at West Vancouver United Church June 12.
• DOWN PARRYSCOPE: No matter how heated you get, pigs don’t sweat.