EDUCATION AT HEART OF EFFORT TO BUILD BRIGHTER FUTURES
One Girl Can event raises $350,000 to help dozens of African girls continue schooling
ONE WOMAN DID: At the Mainoff-Hastings Imperial room, Lotte Davis saw $350,000 reportedly raised for the One Girl Can organization she founded. That will send 85 African girls to university and 95 to high school, said Davis who, with husband John, also founded the AG Hair concern. OGC currently funds 130 full university scholarships, is aiming for 450, and has renovated or erected 98 school buildings since 2008, she said. “There’s no secret to success. What is missing is the opportunity. Just getting into university isn’t enough, so we teach jobfinding-and-holding skills. The only real difference between (Africans and Canadians) is, we were lucky enough to be born here.” And to help those who weren’t, of course.
CAR-FREE ZONE: The 13th annual Cabriolet gala emptied Brian Jessel’s Boundary-off-Lougheed showroom of BMW cars and filled it with $625-a-ticket guests. The $500,000 it reportedly grossed will benefit Pancreatic Cancer Canada, thereby continuing to commemorate dealer Jessel’s father Bernie. While dining on Four Seasons hotel-catered seared scallops and beef tenderloin, attendees were advised to learn about that most dangerous ailment by ceasing to say, “Oh, it’s just back pain,” and opening assumptionscanbedeadly.ca. Of this year’s markedly more glamorous gala, “We decided to get serious about fundraising,” said Jessel marketing manager Diana Zoppa, who co-chaired the ZLC Financial-sponsored running with independent event planner Susanna Stewart.
CUBA SEE: Cuba-born Grammy and Juno winner Alex Cuba (real name Alexis Puentes) entertained when the One Night In Havana banquet-concert benefited Variety — The Children’s Charity. Chaired by sometime broadcaster Jill Sinclair, it reportedly raised $147,500 for juvenile mental health programs, said Variety CEO Cally Wesson. Veteran CKNW producer broadcaster Shirley Stocker, who is Variety’s chief barker (chair), thanked attendees “so that we may continue to be there when families need us most.”
BOUGHT AND SOLD: As for Commercial Drive’s now-renovating Havana restaurant, its previous 21-year co-owners were Mike Abbott, Ken Conquer and June Bennett. Abbott made an early bundle with Vancouver-based Buy & Sell, a free-advertisements paper that aped his native Britain’s Exchange & Mart and inspired others in North America, if not Cuba.
FILLER WEED: A salty tang filled the Four Seasons hotel ballroom when the Wine for Waves tasting had 11 restaurants and 25 Naramata Bench wineries benefit Ocean Wise. That sustainable seafood organization’ s ever inventive executive chef, Ned Bell, offered Vancouver Aquarium president John Nightingale kelpbased seaweed brownies. Had he baked in those confections’ more usual weed, Nightingale might have further craved the early-1960 Austin Healey he seeks. Like hooked fish, those handsome-but-low-slung British sports cars can be landed easily, their mufflers being vulnerable to speed bumps and driveway ends.
FULLY LOADED: Bridal Fashion Week Canada opened at the Fairmont Waterfront hotel, then moved to Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton and Mississauga. Staged again by Parvesh Kuma and Jai Singh’s Raasleela by Parvesh Jai firm, its domestic and international designers included New Delhi-based Ambar Pariddi Sahai. Known for adorning Bollywood stars, she placed a maang tika head ornament, choker, necklace and bracelet with cascading kaira pearls on local model Anastasiya Toropova. No henna mehndi on her hands, arms, feet and lower legs, though, as that demands up nine hours of real brides’ prep time.
VON FLEW OVER: Mission
Hill Family Estate winery’s Anthony von Mandl has received Vancouver magazine’s lifetime-achievement award. He likely chuckled at its somewhat burlesque description of the 1970s Okanagan when he was an imported-wine agent and, briefly, Vancouver magazine’s wine-andspirits scribe. He’d have read its many pages about growers facing marketing-board and climate constraints while developing pure-vinifera vines from the U.S. and Europe. In 1977, Osoyoos Vineyard’s Walter Davidson wryly assessed the eight hectares of vinifera he’d nurtured since 1973, and the Osoyoos Indian Band’s Inkameep (now Nk’ Mip Cellars) operation having planted 85,000 vinifera cuttings from Germany’s University of Geisenheim. “If you take the consensus of the valley, you’ll probably find that (Inkameep manager) Ted Brouwer and I aren’t seen as sane men,” Davidson said. Four years later, von Mandl showed that they were. No less sanely, he generated a North America-wide fortune more from liquor-spiked Mike’s Hard Lemonade than his praiseworthy Okanagan wines.
EAR TODAY: Industrial noise around Yaletown once entailed hectic warehouse bays and locomotives shunting railcars on adjacent sidings. Today, it is an official art form practised by the likes of New Yorker Pharmakon (real name Margaret Chardiet) who has released four albums of it. She staged an industrial-noise set recently in Mason Wu’s huge, high-priced fashion store, Leisure Center. It included old-time tech when, eschewing a remote mic, Ms. Chardiet crawled between packed fans’ legs trailing a cable linked to a locomotive-volume PA system. No one was hurt, other than aurally perhaps. DOWN PARRYSCOPE: When employers say of faithful but sacked staff, “We wish them the very best on what’s to come,” what they mean is, “You’re too old and costly. Get lost.” malcolmparry@shaw.ca 604-929-8456