Toronto Life articles from December 2001

Toronto Life archives from December 2001

(Sarah) Harmer's way.
December 1, 2001... Songwriters will often tell their interviewers: "Listen to the songs," meaning "Leave me alone." Polite ones add "please," and Sarah Harmer, creator of the critically hailed best-selling album You Were Here, is very polite. Still, she says this...

Royal pain: (Adrienne Clarkson's many demands as speaker of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression fundraising dinner).
December 1, 2001... The annual fundraising event hosted by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression hands out awards to worthy members of the international media. Always held in a downtown hotel, the evening more or less follows the same format every year: a...

Adams family: (Ryan Adams and his friend Elton John).
December 1, 2001... The 20-something North Carolina rocker Ryan Adams--who's just one letter away from Canadian pop royalty--played his curious alt-country stylings to a sold-out crowd at Lee's Palace over Thanksgiving. And no wonder: the former lead singer of...

Scold boys: (Upper Canada College's Brad Adams and Chris Taylor shoo away Time magazine and James FitzGerald).
December 1, 2001... One of the many people to be interviewed by the Canuck edition of Time for its story on the ongoing sex abuse investigation at Upper Canada College was alumnus James FitzGerald, author of Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College....

Pees and queues: (Martin Levin's party).
December 1, 2001... Shabby-chic Globe books editor Martin Levin is turning into quite the party thrower. In early October, at one of his many Annex at-home gatherings, the sparkly guest list included McClelland & Stewart's much esteemed editrix Ellen Seligman,...

Grand designs: (Nancy Pencer's grand house is for sale).
December 1, 2001... The stock market's downward spiral doesn't seem to have lowered the expectations of those selling high-end real estate. One of the priciest manors on the market, on Old Forest Hill Road, boasts six bedrooms, a pool, a tennis court and no fewer...

Crimson pride: (fundraiser for Canadian Foundation for AIDS research).
December 1, 2001... Queer-positive do-gooders, cranked up on candy-coloured martinis and whimsical chocolates, batted eyes and business cards at the Red Party, a late-October fundraiser for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research. The Queens Quay club Kool Haus...

This issue: (journalist Michael Posner).
December 1, 2001... I'M BIASED, OF COURSE, BUT I THINK In the late 1970s, I worked at Weekend, which was ambitious, daring and briefly the country's magazine du jour. Weekend dispatched writers and photographers all over the world, syndicated their work...

This month: theatre.
December 1, 2001... OPENINGS Beyond the Byline: A Fundraiser for the Factory Theatre. I had a drug-addled university professor who oft preached "One, four, three, it's all the same number!" Though his it's-all-the-same philosophy seemed dubious, such loopy...

This month: classical music.
December 1, 2001... ORCHESTRAL Kirov Orchestra. Out of the ruins of post-Soviet Russia comes this spectacular find of an orchestra, led by the flamboyant, intense and mysterious Valery Gergiev, a conductor at New York's Metropolitan Opera. The orchestra...

This month: dance.
December 1, 2001... Ballet Jorgen has been performing this charming pocket Nutcracker all over North America since 1995. Its small scale--just 16 professional dancers--endears the production to regional theatres. Choreographer Bengt Jorgen based his version on the...

This month: art.
December 1, 2001... FREE Christmas Spice. In the holiday sweepstakes, Paul Petro Contemporary Art injects a welcome fun quotient. At the gallery's new digs on Queen West, the masterminds behind Bucky and Fluff's Craft Factory (Allyson Mitchell and Lex Vaughn) have...

This month: nightlife.
December 1, 2001... Goldfrapp. Though it sounds like a new Starbucks beverage, the name of this experimental Ennio Morricone-meets-Kate Bush pop music duo comes from one half of the equation, Allison Goldfrapp. The chanteuse hails from Bath, England, and a legacy...

This month: jazz and standards.
December 1, 2001... CONCERTS Jazz Trax Christmas Tour. Smooth jazz is so successful as radio fare, it can come as a surprise when some of its performers turn up live. This touring show--featuring guitarist Norman Brown, pianist Alex Bugnon and trumpeter Chris...

This month: kids' events.
December 1, 2001... Cinderella's Enchanted Castle. Sir Henry Pellatt's House on the Hill showcases a live musical adaptation of the tale of the mop-wielding heroine and her entourage. The airy conservatory also hosts Wizard Works, where Alabizarro and his dragon...

