Town Talk: Wall Ball hands Union Gospel Mission an 80th-birthday gift
Credit to Author: Malcolm Parry| Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2020 15:00:50 +0000
STILL ROLLING: Wall Financial Corp. luminary Peter Wall filled a Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre ballroom recently for the annual Wall Ball. As usual, invitees didn’t pay, parking was free, the food was a cut above, and there were no charity pitches or noisy auctions. True, Wall startled past guests by parading Holstein cows, an ostrich, a donkey and senior politicians. But musical performances predominate now.
Aliaksandra Varslavan staged a Wall Ball concert that included Celtic songs and a mariachi band performing the traditional English air, Greensleeves.
The recent ball saw companion Aliaksandra Varslavan stage a Celtic-themed concert by harpist Janelle Nadeau’s ensemble. It included singers Magdalena How and Yeeun (Yenny) Lee from Nancy Hermiston’s UBC Opera program. Octavio Carillo’s Mariachi del Sol group added a whiff of Wall eccentricity by performing the 16th-century English air Greensleeves.
With Union Gospel Mission $35.5-million Women and Families project ongoing, president Bill Mollard received a $100,000 cheque from Peter Wall.
Wall himself played it straight by handing a $100,000 cheque to Union Gospel Mission’s president, Bill Mollard. Marking its 80th anniversary, the mission is undertaking its biggest project, a $35.5-million expansion of its Women and Families Centre on Cordova Street.
UP THEY GO: Fellow property developer-builder Ryan Beedie also stages free concerts — for 3,000 friends. His first, the Rock’N The Park 2016 birthday tribute to wife Cindy, benefited three city charities. Five years earlier, Ryan and now-late father Keith donated $22 million to establish Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. On his own 50th birthday last year, Ryan launched Beedie Luminaries. It provides scholarships and mentorship for smart but financially challenged 18-to-24-years-olds — 105 this year — who might otherwise forgo post-secondary education. The Beedie Group enhanced its reputation and income by constructing buildings’ walls flat on the ground, then tilting them up to their functional positions. Ryan appears to be doing the same for youngsters.
Vancouver Polo Club’s Tony and Claudia Tornquist, Paul Sullivan, Jay Garnett and other folk now have the option of wintertime play in Indio, California.
BIGGER GREENS: Many Palm Springs visitors aim 43 mm-diameter golf balls at 108 mm-wide holes. Now they may smack balls twice the size toward 730 cm-wide targets on 274-by-182-metre fields. On horseback, no less. That’s through options that Delta-based Vancouver Polo Club offers on the Empire and Eldorado clubs’ 20 polo fields at Indio, California. VPC director Grant Lockhart (membership@vancouverpolo.com) said packages start at US$350 for a trial ride. A weekend, including eight horses, eight seven-minute chukkers of play, clothes, a custom mallet and club membership, might cost $5,500. Or you could park and watch for free at Friday nights’ Polo Under The Lights tournaments.
With the air warm and 2010 Olympics snow scant, Ashlee Oldenburg, Tina-Marie Springham and Isolde Semple modelled games-related VAN’Kerchiefs.
TEN YEARS AGO: To widespread relief, False Creek’s Athletes Village’ was declared ready to house 2010 Winter Olympics competitors. The $1.1-billion False Creek complex had suffered budget overruns while missing schedules and presenting city hall with towering debt prospects. Scarily, too, our warmest-ever January forced games organizers to truck and airlift snow — even 1,000 straw bales — to bare patches at Cypress. Still, the balminess was a boon for models who, clad solely in designer Deborah Vandenakker’s Olympics-themed VAN’Kerchiefs, helped raise funds for B.C. Children’s Hospital.
Even with Justin Trudeau joining the grow-a-beard trend and a wizard-hatted photo urging him to renew his, Malcolm Parry opted to stay bare-faced.
TO BEARD OR NOT TO BEARD: With sports teams, endless young fellows and even our burlesque-prone prime minister wearing beards, it’s tempting to revive my own. Increasing greyness condemned that decades-old adornment to shearing. There was also the matter of ice-cream cones, buttered corn on the cob and suchlike imparting the fragrance of a poorly managed landfill. Topped by a kitchen-foil wizard’s hat, though, the beard in an old photo wickedly whispered: “Grow me again.” Seriously, though, no seductive wizardry could keep the pale strands out of whiskers sprouting anew. And while Shakespeare had Hamlet mention a “grizzled” beard that friend Horatio delicately called “sable silvered,” grizzled it was, and geezer it implied. So, no new face forest for me. Anyway, the Christmas turkey used up all our foil.
RIP: Culture-community and other friends mourn Clearwater-born Eric Green whose bon-vivant manner sometimes evoked Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. Reflecting that era, Green wrote and CBC Radio aired his play, The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe, about the playwright and possible government spy whose works greatly influenced exact contemporary Shakespeare. Maybe Bard on The Beach could stage a version.
Founder-publisher Dan McLeod sold his 53-year-old Georgia Straight recently after coming hairsbreadth close to doing so when it was a mere 15.
NO CIGAR: Before selling his 53-year-old Georgia Straight to Ontario-based Media Central, publisher of the similar Now weekly, Dan McLeod spurned several offers (Sun, Jan. 7). Few likely came closer than city-based Ron Stern’s in 1982. McLeod stared long at the sale document before putting his pen down and continuing his remarkable media career.
Ron Stern missed buying the Georgia Straight weekly paper but got into dailies with Winnipeg Free Press Sun and Brandon Sun owner, FP Newspapers.
Stern later become chairman/president of FP Newspapers which owns the Winnipeg Free Press and Brandon Sun. He relinquished those positions in November but, unlike McLeod, retained his ownership role.
B.C. Hospitality Foundation’s Dana Lee Harris will kick off Vancouver Dine Out Festival with the 20-eatery, 30-drinkey Great Big Taste extravaganza.
BON APPÉTIT: Tourism Vancouver’s 18th annual Vancouver Dine Out Festival will begin Jan 17 with 300 restaurants offering $15-to-$45 brunch-lunch-dinner menus to Feb. 2. The B.C. Hospitality Foundation’s executive director, Dana Lee Harris, will front the related $89-ticket Great Big Taste event at the Rocky Mountaineer station on Jan 16. With 20 restaurant and 30 wine-beer-spirits participants, high-fortitude attendees could pay $1.58 a serving.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456