Toronto Life articles from July 2001

Toronto Life archives from July 2001

Anti-diva: Isabel Bayrakdarian.
July 1, 2001... Isabel Bayrakdarian keeps kicking me in the shins. This is presumably not standard behaviour for an opera singer, stereotypes having led one to expect a certain decorous placidity, or the kind of highfalutin, highly puncturable gravitas the...

Amiel ticket: (Barbara Amiel and her friends enjoying a coffee).
July 1, 2001... More proof that the impossibly rich should have rights, too, dammit. Neo-con media Medusa Barbara Amiel Black (author of the Maclean's article "In Defence of Elitism: Benefits for Everyone," among countless others) was sighted (with skin as...

Accident prone: (Toronto writer Douglas Bell meets his literary hero, British writer Richard Rayner).
July 1, 2001... Toronto writer Douglas Bell (Run Over: A Boy, His Mother and an Accident) acted out the truism that you're never too old to feel like a clod. On a recent trip to New York, Bell beelined to a Barnes & Noble to bask in the divinity of his...

'Shroom service: (Rue McClanahan enjoying dining out in Toronto).
July 1, 2001... The poster girl for postmenopausal libido, Oklahoma actress Rue McClanahan, is best known for her purring performance as Golden Girls' lascivious belle, Blanche Devereaux. In town shooting a CBS movie of the week, the ripe temptress was caught...

Sandie-bagged: (Sandy Rinaldo absent from National Post list of who may replace Lloyd Robertson).
July 1, 2001... Should newscaster Lloyd Robertson (a.k.a. "Canada's Most Trusted Talking Head") one day step down from the populist CTV throne, the National Post recently speculated as to who might replace him. In the Arts section, reporters Siobhan Roberts,...

No-brainer: (Denise Richards visits Toronto).
July 1, 2001... On a visit to Toronto's Second City, Bond girl Denise Richards (The World Is Not Enough), Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser fame and actor Jack Noseworthy (made his big break in the first Brady Bunch movie) were coaxed into performing a set...

Urban decoder: (answers to your questions about Toronto).
July 1, 2001... Dear Urban Decoder: I've heard that our fire truck drivers can hit a switch to manipulate traffic lights when they're en route to an emergency. Is this true? --Roberta Alter, Willowdale Dear Roberta: The trucks themselves...

Carnal knowledge: (storage in Toronto East General's pathology room).
July 1, 2001... Every day, 40 to 60 plain glass jars are wheeled into Toronto East General's central pathology storage room on a stainless steel meal cart. Here, multi-coloured shelving units hold about 3,000 such jars embalming morsels of tissue excised...

(Developers of the Tip Top Tailers retrofit have a party).
July 1, 2001... Top tipplers Developers of the Tip Top Tailors building kicked off their wholesale retrofit of the 1929 art deco landmark with a boozy launch party in late May. Shindig hosts from Atlantic Developments, Deutsche Bank Canada and the Continental...

(Toronto Life's Nina Kootnekoff).
July 1, 2001... WHEN READERS CALL As it happens, the accounting department is where she started when she came to Toronto Life in 1985. "I'd worked in payroll at Today magazine [a newspaper supplement], which was where I learned you either love magazines...

This month: theatre.
July 1, 2001... OPENINGS Dream a Little Dream. My little dream is that the sappy baby-boomer monoculture give up the ghost. This "nearly true story of the Mamas and the Papas" stars former Papa Denny Doherty, who also penned new tunes for the show. In...

This month: Classical music.
July 1, 2001... ELORA FESTIVAL The venerable Elora Festival, now in its 22nd year, showcases an eclectic roster of music, running the gamut from psalms to classical oratorios and sonatas. Concerts are held in five main locations: Elora United Church, 75...

This month: Dance.
July 1, 2001... Dusk Dances. Between two trees, on a hill or in the middle of a field, Toronto dancers ply their trade in three city parks at sunset. Each venue has five performance spaces, and a host, like a dancing Pied Piper, leads the public from piece to...

This month: art.
July 1, 2001... FREE Euan Macdonald's deadpan video shorts invite the viewer to finish the story. Three Trucks, a two-minute video, titillates with a tinkling musical standoff between rival ice cream vendors at an intersection. Hammock Sleep documents the...

This month: nightlife.
July 1, 2001... Aerosmith. Mouthy front man Steve Tyler still delivers after 25 years in the biz and 100 million albums sold worldwide. The group has taken the usual ride on the rockin' roller coaster, born in the 1970s as the working man's rock band (less...

This month: jazz and standards.
July 1, 2001... FESTIVALS DU MAURIER DOWNTOWN JAZZ FESTIVAL FREE Toronto's 15th annual jazz fest, the city's largest, closes this year with a two-day street party on June 30 and July 1. Metalwood, a quartet that combines Toronto saxophonist Mike Murley,...

