Town Talk: West side restaurateur feeds east side kids
Credit to Author: Malcolm Parry| Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 15:00:23 +0000
ANOTHER JOE: As well as serving his Hawksworth and Nightingale restaurants’ affluent diners, David Hawksworth squeezed in a catering gig at Britannia Secondary’s east Vancouver campus recently. There he delivered a Christmas turkey-and-trimmings meal to Streetfront Alternative Middle School teacher Trevor Stokes and the sometimes-hard-done-by students he says “are worth investing in.” The event was staged by Vancouver Firefighters Charities members who partner the non-mainstream school through the Sports for Kids program. As usual, Dotty Kanke and husband Bud were involved.
Bud Kanke sold Joe Fortes restaurant to David Aisenstat in in 2012 and may wonder if its1948 Chrysler taxi will grace a soon-opening Whistler locale.
That same day, the Joe Fortes restaurant that Bud founded in 1984 and sold in 2012 announced that it will launch a Whistler satellite in January. Perhaps the original Thurlow-off-Robson joint’s 1948 Chrysler taxi will trundle up the Sea to Sky Highway to park outside the new one.
Omnifilm Entertainment partner-executive producer Gabriela Schonbach feted daughter Amanda Giannakos on founding separate-but-linked NM Media Co.
TIED TO BE FIT: Like apples, accomplished parents’ children reputedly land close to the tree. The moviebiz equivalent is not being left on the cutting-room floor. That’s the case with Amanda Giannakos, whose mother, Gabriela Schonbach, is partner-executive producer at city-based Omnifilm Entertainment. At that firm’s recent 40th anniversary celebration, marketing-distribution director Giannakos said she founded the independent but related NM Media Co. in April. Its first 25-episode series, Strong By NM, will air next fall on the One Get Fit channel. It presently carries Omnifilm’s Namaste Yoga series that former lawyer Giannakos heads. Early-morning one-minute handstands may have concentrated (or frazzled) her brain to launch the 160-paper-page Movement by NM magazine that “explores the intersection of art, fitness and everyday life.”
Marc Schutzbank, who heads the Fresh Roots student-farming programs, received $13,000 from charity-funding Give A Damn founder Martin McNish.
DAMN RIGHT: Odlum Brown portfolio manager Martin McNish and others gave charity giving a new twist in 2016 by sparkplugging the Give A Damn program. At quarterly events, twenties-to-forties-aged members each put up $100 and vote on pitches by three charities’ representatives. In the Yaletown’s Earls loft recently, Fresh Roots (freshroots.ca) executive director Marc Schutzbank, 32, received a $13,000 pot swelled by attendees and McNish’s friend Martin Jones, the San Jose Sharks goaltender. Schutzbank, whose wife Ilana Labow co-founded Fresh Roots in 2009, said elementary and secondary students grow food at educational farms on several schools’ grounds, learn to cook it and see it go to cafeterias, food-access programs and suchlike. “When kids are outside and growing something, they also find success in the classroom, and their confidence increases,” said U.S.-native Schutzbank who came to UBC in 2010 on a Fulbright scholarship. “If they grow it, they will eat it,” he said of Fresh Roots’ students. Canada, he added, “is the only G7 nation without a federal school-meals program.” He and Labow have a first and presumably healthy-eating child due Jan. 11.
After running her artisan-designer Address show here since 2015, founder Kate Duncan will present 12 designers at Toronto’s DesignTO festival.
A TOAST: To furniture maker Kate Duncan, who launched her ever-growing annual Address show of talented young designer-artisans in 2015. Having gained a solid reputation, she’ll present 12 of them during Toronto’s DesignTO festival Jan. 14-19.
Greeting Matteo Escoto, nine, at an Omega reception, George Frankel said that his family-owned Bridges restaurant will undergo a $15-million renovation.
ABOUT TIME: Another fourth-decade landmark restaurant, Bridges, is due for a $15-million renovation. So said George Frankel, who built the Granville Island waterfront facility and, with son Daniel, bought out his surviving partners in 2018. A building permit arrived this week. Beginning in fall 2020, work will involve wraparound terraces on both floors. Daniel, who runs the family firm today, also owns all three Tap & Barrel pub-restaurants and Brewhall, the former Steel Toad Brewery. At the Omega boutique’s recent annual reception, Frankel pere greeted Matteo Escoto, 9, who appeared in past columns modelling the Swiss firm’s wristwatches. Frankel wore a competing Rolex Oyster that was a gift from Daniel but vowed to reciprocate with a like-value Omega.
With 50 or so books produced to date and more on the way, expatriate logger-turned-author David Day will return to his native Victoria by summer.
DAY’S AHEAD: Victoria-born former logger David Day has written and helped provide paper for more books than many have read: 50 and counting. His Tolkien Bestiary sold a million copies. His Doomsday Book of Animals, with a foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh, sold 750,000. Pal Terry Jones, the Monty Python Flying Circus team member, wrote the introduction for his Decoding Wonderland. Three more in Day’s Tolkien series were released recently in North America, the UK and France. With wife Roisin, the long-time expatriate will soon occupy a former Day-family home in Victoria.
Journalist-author Stevie Cameron’s brother, artist-drummer-singer Chris Dahl, has released the Silver Dagger single from his Smoke + Shadows album
HI-YO SILVER: Further up-Island, Qualicum Beach’s Ceramics Artworks firm owner Chris Dahl has released the Silver Dagger title track of a self-produced world-fusion album titled Smoke + Shadows. Artist Dahl drummed with the My Indole Ring band that had its self-titled 1969 album re-issued 41 years later by a producer in then-psychedelia-crazy Germany.
Seen here with Vanishing Tattoo partner Thomas Lockhart and Chili Dog, Vince Hemingson exhibits non-tattooed nudes and other photos in Kitsilano.
AFTER TATS: Vince Hemingson pinpointed communities in Borneo, California, China, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Samoa, and other locales for a documentary titled The Vanishing Tattoo (vanishingtattoo.com). No cutaneous embroidery appears on the female subjects of his Nude In The Landscape photographs exhibited at 1725 West Third to Dec. 31, along with others of Asian locales and African wildlife.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: All bluster aside, modern-day “witch hunts” may actually identify witchcraft.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456