Hope shines at Glow gala as benefit raises $1.2 million
BC Women’s Hospital: Goal ‘to save babies’ lives’ with purchase of high-tech equipment and new technology
GETTING GLOW ON: Slumdog Millionaire movie star Freida Pinto climbed Pan Pacific hotel staircases to the sold-out Glow benefit gala for BC Women’s Hospital’s newborn ICU unit. So did several real-life multimillionaires, including Wesbild chairman Hassan Khosrowshahi, who sold his Future Shop chain to the Best Buy concern for $580 million. The debut gala’s co-chairs, Lighthouse leadership firm principal Michelle Rupp and Telus VP Jill Schnarr, were welcoming attendees when an aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni drifted up from Burnaby Lyric Opera’s main-floor concert: “Till they have got some wine and are hotheaded, let’s prepare a great party.”
Prophetic words, indeed, as the event reportedly raked in $1.2 million. That brought BCWH’s Hope Starts Here campaign within $1.8 million of the $17 million needed for new technology and high-tech equipment “to save babies’ lives.” So said campaign leader Tamara Taggart, who MC’d the gala with CTV News co-anchor Mike Killeen.
• MO’ BUTTER: Butter Bakery & Café proprietor Rosie Daykin has made mercifully noiseless “Whoopee Pies” for Wayne Gretzky and hockey- puck-sized Oreo cookies for Barack and Michelle Obama. Nothing yet for the Queen, although Daykin figures Her Maj would be jolly happy with the Lemony Lemon Loaf that is a top-5 seller at her Mackenzie-at-33rd store. It’s also on page 78 of her second book, Butter Celebrates, which she released at said premises while apologizing to attendees for omitting the recipe from her first.
• HERE’S A TWIST: The Japanese restaurant Q Shi Q opened on False Creek Thursday by giving away a renovated 1979 Honda motorcycle that was hardly as hot as its spicy chicken dish’s jalapeno and habanero peppers. One wishes restaurateur Umberto Menghi had done that with a spiffed-up 1979 Ferrari at his reborn and ever-busy Giardino.
• HIGHER AND DRYER: After three years of going underground in a CBC-TV studio, Arts Umbrella’s Splash gala returned to Granville Island’s Performance Works for its 33rd running. The event’s title often caused rueful laughs when squalling rain puddled in the auction tent. For the recent fine- weather event, though, $300,000 reportedly cascaded in instead, including the $32,500 (estimated value $40,000) paid for Haida artist Don Yeomans’ Welcoming Frog sculpture. Discounted bids were similar for the 40 live-auction pieces and others donated by artists and their galleries. Some went over estimate, notably a photograph from Dina Goldstein’s Fallen Princesses series that fetched $ 7,250. Depicting a dejected Cinderella boozing alone in a cowboy bar, the picture will contrast sharply with its future home. That’s the interior of buyer and global wind-farm builder Brian O’Sullivan’s 42-metre motor yacht Komokwa.
• IN THE CHIPS: There was a feeding frenzy at Vancouver Aquarium recently. Not in the fish tanks, but through the corridors around them as 650 folk sampled offerings from 12 restaurants, four patisseries, 15 wineries, four beer-and-liquor makers and a coffee outlet. Some 400 additional “last-minute people” had hoped to contribute to the $165,000 reportedly raised at the sold-out Toast To The Coast fundraiser. So said director John Nightingale while standing beside a mass of red jellies “that could hurt you very badly, but probably not kill you.”
Nightingale’s favourite aquarium denizen was a two-year-old octopus restrained by a strip of Astroturf from slithering from his shared tank to gobble up live sushi in others. Such creatures “have only eight nerve ganglia or brain cells. But they are regarded as the most intelligent of invertebrates. You can train them to take the lid off a Mason jar but not put it back on again — a bit like a husband,” the married-for16-years Nightingale said. “Even with that basically small processor, they keep eight arms and 200 suckers going,” he said, possibly unheard by three city councillors present.
• SETTING IT STRAIGHT: Desha Sekhon, not Dasha, is the Ronald McDonald House benefactor.
• BOOKS AND BAGGAGE: The recent report of Kunming Airlines’ cabin crew being stuffed into overhead baggage lockers would be vieux chapeau for Air Canada’s Mariette Day. Not that the French-born former flight attendant underwent a similar hazing ritual. Knowing that then-husband Brian was booked into a certain seat, she had colleagues shoehorn her into an overhead bin. When her lawyer-hubby opened it for his briefcase, there she was, welcoming him.
There’ll be no such theatricals when Brian’s brother David Day flies in next week to launch his umpteenth book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded. It is written somewhat in the style of his six on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit mythology. No foreword from the Duke of Edinburgh, though, as there was in Vancouver Island logger-turned-author Day’s The Doomsday Book of Animals.
• DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Back in the news while seeking yet another humiliating multibillion-euro bailout, Greece’s promise-breaking, proto-communist but photogenic Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must be thankful he didn’t have to compete for office in an economically stable, low-unemployment, tax-reducing country with minimal inflation and higher-thanever real incomes.