This month: kids' events.
July 1, 2001... Circus! Thrill to gravity-defying feats performed before your very eyes. Children can discover the secrets of balance and rotational mechanics on the high wire, or learn how human bodies respond to physical exertion on the trapeze (sequined...

This month: diversions.
July 1, 2001... FREE Canada Day. The usual holiday weekend activities--the midway, Kim Mitchell, fireworks, flags--in the unusual setting of what will soon be a noted urban park designed by the celebrated Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. More than 100,000 people...

Higher, faster, stronger: their airline barely got off the ground before it crashed and burned, but the Roots boys (Michael Budman and Don Green) are ready for takeoff again ...
July 1, 2001... ON THE AFTERNOON OF WHAT WILL UNdoubtedly be a frozen February 8, Olympic teams from over 70 countries will march into the Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City to open the 2002 Winter Games. Some 52,000 people--at $885 (U.S.) a pop--will be...

Adultescents only: following Maxim's lead, MOJO Radio, a recent addition to the new testosterone media, caters to an audience interested exclusively in sports, sex and beer ...
July 1, 2001... IT SOUNDS AS IF SARA FROM MISSISSAUGA has uncovered the ultimate Canadian sexual perversion, and ears are perking up across the GTA as she phones it in to Talk 640, the local station that was reinvented in April as MOJO Radio, the world's first...

Smooth operators: the facelifts and hair transplants, the nose jobs and tummy tucks, the breast implants and penis elongations ... Toronto's cosmetic surgeons to the stars.
July 1, 2001... If the quest for platonically perfect parts hit Torontonians a tad later than it did Americans, we appear to be making up for lost time. Thirty years ago, you could count the surgeons performing cosmetic procedures on one hand and still hold a...

Dabbing for dollars: (bingo).
July 1, 2001... On the day of the $10,000 Must-Go Progressive, Lee Grainger arrives around 11:30 a.m. and takes her favourite seat, at table number 89, smack dab in the middle of Trent Bingo Country Live, an institution near Main and Danforth that regulars...

Driven: (a day at the Molson Indy).
July 1, 2001... "Faster," I said, and she smiled. My old man's powder blue VW Rabbit was shaking, chassis going, nearly gone, the highway stretching out empty, and she floored it. The speedometer climbed upward in miles per hour--80, 90, needle...

Green piece: (Toronto Sculpture Garden).
July 1, 2001... In a courtyard off King Street, just east of Church, sandwiched between two Georgian buildings, is a slim rectangle of green. A 20-foot-high waterfall cascades down one corner, drowning out the rush of traffic. Almost every day, art lovers,...

Game boys: the bid team put together an impressive, if puzzling package for the 2008 Games ...
July 1, 2001... The message begins with static, then bar-like background voices. "John Bitove calling. I'm in Lausanne." He leaves a Toronto number, which turns out to be his wife's cell. John Bitove Jr., head of Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid, is in...

Lip smacker and a neck wrapper.
July 1, 2001... Love beads Like a sartorial version of the standard cabbie car seat cover or Chinatown beaded curtain, this necktie is oddly practical. Hand-strung in Malaysia with roset and mother-of-pearl, it won't fade, stain, pill or lose its pre-tied...

Happy days: an odd jumble of small homes north of the Junction, Mount Dennis doesn't have the kind of history you find in guidebooks ...
July 1, 2001... THE TV BOLTED TO THE CEILING IN THE BEVERAGE room of the Mount Dennis Legion is tuned to History Television. George C. Scott plays Patton to an audience of two men in their 50s, one tending bar while the other nurses a bottle of Canadian....

Well-healed: makeup artist Kathy Chau.
July 1, 2001... Makeup artist and hairstylist Kathy Chau pulls on dead-cool style as effortlessly as she sweeps shadow across a model's eyelid. Having turned an entire room of her home into a closet, Chau plays fashion archivist with clothes from her past. So...

Outside in: to the casual observer, Toronto street food consists of a questionable hot dog ... in fact, the city harbours some of the world's finest sidewalk snacks ...
July 1, 2001... I WISH WE HAD MORE SIDEWALK THEATRE in Toronto. How delightful it would be to come upon a company of actors in the street, to find dancers, jugglers and conjurors out on the islands or down at Queens Quay, a ventriloquist at every major...

Tasting notes: wine.
July 1, 2001... The Germans are coming Bone dry or not, cool-climate rieslings have a crisp, refreshing citrus acidity that makes them perfect summer whites. This month's Cellar Keeper, made in the semi-sweet style, is a fine sip solo and a good foil for...

Change of tune: September 1994-June 2001. (Toronto Symphony Orchestra conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste).
July 1, 2001... After Jukka-Pekka Saraste was named conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1993, the Globe and Mail's music critic flew to Finland to interview the maestro as he reclined naked in his country sauna. Toronto was plastered with posters of...