Toronto Life articles from September 2001

Toronto Life archives from September 2001

Old McDonald: (Bruce McDonald).
September 1, 2001... Bruce McDonald--movie director, angry middle-aged man, College Street staple--has downed just a few glasses of red wine when he starts talking heroin. Heroin is a frequent, jokey reference point for him, a metaphor for edginess, for kicking...

Punch lines: (Hermes president Jennifer Carter comments on fashion).
September 1, 2001... Constructive Criticism, the much read corner of the National Post weekend edition, where quasi-celebrities like Jeanne Beker, Moe Berg and Enza "Supermodel" Anderson make catty comments about the fashion gaffes of genuine celebrities like...

Chapter two: (Larry Stevenson, former Chapters CEO goes to school in France).
September 1, 2001... The theory that young literary types should spend a few years in Paris before establishing their careers back home seems to have been misunderstood by former Chapters CEO Larry Stevenson, who is doing things a little backwards. Not long after...

Seniors' moment: (Sophia Loren visits hairstylists at Villa Colombo in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... Hairstylists near the Italian old folks' home Villa Colombo were booked solid the week before Sophia Loren popped by for a visit during her month-and-a-half stay in Toronto. (The 66-year-old sex kitten was here shooting Between Strangers, a...

Close encounters: (Jack Cockwell new chair of the Royal Ontario Museum board).
September 1, 2001... People who moan and groan that Toronto is so small they're liable to run into their former best friend at the local Loblaws or bump into their dreaded Grade 10 French teacher on the streetcar will no doubt feel waves of sympathy for Jack...

Power trip: (anti-establishment art student Jesse Power).
September 1, 2001... In a few swift months, the 21-year-old anti-establishment OCAD student Jesse Power has earned the kind of notoriety that most artists spend their whole lives cultivating. This summer, the papers chronicled how he and his pal Anthony Ryan...

Urban decoder: (questions about Toronto).
September 1, 2001... Dear Urban Decoder: What exactly was Belt Line Trail before it became my favourite jogging route? --Marianna Howard, Forest Hill Dear Marianna: Back before the dreaded Gardiner expedited crosstown traffic, two steam train...

Jackman five: (Hal and Maruja Jackman's children).
September 1, 2001... In a city perilously short on Beautiful Young Things, where even the party pages of our daily papers often look more glum than golden, the Jackman children have emerged onto the scene to put the cream back into high society. The starry...

Follow that care: (car thefts).
September 1, 2001... While the party may be over for dot-com kids and their pinstriped sugar daddies, car thieves in Toronto are revving their way to the piggy bank. In fact, Toronto, with its plush supply of SUVs, Mercedes, Boxsters and other glam-mobiles, has...

Rock bottom: (ROM's gems).
September 1, 2001... A glided bank vault door--buried in the ROM's dank and labyrinthine underworld--opens sluggishly onto a hideout harbouring over a thousand twinkling gemstones. Only four geologists have access to this $10-million treasure trove, its walls and...

This issue.
September 1, 2001... NO ONE LIKES REJECTION, BUT TO BE TURNED DOWN TWICE- I refer of course to the Olympics--is, let's admit it, a real slap in the face. Like many of you, I had hoped to attend the Games, maybe get to see the 100 metres(although I'm pretty sure the...

This month: theatre (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... OPENINGS Dark Divas, the Musical. Much awarded Canadian jazz vocalist Ranee Lee (she won a Dora for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill) channels seven legendary black stars, including Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald....

This month: classical music (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... ORCHESTRAL Tafelmusik launches into the season with its bread and butter, the masterpieces of the baroque repertoire. Although the group has sometimes strayed from the safety of the 17th- and 18th-century canon, the ebullient and ordered...

This month: dance (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... Behind Silk Ribbons & Rebozos. Two imaginative choreographers from very different cultures, Norma Araiza and Elena Quah, collaborate to share their life experiences in movement. Araiza, born in Mexico, and Quah, from Hong Kong, crafted a series...

This month: art (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... [FREE] Familial Ground. Putting flesh on the bones of his fragmented family history, Toronto photographer Rafael Goldchain takes the extraordinary step of impersonating a number of his male and female forebears to create black and white...

This month: nightlife (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... CONCERTS Backstreet Boys. Fresh faced from weeks in treatment for alcohol abuse, depression and anxiety, A.J. McLean triumphantly rejoins his B Boy brothers. In preparation for the garcons' world tour, go and pick up their third recording,...

This month: jazz (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... CONCERTS B.B. King Blues Festival. They aren't making original giants of the blues any more, and this one-day festival spotlights two of them, B.B. King and Buddy Guy. At 76, King remains a consummate performer. He's been playing and...

This month: kid's events (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... Circus! Children's entertainer Ben Burland is on hand with his bag--or, rather, trunk--of tricks: spinning plates on sticks and riding an itty-bitty bicycle. Yo-yo champ Aiden Orange also strings kids along with a workshop to help them get a...

This month: diversions (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... Cabbagetown Festival. Toronto's most gracious yet vibrant neighbourhood celebrates its continued vitality with a mini-film festival, Sept. 5; a pub crawl, Sept. 6; and a tour of its spectacular bay-and-gable Victorian homes, Sept. 9. The...

