Toronto Life articles from August 2001

Toronto Life archives from August 2001

Big Ben (Mulroney).
August 1, 2001... The city is so hot it stinks, but, somehow Ben Mulroney glows. He's tall, poised, quick with a solid handshake and just vaguely aloof. He could be a Ralph Lauren model. While Canadians are known for being meek as mice, suspicious of ostentation...

Girl scout: (Lauren Mechling's assessment of the singles scene).
August 1, 2001... Being beautiful, clever, well dressed and available is not, apparently, the recipe to snare a bodacious boy. According to Lauren Mechling's recent assessment of the singles scene in the National Post, a good man is still hard to find. As the...

Bard-hopping: (Toronto's movie industry).
August 1, 2001... Hollywood North has been accused of many things: stealing jobs from Los Angeles film crews, clogging up the streets of Toronto, boring newspaper readers senseless with updates on celebrity shopping sprees. But no one has yet given Toronto the...

Kiss me, Kate (Taylor): (Louise Pitre wins a Dora Award for Mamma Mia!).
August 1, 2001... When Mamma Mia! opened last year, it came as no surprise to theatre types that the sharp-tongued and decidedly highbrow Globe and Mail critic Kate Taylor gave the show a thumbs-down. It was, after all, an ABBA musical. And even though it was a...

Now they're cooking: (Emeril Lagasse offers the Paul Christopher Band a job).
August 1, 2001... Members of the fledgling Paul Christopher Band probably dreamed of being discovered. They may even have dreamed of being on television some day. But it's unlikely that they ever dreamed of being discovered on a cooking show. Enter chef Emeril...

(Columnist Rosie Dimanno and her earring).
August 1, 2001... Dear Urban Decoder: Over the past six or seven years that I've been reading Rosie Dimanno's column in --Kate Lavoie, High Park Dear Kate: The perpetual plume adorning Rosie's lobe is, in fact, an earring. While on assignment...

(Are there beavers in the Don River).
August 1, 2001... Dear Urban Decoder: I recently heard a story about a dog being attacked by a beaver along the Don River. Are there really beavers in the southern portion of the Don, and if so, why have I never seen a dam there? --Alison Watson,...

(Where do subway cars go at night?).
August 1, 2001... Dear Urban Decoder: Where do subway cars go at night, and what happens when they get there? --Manuel Rodrigues, Bathurst and Eglinton Dear Manuel: When rush hour subsides, the 546 subway cars that serve Toronto every day...

Reality check: Dorkville: (Yorkville).
August 1, 2001... Private school girls splurge their daily calorie allowances on pistachio ice cream, Baby Gap-clad toddlers stumble up the park's enormous rock, and dapper couples linger over spritzers, Holt Renfrew bags carefully perched at their...

Revenge of the nerds: (ChumCity bash).
August 1, 2001... Handbags ranged from Vuitton clutches to grease-stained canvas totes at ideaCity's final fete, where guests mingled over pickled-ginger ice cream, cassava root canapes and gazpacho shooters. The conference, a $3,000-a-ticket Znaimer...

This issue: (Canadian authors).
August 1, 2001... IT ISN'T EASY BEING A WRITER IN CANADA. A DOZEN OR SO superstars--Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje among them--do spectacularly well. The rest support themselves by bartending or teaching or scribbling ad copy for Canadian...

This month: theatre.
August 1, 2001... OPENINGS Pericles. Listen to the lapping waves while you muse on your mortality. Shakespeare's wacky romance about the titular Job-like hero is performed outside, by a lake, in Oakville's lovely Coronation Park. With Jonathan Eliot,...

This month: classical music.
August 1, 2001... STRATFORD SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL The inaugural festival continues in the Shakespeare theme park with an imaginative and fresh repertoire. Two venues listed here: City Hall Auditorium, 1 Wellington St.; Perth County Court House, 1 Ontario St....

This month: dance.
August 1, 2001... fFIDA 2001. When Michael Menegon and Allen Kaeja founded the fringe Festival of Independent Dance 11 years ago, they never imagined that they were laying the foundation for one of Canada's largest international dance festivals. Participants are...

This month: art.
August 1, 2001... FREE Pool. It's "water, water everywhere" at Harbourfront as a score of artists test the depths. Inside the York Quay gallery amid an installation of water-themed paintings and photos, Eldon Garnet's open aluminum book sculpture spurts water...

This month: nightlife.
August 1, 2001... CONCERTS The Dave Matthews Band. Expect Dave-heads to make a pilgrimage from all corners. Like Dead-heads, they travel from show to show in VWs and tie-dye, comparing notes that only a fanatic could appreciate. Also like the Dead, the Dave...