This month: diversions.
December 1, 2001... Analyze This! A film lest in nine parts, pushing the schmooze factor with screenings that mix education and delight. The series concludes with showings of the recent time-twisting fare Memento, Dee. 2, and Hitchcock's suave '50s classic...

Treasure island: each week, Klaus Bock mined our trash for gold, hauling away discarded bikes and boots ... he lived on the border between sane and crazy ...
December 1, 2001... THINGS HAD THEIR PLACES IN HIS COLLECTION. Along the north fence, a pile of bicycle parts--rust and fusion. Beside the house, the punk and rot of a woodpile. Over there, the plastics: buckets, bags, vapour barrier with ragged edges, flotsam...

Agent provocateur: in a business where everything is always and finally about money, Shari Caldwell is the rarest of creatures ...
December 1, 2001... MOST EVERY DETAIL IN HER HOME suggests the conventional comforts: the location at the end of a shaded crescent in the Beach, the pool in the backyard and the company of an old, needy dog named Stokely. But the carved wooden masks give Shari...

Magic hands: if you ever need heart surgery, this is your man. His name is Tirone David, he's at the Toronto General Hospital ... and other surgeons ... think he's a genius.
December 1, 2001... SURGERY OF THE HEART has probably reached the limits set by Nature to all surgery; no new method, and no new discovery can overcome the natural difficulties that attend a wound of the heart. --Stephen Paget, 1896 AT 12 MINUTES AFTER SEVEN...

Rituals: scents and sensibility.
December 1, 2001... I once had phone sex on a public telephone in the St. Lawrence Farmers' Market. Third booth to the right. Nine-thirty on a summer Saturday morning, while the man to my left inquired loudly whether his wife wanted curly or Italian parsley and...

Best and worst of the city: the highs, the lows, the riffs, the blows: a outrageous opinionated look at Toronto in 2001.
December 1, 2001... MOST DANGEROUS MEASURES TAKEN TO HANG A SIGN THAT FROM THE GROUND ENDED UP LOOKING NO BIGGER THAN A POSTAGE STAMP In July, two Greenpeace enthusiasts managed to scamper up CN Tower guy wires and hang a banner reading "Canada and Bush,...

Icons: who gives a schvitz?
December 1, 2001... The Oak Leaf is not a glamorous place, unless your idea of glamour is a Soviet-era Men's Palace of Fitness and Health in, say, a not-so-prosperous corner of Krakow. Nor is Toronto's oldest sauna--built in 1939 to serve a growing, sore-muscled...

Bones of contention: for the past year, St. James' Cathedral has been embroiled in a fierce controversy over a proposed condo development on the church grounds ...
December 1, 2001... The 47-year-old Ph.D. radiates a bracing appreciation for history. His consulting firm, Archaeological Services Inc., gets called in when developers or road builders stumble across relics. His office, on the second floor of a modernist stucco...

Give it to me: if you don't ask, you'll never get it. Herewith, 10 pages of list toppers no one can resist.
December 1, 2001... SUPER SHOPPER FOR THE HOST Cuisipro spatulas, spoons, whisks $9.99-$15.99, Dish Cooking Studio Mini- Joy of Cooking $6.95, Teatro Verde. Southwater cookbooks $8 each, Spotted Zebra Olof Soderholm soft cheese knife $22, one-handed...

Guts and glory: bull's penis soup. Curried seal. Fish in a pig's bladder. Who dares to serve - or eat - such exotica? What our best chefs would feed us if only our palates were willing.
December 1, 2001... THERE WAS ONCE A CHEF WHO WENT BACK home to France for his vacances and returned a changed man. Even the apprentices noticed the glint in his eye, the sudden flux of French patois in his conversation, a daring new creativity in the daily...

Tasting notes: wine.
December 1, 2001... The drying game Fortification is what's needed when the mercury dips below zero. This month, it comes in the form of port and madeira (both brandy-fortified wines), as well as big-bodied reds like amarone della Valpolicella. To concentrate...

Restaurants.
December 1, 2001... Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by A LA MODE Acqua *** Best known for power lunches and as an after-work meet market, Acqua secretly saves its best for Saturday evenings, when the bar is dead, fewer than half its...