Flaherty's folly: ... (Mike) Harris and his crew dropped a new bomb on Toronto parents. The only upside to Jim Flaherty's private school tax credit ...
September 1, 2001... HAD IT NOT INVOLVED SUCH A SERIOUS matter, Jim Flaherty's mea culpa that Monday morning in June might have been funny, in a dark way. Here was the province's brand new finance minister, sitting four square in front of a legislative committee,...

Voice of reason: Margaret Wente's Globa and Mail column stands in high relief against the tear-mongering that dominates daily journalism ...
September 1, 2001... JOURNALISM HAS A WEAKNESS FOR pathos-drenched stories about plucky cancer victims, brave single moms, medical miracles delivered at the last moment, movie stars who reveal the deep emotion in their hearts, and substance abusers who overcome...

Dancing on the edge: her mission at the National Ballet School is to prepare students for an art form that is both enchanted and endangered ...
September 1, 2001... MAVIS STAINES WAS ONLY NINE WHEN SHE first announced her desire to attend the National Ballet School. Her parents, unpersuaded either by the necessity or the wisdom of her choice, resisted as long as they could. Indeed, Staines didn't enrol...

Eating our young: the debate around education reform has been clouded by thuggish rhetoric from the Tories and apocalyptic images from the teachers ...
September 1, 2001... FROM THE SCHOOLYARD of Ecole Publique Gabrielle Roy, the marquee of Fillmore's strip club is an unflagging beacon: "Sofa Sex, Bottomless Babes--Baby It's Hot Inside!" The route to the school, along Dundas East, is rarely without some twitchy...

View to a thrill: (Wonder Mountain at Canada's Wonderland).
September 1, 2001... It all started with a well-orchestrated kaboom. On June 13, 1979, Ontario premier William Davis put down his glass of sangria, mounted the stage of St. Lawrence Hall and, in front of 700 members of Toronto's business elite, depressed the...

Girls of summer: ... a memoir of Camp Kawagama.
September 1, 2001... FROM THE STREET, Holy Blossom Temple was glowing under late-December sunshine, an unlikely day for a funeral. My plan was to slip in, sit unobtrusively in the back row and say my private goodbyes to Elsie Palter. It had been almost 45 years...

Rituals: check mates.
September 1, 2001... It's 5:15 p.m., and 30-odd men cluster around nine concrete tables outside Sam the Record Man. Some are playing chess, some are playing backgammon, some are dealing drugs; one well-dressed youth walks past and whispers "weed" in my ear. From a...

Fight at the opera: Toronto is one of the only major cities in the world without an opera house ... the battle to build one has been going on for more than 20 years ...
September 1, 2001... DAVID MIRVISH, WHO HAS A REPUTATION for never losing his cool, was losing his cool. It was June of 1998, and a meeting was taking place at the Canadian Opera Company's Front Street East headquarters. Seeking a designer for its proposed new...

Big-league chew and a booty call.
September 1, 2001... Sitting pretty You heard it here first: the newest wave in the vogue for retro is French deco. This handsome armless Chaise Apollon, designed in the '30s by Parisian modernist Lucien Rollin, is a prime example of the movement's refined,...

This old house: how do George and Elizabeth Baird ... describe their home, a 14-year adventure in joint design?
September 1, 2001... ONE COOKS, THE OTHER DESIGNS BUILDINGS. The cook has 74 works listed under her name at the Toronto Library, beginning with Classic Canadian Cooking and including Kids in the Kitchen, Muffins & More and Thirty Minutes and Light. The architect...

Lithe wires.
September 1, 2001... These UW Studio design sirens have stamped their slick style on such notable interiors as the expansive, interactive U8TV loft and the hip Toronto idyll of Krispy Kreme importer Roly Morris. Urtasun places interior dressing and body dressing on...

Rainmakers: some achieve fame, others find infamy. But can Toronto's glam restaurants, with their star-spudded guest lists ...
September 1, 2001... ONE OF MY MOST TREASURED PIECES OF Toronto memorabilia is a two-page guide for businessmen visiting our city, produced by Island Publishing Co. Ltd. of Pewsey, Wiltshire, England. "Toronto is rated as one of the best cities on the continent for...

Tasting notes.
September 1, 2001... Rhone ranger Syrah, a noble grape known for making wines that last, is the red grape of northern Rhone. There, its classic gamey, minerally black pepper edge adds intrigue to intense berry flavours. The grape is also gathering fame in the New...

Restaurants (in Toronto).
September 1, 2001... A LA MODE [NEW] Lemon Meringue *** 1/2 All is not quiet on the western front. Bloor West Village's bakery-cum-restaurant has blossomed into a neighbourhood hot spot under the watch of sisters Slava Iwasykiw and Sonia Potichnyj. Bright...

Starry nights: hanging with the in crowd at the Issaacs Gallery.
September 1, 2001... Opening nights at 832 Yonge, uptown art collectors with bottomless pockets mingled with young downtown art collectors, their pockets empty; there were artists, artists' wives, artists' lovers, artists' friends; there were critics, curators,...