SFU HONOURS FRANCES AND SAM BELZBERG
Couple spearheaded a $13.5-million campaign for a satellite campus
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED: It was 1986 when Simon Fraser University’s debut President’s Distinguished Community Leadership Award went to Patrick Reid, the commissioner-general of that year’s World’s Fair. Honoured at a Four Seasons hotel banquet this week, Frances and Sam Belzberg joined the ranks of six earlier recipient couples. Their good turns included heading an initial $13.5-million campaign to aid a downtown satellite campus. The Sears chain had endowed SFU with $12.5-million-worth of future rent on its vacated Hastings Street store. Earlier, when the Belzbergs donated $1 million at an intimate dinner in the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue’s Samuel and Frances Belzberg Atrium, Sam gracefully thanked late SFU chancellor Jack Diamond “for picking me to have this opportunity.”
THEY’RE ON: Hastings Racecourse’s season began three weeks ago. Five-hundred moms will receive Mother’s Day bouquets there Sunday. Parents-inwaiting, though, wait for July 16, when Social Concierge principals Jordan Kallman and Tyson Villeneuve will stage the eighth annual Deighton Cup event commemorating city saloon pioneer Jack “Gassy” Deighton. There’ll be nothing rough and smelly, though, other than the cigars many participants pretend to enjoy. Look instead for a lively parade of nattily clad chaps and hat-wearing women in sky-high heels, higher hems and frocks tighter than a photo-finish.
THE NEW RUSTIC: It was 1914 when soldier-poet Joyce Kilmer wrote: “But only God can make a tree.” Now, Peter Wall has made a dozen, albeit in metal, to stand beside his Shannon development on Deep South Granville Street.
ARTIST ONE: Frogs may croak around the Museum of Anthropology when Kamloops-born painter Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s solo exhibition opens there May 10. Accustomed to his works fetching top prices, he’s also adept at pricking non-Aboriginal sensitivities, such as advising guests at collector-supporter Michael Audain’s home: “You are all squatters on our land.” Ditto by wearing a T-shirt with the message: “I am having a bad colonial day.” And especially by planning a painting titled: Went To Residential School And Got Raped.
More in the artistic spirit, Yuxweluptun took a copy of Canada’s Indian Act to Britain’s Bisley rifle range and promptly shot holes through it. But there was a characteristic twinkle in his stern eye when, having accepted a British Museum commission, he said: “You have to be dead to get in that place. Still, it’s a great honour.”
More puckishly, Yuxweluptun described a work of his in collector Michael O’Brian’s home that pictured a Salish longhouse ceremony involving spirit and blackface dancers. “It starts when the frogs stop croaking, and it stops when the frogs start croaking,” he said. “The frogs always know when winter is.” Asked if humans mightn’t know that, too, he grinned and said: “Yes, but the frogs are more accurate.”
STRONGER HEART: Mission Hill Family Winery owner Anthony von Mandl and wife Dr. Debra Gibson left the Queen Elizabeth theatre last Saturday with Evita star Caroline Bowman’s words still ringing: “Oh what I’d give for a hundred years! But the physical interferes.” Bowman was playing
the role of late Argentine dictator Juan Peron’s wife Eva, who succumbed to cancer at age 33. Von Mandl is in New York today with someone who is 100 years old. She’s his mother, Bedriska Mandl- Schlesinger, who’ll receive the Ellis Island Medal of Honor there. Honourees needn’t be immigrants like Bedriska, who left Europe during the Nazi hegemony. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first of several international recipients. Even von Mandl will get one along with his mom.
DIFFERENT STROKES: While visiting Mission Hill, East Germany-born Australian wine magnate Wolf Blass laughed at the gold and silver medals adorning competition-winning vintages displayed in the winery’s sales room. “If we did that in Australia,” he said, “they’d all be pinched in five minutes.”
TOP JOB: Canada’s biggest medal may have been the subject of pillow talk while Blass admired von Mandl’s $40-million West Bank facility, including a carillon in which the C-note bell is dedicated to Bedriska Mandl-Schlesinger. Such whispering would have occurred in a guest room occupied by friends of the padrone quietly extending their honeymoon. The groom, a McGill University masters student, likely had a more public future planned. Indeed, Justin Trudeau is now prime minister, and his bride, former TV host Sophie Grégoire, is a mother of three.
CRASH-TEST ARTIST: After a car smashed into Sarazen Brooks’ stationary vehicle in 2010, the necessarily painful and continuing recuperation got her painting full time. Although not as speedy as the vehicle that could have ended her life, she can execute large canvasses while others watch. Planetarium audiences saw her do just that during the Dream-Journeys series’ recent “resounding consciousness” events, and will again May 19.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Radical architects are figuring how to design towers that, with no concavi- ties, overhangs or cut-outs, run straight and vertical from ground level to roof.