GALA RAISES $5.95M FOR CANCER CARE
Night of a Thousand Stars event shines with major donation from Darlene Poole
STARS SHONE: Heading into the Vancouver Convention Centre West’s window-walled ballroom, Night of a Thousand Stars gala chair Nancey Nanji said she expected to raise “maybe $3.4 million” for the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. Husband Noordin Nanji, QC, chairs the foundation’s board. The 22nd annual event’s take was already earmarked for advanced cancer care and to help replace an aging surgical robot. By night’s end, a record $5.95 million was reportedly in the bag with $1.97 million of it coming from Darlene Poole to commemorate husband Jack, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2009. Her donation will pay for a robot that, like him, will be named Jack.
TRUE BRIT: Three months into her job as British high commissioner to Canada, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque visited Vancouver recently. Fellow diplomats and others greeted her at a reception that British Consul General Nicole Davison hosted in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia’s ballroom with its unique-forVancouver minstrel-style gallery. Guests included newly installed U.S. Consul General Katherine S. Dhanani. Further representing diplomacy’s welcome feminization, le Jeune d’Allegeershecque is the first woman among 25 successors to 1928-34 high commissioner Sir William Clark. Along with a lord and a viscount, 12 men designated “sir” have followed him, including 1946-52’s Sir Alexander Clutterbuck. Perhaps to remind Brexit-era guests of the United Kingdom’s contiguous regions, they were served Welsh lamb, Scottish haggis and English mashed potatoes and “swades.” The latter was possibly a typo for “swedes,” meaning the rutabagas that Scots call “neeps” and consume with haggis. Not offered were England’s everrisible spotted dick and bubble and squeak that, her Belgian married name aside, le Jeune d’Allegeershecque may have savoured as a child in Ipswich.
HOLD THE SQUEAK: Perhaps retiring Vancouver Symphony Orchestra musical director Bramwell Tovey will relish such oh-so-English dishes as toad in the hole (sausages and Yorkshire-pudding batter) when he takes up the BBC Concert Orchestra’s baton in January.
LONG PAST BRATZ: Julia Molnar celebrated her Isola Bella’s boutique’s 35th anniversary this week. Not at the high-end children’s-wear outfit’s Kerrisdale Village locale, though. Instead, Molnar, friends and clients partied at ceramicist Janaki Larsen and fashion designer Hajnalka Mandula’s Mount Pleasant shop-studio, Atelier St. George. Nor was it strictly a 35th as Molnar operated her business as Bratz for the first 54 months. That name also symbolized her personal output of five sons before actor-husband David Cubitt contributed a feminine flourish with daughter Arabella in 2003. Casa Arabella is also the name of the couple’s getaway home in San Miguel d’Allende, Mexico.
STILL WAGGING: Also marking its 35th is the city-founded electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy. It emerged from the Images in Vogue ensemble when leader Kevin Crompton, having resolved to perceive “life as seen through a dog’s eyes, ” recorded the song K-9. Several albums were produced by former Skinny Puppy member Dave “The Rave” Ogilvie, who surfaced recently at the opening of Presentation House’s photo-based Polygon Gallery on North Vancouver’s waterfront. He popped frosties there with Bomber Brewing partner Cam Andrews, husband of respected photo-artist Jessica Bushey.
GOOD SHOW: Oohs and aahs sounded at the Polygon Gallery opening. Many were for the Patkau Architects firm’s work inside and out. The debut exhibition of local artworks was dominated by Rodney Graham’s 5.5-by-3.04-metre Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour transparency that portrayed the kayakseated artist in three backlit light boxes. Respecting the 1981-founded gallery’s mandate, most works were photo-based. Cameron Kerr stretched that by showing a photo of an Upper Levels Highway bridge’s concrete substructure, then recreating it in a 275-kg sculpture of plywood and solid yellow cedar that might attract scent-tagging skinny puppies if installed outside.
BAX BACKED: It’s four years since artist Athena Bax (short for Baxevanakis) exhibited paintings in her east side studio-residence. Affluent collectors filled the joint again recently, and red “sold” dots soon appeared beside virtually every piece. “I don’t care for my work to be in museums,” Bax said, “but that my clients put them in their bedrooms and bathrooms.” Paolo and Clara Aquilini of the Canucks-owning clan have reportedly hung five paintings that way. A recent two-metre-tall one incorporates 234 of Bax’s favoured four-letter words, none of them salacious. With “puck” and “goal” added, it might be just right for the Aquilini loo.
AIR APPARENT: The Bayshore hotel’s ritzy new HJU:Z lounge commemorates past guest-billionaire Howard Hughes’ aviation exploits. Air, the open kind, also characterizes the Reflections lounge in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia’s seasonally revamped central quadrangle. With Christmastime nigh, the alfresco joint serves such cocktails as Scrooged Up — not with tiny Timbits on the side, though. Global TV’s Sophie Liu toasted there recently following a five-day flight to and through Spain, Switzerland and France with Georgia managing director Philip Meyer.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Passengers for Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposed 400 km/h train to Seattle might make trundlespeed connections via Surrey’s planned street-level trams.