Toronto Life articles from November 2000

Toronto Life archives from November 2000

Modern man: Marc Mayer.
November 1, 2000... The huge smokestack of the Power Plant gallery, so named because it was once an industrial generator, is a beacon for Harbourfront visitors, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll like what they find inside. Marc Mayer, the director of the...

(Heather Reisman of Indigo Books wants to endow a chair at University of Toronto's architecture school after Frank Gehry).
November 1, 2000... Designer chair Seems Indigo Books owner Heather Reisman has an interest in architecture that extends beyond the realm of how many cookbooks you can fit into an eye-level shelf. Rumour has it she's been busy dialing up her well-to-do pals...

(Gwyneth Paltrow at the film festival).
November 1, 2000... Sliding doors It was the first Saturday night of the film festival, and a small crowd of celebrity watchers hovered around the Four Seasons, all eyes fixed on the hotel. "What are you looking at?" they asked each other. "Dunno," others...

(Lawyer Eddie Greenspan entertains at this years AIDSbeat).
November 1, 2000... Don't quit your day job This year's AIDSbeat, the fundraising event where a pack of sloshed lawyers jump up onstage and do goofy things to entertain one another, went down at the splendidly refurbished Capitol Event Theatre. Too bad the...

Surf `n' turf: (a different Superbowl wager).
November 1, 2000... It was a delightfully fishy summer for John Maxwell, owner of Allen's pub on the Danforth. He and his pal Rodney Clark, the man behind Rodney's Oyster House, bet on the Superbowl back in January. To figure out what they'd wager, they weighed...

Atom bomb: (Robert McKee discusses Canadian cinema).
November 1, 2000... Robert McKee, the legendary off-Broadway actor turned Hollywood screenwriter turned film seminar guru, recently strutted his shtick at Toronto's Atlantis Theatre, just east of the Ontario Place dome. His now famous Story Seminar crash course...

Ride on the Popemobile: (Carol Pope).
November 1, 2000... Rough Trade's provocative, Sapphic chanteuse, Carole Pope, has this month published her memoir [Part 1 of 2] WHEN WHO WHERE MEMORABLE BECAUSE ...

(Film Festival pictures).
November 1, 2000... Film fete Klieg lights criss-crossed the sky above as thousands marched down a roped red carpet into the hot-ticket Alliance Atlantis film fest shindig, giving the staid ROM a thrumming pulse. A phalanx of cops and suit-clad, headset-sporting...

This issue: (photographer Yuri Dojc).
November 1, 2000... YURI DOJC'S CZECHOSLOVAKIAN MOTHER MADE A POINT OF telling him that he was born on a Sunday. "The Sunday children," she said, "are always lucky." And, as he readily admits, he's had more than his share of good fortune. Take, for starters, the...

This month (events in Toronto).
November 1, 2000... THEATRE OPENINGS Dame Edna: The Royal Tour. Australian comedian Barry Humphries' aggressively charming alter ego lands in town with a show that won a special Tony in New York. Dame Edna will speak on current topics, perform some...

Worth the price: what a city with four daily newspapers doesn't need is three more - even if they're free ...
November 1, 2000... SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, three unfamiliar daily "newspapers" appeared like a rash across the face of Toronto, raising the number of English-language dailies in the city from four to seven and visibly adding to the litter in the streets and...

X marks the spot: not all councillors are created equal. Some have an intelligent vision for the megacity, some are completely parachial ...
November 1, 2000... SILLY SEASON HAS DESCENDED on municipal politics again. The proof? In early September, with the deadline for nominations drawing near, one Jim Walker submitted his papers to run in St. Paul's, a ward that just happens to be the turf of...

Raising the barre: she's performed solo and in troupes, at home and abroad, in works created by others and works she made for herself. At 48, Peggy Baker is a legend in contemporary dance ...
November 1, 2000... DON'T BOTHER TALKING TO PEGGY BAKER about whether she's a modernist or a postmodernist. "I don't like labels," she says, waving them away with a sweep of her extraordinarily long, elegant arms, somehow frowning and grinning at once. A legend in...

City of nations: a Canadian writer, very much at home in the world, returns to find the world very much at home in Toronto.
November 1, 2000... ONCE AGAIN, I HAVE COME BACK TO CANADA. This time, I've been away for almost three years. Back and forth, over water and land, through time zones and languages and the different gestures of the head and hands, I have lived in a state of...

Bathing booty and bed duds.
November 1, 2000... Water softener At this miserable time of year, nothing is as revitalizing as a good, hot soak in a deep, sweet-smelling tub. Our favourite fix at the moment is Relaxing bath salts from Japan's own Shiseido. Infused with ginseng, peony and...

Plastic wrap: Umbra's co-founders commissioned a building in their company's youthful image. The result: a new world headquarters, the last word in industrial modishness.
November 1, 2000... TURN OFF MIDLAND AVENUE ONTO THE aptly named Emblem Court, and something bizarre rears up. It looks like a campanile, the free-standing bell tower that marks important buildings in Italy. But we're in deepest, desolate Scarborough, and unlike...

Rock and roller: Dinah Luxton.
November 1, 2000... If you see a lithe, blonde fashion plate swoosh by on souped-up in-line skates, there's a good chance it's designer-stylist Dinah Luxton crossing town to make a retail appointment. Fresh from a stint at Club Monaco, where she was everything...

Simply the best: if the meal is a masterpeice ... chances are the chef places a weekly order with Jean-Marc and Nadine Ridel of La Ferme, restaurant supplier nonpareil.
November 1, 2000... GIOTTO, THEY SAY, HANGED HIMSELF IN despair because his colourists failed him. He realized that the great frescoes of his youth were already fading and blurred (unstable pigment, intemperate tempera), and one summer evening, as the sunset...

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

(Toronto) restaurants.
November 1, 2000... Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by A LA MODE NEW Focaccia (***) A room of considerable charm--earthy hues, overhead wine racks, a pew running the length of the room--and a most agreeable and bemused server endow...

Ben Wicks, October 1, 1926 - September 10, 2000.
November 1, 2000... It's impossible to think of him without smiling. A few minutes with Ben always left you feeling that the world was a better place and that you, you particularly and against all the evidence, might have a part in it. He was always and utterly...