This month: jazz and standards.
August 1, 2001... Markham Jazz Festival, now in its fourth year, combines community spirit with spirited music, much of it outdoors and flee. The festival opens with the Markham Theatre Gala, its one ticketed event, and features young performers dedicating...

This month: kid's events.
August 1, 2001... Kidsummer. There's no excuse to succumb to end-of-summer ennui. This Today's Parent program serves up more than your humdrum lemonade-and-swimming-pool summertime fare. Highlights include a gambling-free day at Woodbine Racetrack. There's also...

This month: diversions.
August 1, 2001... Canadian National Exhibition. In a world of niche marketing and narrowcasting, the grand old lady of Lake Shore Boulevard--122 years old and still kicking--continues to target the broadest audience possible. In addition to the midway, see...

Counsel to the damned: during back-to-back trials in 1961, Ross MacKay represented two men accused (Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin) of murder. A year later, they were put to death in a double hanging ...
August 1, 2001... ARTHUR LUCAS AND RONALD TURPIN ATE their last dinner--each had steak--with spoons. In Corridor H-9 at the Don Jail, where the two had been confined for most of 1962, table knives and forks were considered weapons. Cyril Everitt joined them,...

Voice collector: he has showcased opera stars from the international scene and introduced, with a talent scout's instinct, the best of the next generation. Neil Crory, music producer, workaholic, ...
August 1, 2001... NEIL CRORY WAS ALWAYS OUT OF STEP WITH the other kids his age. Growing up in rural Alberta, he was a loner, his constant companion a transistor radio that he took everywhere, tuned either to the CBC or a university station. He never missed the...

Three sisters.
August 1, 2001... My youngest daughter, Ginnie, is the lucky one. One June day, a few weeks after Rachel's death, she shows up to announce she's won ten thousand dollars from a car dealership in North Vancouver. "Not a car?" I ask. I'm hulling strawberries...

Associated press.
August 1, 2001... That boy works as a photographer for the Associated Press. He is at home in a suite at the Marriott Hotel in a city whose name sounds like machine-gun fire. Through e-mail he sends you photos of human rights violations: the scarred backs of...

Interposition.
August 1, 2001... In her neighbourhood she was as much a fixture the caserne de pompiers; when she'd walk to a cafe, barks and whistles would follow her like she was the sausage truck. Her daughter was nine years old and had thick black hair and long limbs like...

What are we doing here?
August 1, 2001... What is she doing here watching this older man, practically an old man, briskly rubbing garlic against the inside of a wooden bowl in preparation for a caesar salad when she could be at a real party, like the party last night, where that one...

Cool quaff and an open house.
August 1, 2001... Chin-chin Now that cocktail mania has turned even the martini into camp, the au courant are opting for a drink with no-frills continental cachet: the aperitif. Judging from the tabletops at our most bustling boites, this summer's...

Box set: Mies van_der_Rohe meets Mexico is what you think when you come upon Astra Burka's cubed concoction. She likens it to a dessert: strawberry cheesecake, simply delicious.
August 1, 2001... THE ALLEY LOOKS LIKE MANY IN LITTLE Italy. The nonchalant derrieres of early-20th-century houses are interrupted by the occasional small factory turned condo; a few dispirited cars sit beached in weeds. Just blocks from the chic-ification of...

City slicker: Stephen Tapp.
August 1, 2001... He may live for the frenetic pace of quick-cut television, but Citytv vice-president and general manager Stephen Tapp takes his sartorial cues from the medium's golden age. The son of Montreal radio and TV personality Jimmy Tapp, Stephen...

Down the garden path: wherein our critics picks up a hitchhiker and discovers the traveller's "shortcut" to Stratford paved with culinary diversions.
August 1, 2001... PERHAPS YOU SAW HIM, SHUFFLING WESTWARD on the highway: a stooping man with wild white hair, wearing what looked like a ragged dressing gown. I had set off that cloudless summer's day for Stratford, intending to review a promising new...

Tasting notes: wine.
August 1, 2001... California dreaming The western state crushed 3.3 million tons of wine grapes last year, a record-setting 27 per cent more than in 1999. Even as supply grows, prices are rising sharply, especially among Napa vintages. Far Niente's Cabernet...

(Toronto) restaurants.
August 1, 2001... Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by Toronto Life's anonymous reviewers, who are required to be honest, accurate and fair. Marks are awarded only for a restaurant's cooking, taking into account the kitchen's ambitions, consistency of...

Abandoned: unsealing a time capsule on Lippincott Street.
August 1, 2001... "But I'm going to move back. I am," Carrie Hudson would say if you called. And then she'd giggle a bit over the phone. Her two-storey Victorian row house on Lippincott had stood empty for two decades--through the 1980s and '90s, through the...