Toronto Life articles from February 2000

Toronto Life archives from February 2000

Man of the cloth.
February 1, 2000... Back in the early '60s, when Harry Rosen's retail empire was but a one-store operation on Richmond Street, a customer came in and ordered a suit for the holiday season. When the gentleman returned to pick it up, the garment had not yet arrived...

Fine romance (dating service caters to University graduates).
February 1, 2000... No discreet daytime encounters with horny housewife here. The Right Stuff, an elite matchmaking service, trades in pedigreed professionals seeking their "soulmate," "companion" or an "interlocutor." And what must a smarty-pants singleton do to...

This issue.
February 1, 2000... RIVERDANCE, IRELAND'S OVER-THE-TOP CELEBRATION OF Celtic culture, was burning up North America in the summer of 1997, and when it arrived at the Hummingbird Centre, Matthew Barrett, chairman of the Bank of Montreal and proudly Irish, decided to...

Transformer.
February 1, 2000... "I hear great music in everyday language," Judith Thompson rhapsodizes, surrounded by a makeshift kitchen in the Tarragon Theatre's rehearsal room. "If I hear a couple having an argument on a bus, I'm fascinated. It's focused, the language...

Station broke: for most of its 50 years, CJRT has been fighting to survive.
February 1, 2000... A CERTAIN AIR OF DESPERATION has always surrounded CJRT, the FM radio station that started life as a student lab at what was then called the Ryerson Institute of Technology and eventually became part of the city's cultural landscape. For...

Play boys: celebrating 25 years this month, TheareBooks ... has weathered three locations ... next challenge: the Internet.
February 1, 2000... EVERY COMMUNITY, LARGE OR SMALL, HAS its version of the town square. A place for trade, probably, but more importantly a place for the exchange of news and views, ethical debate, gossip and speculation, discreet spying and indiscreet flirting....

Irreconcilable differences: Anne-Marie Sten grew up in Toronto ... by the time she married banker Matthew Barrett, she had become a woman of the world.
February 1, 2000... ANNE-MARIE STEN WEARS A SLEEVELESS TEAL BLUE SHEATH with a plunging neckline. Simple and tight, without embroidery, without sparkles, without any adornment, it hugs her slender six-foot frame, held up, barely, by off-the-shoulder straps, as if...

Suit kitchen (the Law Society of Upper Canada runs a meal program for the homeless).
February 1, 2000... "The bitter part is in the divisions," says an earnest young litigator to the jurisprudential gentleman by her side. He nods gravely: the divisions can be bitter. They're not talking about divorce settlements here. This meeting of legal minds...

Faulty tower (1960s counterculture co-op Rochdale College is refurbished as a senior citizens home).
February 1, 2000... When Marshall McLuhan decreed that Rochdale College had the makings of a utopian flop--"They're all hurrying backward into the past as fast as they can go"--he was, as usual, cornering a Canadian paradox. In 1966, to allay the shortage of...

Heist: the 1995 Loomis armoured truck robbery was pulled off by a bunch of wannabes who will go down in criminal history for their take - $3.1 million cash - and their incompetence.
February 1, 2000... Just before midnight ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1995, a Loomis armoured truck pulled into the shadows behind the Bank of Nova Scotia on Albion Road near Highway 27. The driver, an affable, easy-going 31-year-old named Graeme Finnell, shone his...

Writers in residence: Timothy Findley and Bill Whitehead are tickled pink - or should we say rose, fuchsia and cerise - about their Stratford condo.
February 1, 2000... "NEVER SAY PINK," THE NOVELIST TIMOTHY Findley warns, although it looks as if there are three shades of pink paint in the living room alone. "I hate pink," explains his partner, Bill Whitehead. "Its rose, and don't you forget it." If...

Party boys: Leslie Ng and Byron Dill.
February 1, 2000... Follow the right crowd at the right time to the right velvet rope, and someone is bound to drop their names to the doorman. The business partners, friends since their teenage clubbing days, are known to most every young stylist, designer and DJ...

Rooms with a Wu: of Hemispheres, Lai Wah Heen and Sen5es - and Henry Wu, the man behind three of the city's most inventive restaurants.
February 1, 2000... HENRY WU IS THE MOST DYNAMIC RESTAUrateur in Toronto. Explain and discuss, giving specific examples. Some day, I suspect--and sooner rather than later--students taking degrees in hotel management will find themselves faced with this question....

Tasting notes.
February 1, 2000... These notes list producer-shipper, agent and phone number, CSPC number (V indicates a Vintages bottle), price per 750 mL and region. Consignment bottles are generally brought in by the case from the agent. Rating is on a five-star system that...

Accents, Sutton Place, 955 Bay St., 324-5633.
February 1, 2000... The place Back of the lobby of the Sutton Place Hotel, on the Wellesley Street side. A long, narrow room, with a piano near the entrance, features a long wooden bar with a dozen seats; wooden tables stretch to the rear of the room, which...

Rick Danko: December 29, 1943 - December 10, 1999.
February 1, 2000... The obituaries marking Ricky's death talked mostly about his days as a musician with The Band and Dylan. But in 1960, when he walked into Le Coq d'Or on Yonge Street, he was all of 17, and he was green--a slim kid from tobacco country with long...