Brilliant ‘day at the races’
Racing for charity: Deighton Cup event lures the dolled-up and dapper for champagne and swirling cigar smoke
RUNNING OVER: Producers Dax Droski, Jordan Kallman, Brett Turner and Tyson Villeneuve won a meteorological gamble at Hastings Racecourse when rain stopped and the sun shone on their Deighton Cup benefit for Variety – The Children’s Charity.
The “day at the races” drew even more ’20s to ’30s participants than previous runnings did. Still, the traditional motifs pertained: high heels, higher hems, fascinator chapeaux, dapper-dressed chappies, roiling cigar smoke and enough Veuve Clicquot champagne to turn the event’s parched lawns green again.
Much jolly juice was poured by Mile’s End Motors owner David Bentil, who corralled 3,000 horsepower in six deluxe jalopies parked beside his hospitality pavilion. As for live gee-gees, a wee-hours wowser who “just had to bet” on Every Nites A Blur, gleefully saw that outsider win the sixth race.
Event co- producer Kallman will soon begin romping home, too, having proposed to Dawn Melody, whose highrise fascinator matched architect-employer Michael Green’s aims for wood- constructed buildings.
Veteran mining deal-maker Stuart (Tookie) Angus eyeballed the racetrack’s railside concourse filled with bright, younger folk like Mali Meibod, who would soon defend her PhD in experimental medicine and launch her own skincare company. “Just what this place needs,” he said. Solid gold, that is.
• RAISING THE BAR: The Chinese perspective on ever-pricier real estate will be the theme of Omni Television’s September-premièring House My Style series, hosted by Realtor Ling Qiu. Co-producer Kevin Li also produced the Ultra Rich Asian Girls series. Shanghai-born, Beijing-raised Ling looks forward to something else going higher — the bay gelding Chicago that she rides in Southlands Riding Club show-jumping events.
• LOOK AGAIN: Paris designer Christian Dior’s luxurious 1947 line differed enough from austere postwar fashions to be named the New Look. The firm he founded has now done the same for the Hotel Vancouver. Wall-to-wall invitees popped in and a blizzard of Moët et Chandon champagne corks popped out for the 9,000-square-foot Dior shop’s recent opening. The two-floor facility’s staircase is backed by a “video wall” of ever-changing multiple images that echo another new look: the one Prague’s Laterna Magika theatre technicians developed a decade after Dior launched his.
• SIZE 88: Georgia Street will gain another chi- chi retailer when Manuel Bernaschek’s Stefano Ricci boutique opens beside a near- ready hotel named for a bumptious billionaire with political aspirations. As well as purses to $90,000, the store may feature an entrylevel $110,000 Fazioli grand from Bernaschek’s Showcase Pianos firm.
• YES MINISTER: Imagine that perceptive, but long-defunct TV series, basing an episode on B.C. having a minister for redtape reduction.
• GREENS TO GREEN: If Jason Ko had played better golf, he might not have donated $1.2 million for lung cancer screening as reported here recently. Instead, the bunker- bedevilled 68- yearold ended a 12-month “retirement” in 1994, returned to the pharmaceuticals-manufacturing game, and began supporting many medical-related programs.
After working for Pfizer in his native Taipei and in L.A., pharmacist Ko co-founded Grand Pharmaceuticals in 1989, then sold his interest after moving to B.C. with nurse-wife Emily. Urged by former customers, Ko, ditched his golf clubs, leased a 2,800-square-foot Vancouver facility, and began packaging all-natural health products. Three years later he bought a 60,000- square- foot Sauder Industries plant, then doubled it by leasing.
Family-owned Viva Pharmaceutical Inc.’s 200 employees can now produce 40 million softgels, 25 million tablets and three million hard-shell capsules daily, and 2,500 tonnes of liquids and creams annually. Canada and the U.S. receive 30 per cent each. The remainder go to Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Son David oversees a plant-warehouse that opened in Ferndale, Wash., this year. Son Edward does the same in Brunei. The quietly religious Kos own a developable 3.3-hectare site in Blaine.
As well as serving major pharmaceutical clients, Viva launched its own branded line of nutraceutical capsules, tabs and softgels in July. They address such matters as liver, eye and prostate health, insomnia and other ills. Nothing yet for golf-swing deficiencies, though.
• HIGH FLYING SHORTS: The Air Canada en Route Film Festival held a reception at Vancity Theatre recently for its August through December inflight screenings of 20 Canadian short movies. One selected moviemaker, Fort McMurray-born Cody Bown, wrote, produced and directed Wool about a young man’s migraine-induced dream. Director Milena Salazar’s Mars Barb, details Surrey resident Barbara Keith’s bigger dream: to join the Mars One expedition’s 24 red-planet émigrés on a flight even more demanding than Vancouver to Osaka by Air Canada Rouge middle seat.
• THE NIGHT STUFF: Araxi Longtable diners will have all evening Aug. 3 to consume oysters, crab cake, crispy dusk, smoked chinook, sablefish, grilled beef filet, smoked brisket and nougat glacé with chocolate ice cream. Six days later, Golden Dumpling Cook Off contestants will vie to swallow the most dumplings in two minutes flat.
• DOWN PARRYSCOPE: City hall’s concern for pre- 1940s mansions’ heritage integrity seems not to apply to pre-1940s bridges.