Town Talk: Revisiting some who helped make 2019 what it was
Credit to Author: Malcolm Parry| Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2019 04:03:10 +0000
With 2019’s imminent demise, we’ll check off another box among the 6,000 or so that constitute recorded history. The year’s delights, disasters, encouragements and letdowns will be remembered and possibly surpassed. From our own community, this column recalls some who contributed to it or otherwise sustained the character of the place we call home and that, troubled aspects notwithstanding, few would wish to forget.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
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Thoroughly vice-regal in red, B.C. Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin attended a B.C. Women’s Hospital Foundation benefit accompanied by ceremonial aide de camp and former Vancouver police inspector Bob Usui.
B.C.-native tenor Ben Heppner hosted the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary concert at which an Orpheum theatre audience got the measure of Netherlands-born, nine-month music director Otto Tausk.
Actor-director Jason Priestley appraised a Jane Austen-style dress named Lovey when South Granville retailer and friend Julia Molnar launched a first-in-Canada satellite of the Paris-based La Maison Bonpoint store.
In the Macaulay Fine Art gallery, Cowichan/Syilx artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun exhibited a $45,000 sculpture titled Opioid Ovoid Humanoid that seemed to move every time viewers briefly looked away.
Actress Pamela Anderson struck a characteristic pose in the Vancouver Club where an art auction, including this $30,000 work by global photographer Raphael Mazzucco, benefited her self-named foundation.
At Manuel Bernaschek’s Stefano Ricci store, the designer’s son, Niccolo, showed a gold-buckled crocodile belt with 13.8 carats of diamonds that would hold a dapper chap’s pants up and maybe get him held up, too.
Returning to her Emily Carr University job after experiencing a tsunami in her native Indonesia, Diyan Achjadi wrapped an articulated city bus with artwork representing Dutch settlers’ fantasy views of that nation.
While the For Children We Care gala raised $4.1 million for B.C. Children’s Hospital, third-time presenter Ben Yeung checked out a $500,000 Roll-Royce Cullinan that Open Road dealer Christian Chia brought along.
Helping fund her Obakki Foundation’s sustainable projects in South Sudan, Cameroon and Uganda, Treana Peake welcomed former child soldier Emmanuel Jal to the White Envelope benefit at her Gleneagles home.
Toting an ultra-thick milkshake, chef Dawn Doucette opened North Vancouver’s 1950s-style Douce Diner in premises that husband Nino Giangrande built around Doucette’s sister Timi Fuller’s mosaic floor.
Sharing haircuts at a Canada Walk of Fame ceremony, mega-entrepreneur Jimmy Pattison may have appraised B.C. Premier John Horgan as a future employee as he did his NDP predecessor, Glen Clark.
With a poster of the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows aerobatic team behind them, U.K. High Commissioner Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque and Consul General Nicole Davison had just seen the real aircraft speed past them.
Polygon Homes chair Michael Audain accompanied wife Yoshi Karasawa at a Whistler gala that raised $450,000 for education, events and exhibitions at the $43-million Audain Museum he’d built and endowed nearby.
Cited for addiction recovery at the annual Courage To Come Back ceremony, Blackfoot Geri Bemister was accompanied by Ravenswood Consulting partner, spouse and Coast Salish member Celina Williams.
Having fought with other Canadian troops in the June 6, 1944, Normandy landings and the liberation of Holland, Master Warrant Officer George Chow was congratulated by China’s consul general, Tong Xiaoling.
Everything came up roses for Isabella McKinnon at the 11th annual Night of Miracles gala where she greeted South Asian community members who raised $742,495 for B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Lotte and John Davis fronted their fifth One Girl Can event to fund education for East African women and projects such as the rebuilding of Nairobi’s Ushirika School that collapsed, killing 11 of its 615 students.