POLO PLAYERS ARE OUT STANDING IN THEIR FIELD
Vancouver Polo Club pays $2 million for full-sized field near Boundary Bay
CHUKKER TIME: During his 15 years in England, investment-biz chap Tony Tornquist acquired wife Claudia and a consuming passion. They both did. It was polo, a sport played on 30 fields near their London home. Not so in Vancouver, where only Southlands Riding Club offers a field, albeit far short of the 300-by-160-yard regulation size. The equivalent of five Canadian Football League fields and end zones, such layouts give ponies (horses up to 147.3 cm to the top of the withers) enough space to gallop.
“So, we had to buy some land and make our own,” Tony said. Easier to say than pay for. By January, though, they and fellow investors Jay Garnett and Paul Sullivan paid $2 million for eight hectares almost close enough to Boundary Bay for a good whack to set the ball afloat. Their Vancouver Polo Club launched recently with the vancouverpolo.com site advising on dues, games, lessons, boarding and alwayswelcome spectators.
THE MUSE HOUR: Some 300 attended a gala for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s four-month exhibition, Picasso: The Artist and His Muses. The $500,000 and change reportedly raised will swell a still-sparse $350-million pot to build a cubist-looking VAG replacement at Georgia and Cambie Street.
Pamela Richardson and Catherine Guadagnuolo chaired the event. The latter was detained by her own construction project: a house in Sicily. Not so Richardson, who is building in town. However, she and husband David did donate for auction a dinner for 12 at their alternate home in Mougins, France, where Picasso lived from 1961 until his death in 1973.
GREEN SCENE: Golfers seldom tee-off in the early-morning rain wearing Audrey Hepburn-style little black dresses and faux gems. But actress Keegan Connor Tracy and her Breakfast at Tiffany’s team did that recently. The 27th Women’s Media Golf Classic and an after-banquet at founder Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia’s Century Plaza hotel reportedly raised $235,000 for the Pacific Autism Family Foundation. Telus donated $100,000. Such a sum could see anyone go lightly to the nearby Tiffany store for real diamonds in the Victoria collection’s pendant-earrings-bracelet-ring foursome.
BHANG ON: Wrapping tonight on the VAG plaza, the Vancouver International Bhangra Festival reflected 2004 founder Mo Dhaliwal’s intent to have it lead in the Punjab-based musical form developed in 1980s Britain. Dhaliwal and succeeding artistic director Tarun Nayar, the Delhi 2 Dublin band co-founder, attended a reception where U.S. Consul General Lynn Platt quoted President Barack Obama on multiculturalism contributing to “the rejuvenation of America.” Festival participants there included Rakhi Mutta, Harj Nagra, Vijay Yamla and Jasmine Sandlas, who said her hit song Devil-Yaar Na Miley means the internationally valid “All I want is love … or nothing at all.”
TOP JOCKS: Some 850 attendees saw 11 individuals and one hockey team inducted when the Banquet of Champions marked the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame’s 50th anniversary. Making it a family affair, Diane Clement was inducted 16 years after husband, physician and fellow Olympian Doug. Awarded only 17 times since 1980 (Terry Fox), the W.A.C. Bennett Award that commemorates the late premier went to Arthur Griffiths. He chaired early 2010- Olympics bidding, spearheaded the building of B.C. Place (now Rogers Arena), and in 1997 sold the Vancouver Canucks team his father Frank had owned from 1974 until his death in 1994.
TRUE BLUE: Former Sports Hall of Fame board chair, B.C. Rugby past-president and Canadian Direct Insurance’s founding CEO Colin Brown brought that company’s $25,000 donation to the Banquet of Champions. Athletes need “dedication, commitment and perseverance,” he said. Now retired from CDI, he’ll draw on all three while studying blues guitar with Cousin Harley band founder Paul Pigat. That music, Brown said, “is appropriate for someone coming out of the insurance business and five years of Alberta’s catastrophic claims.” CONGRATULAZIONI: Born to Pentecostal ministers, nurtured in a church basement and now heading 8,000-employee North- land Properties, Robert Gaglardi will be named Italian of the Year at the Confratellanza Italo-Canadese Society’s Columbus Day banquet Oct. 1.
NOW YOU SEE IT: Neil and Nina Jane Patel left Leicester while its soccer team leaped from the English Premier League’s last to first place in one year. Neil likely hopes for such success for his Pender-off-Broughton Kabuni Design Studio. The new, two-floor joint enables interior designers, clients and local and international suppliers to develop schemes aided by tabletdriven holography and tabletop flat monitors. The Patels’ four children already use them to whip up rooms or entire houses in no time.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Ottawa could confirm its combat and pipeline shyness by disregarding half-measure Super Hornet fighter jets and equipping the RCAF with ultraslow Solar Impulse aircraft that burn no fuel and couldn’t harm a flea.