AWARDS BASH HONOURS THE COURAGEOUS
Coast Mental Health Foundation celebration reportedly raises $1.43M
WELCOME HOME: Courage to Come Back Awards founderchair Lorne Segal welcomed B.C. Lt.- Gov. Judith Guichon to the Vancouver Convention Centre where she and more than 1,500 others attended the event’s 18th running. More pleasing still, perhaps, was the sight of Christy Campbell, Jemal Damtawe, Meredith Graham, Dr. Barbara Harris, Coltyn Liu and Tom Teranishi receiving awards in the physical rehab, addiction, social adversity, mental health, youth and medical categories. Presented by the Coast Mental Health Foundation, the celebration reportedly raised $1.43 million, including $100,000 from Victoria presented by Health Minister Terry Lake.
DIFFERENT STROKE: Segal and wife Melita’s 22-year-old son Matthew has the courage to go forward — at close to 15 knots. As the tactical commander of other like-aged Yale students, the economics student is stroke oarsman of the lightweight eight that outran Harvard and Princeton boats recently. He and his shellmates will battle 18 Ivy League and other top varsity squads in this weekend’s Eastern Sprints tournament in Worcester, Mass. If Yale’s undefeated, nationally top-rated crew wins there or at the Intercollegiate Rowing Assoc. championships at Princeton, N.J., June 3-5, they’ll go to Britain’s Henley Royal Regatta June 29July 3. Segal, who began rowing during Grade 8 at St. George’s School, has also set national and world indoor records.
BACK TO PEOPLE: Long known for swoopy-droopy paintings of city buildings, bridges and other landmarks, Tiko Kerr has kept the bright colours but applied them to humans and “the complexity of identity.” His Body Languages exhibition is on at Meyvis Araniva and Don MacMillan’s Sixth-off-Main SoMa gallery. Recent shows there have been as tasty as fare served at the neighbouring Whip restaurant, which began as a gallery itself in 1995. FISH AND FLIGHTS: Vancouver Pacific Salmon Foundation chair Roger Flowerdew, CA totted up the $500,000 or so that 680 attendees generated when Ken Bowden and Bruce Langereis co-chaired the 24th annual dinner-auction in the Vancouver Convention Centre. The foundation’s $7.5-million budget funds conservation and rebuilding programs for Pacific salmon stocks. Guests sampled sockeye and spring salmon, halibut, tuna, shrimp, sablefish, skate, trout roe and tuna before digging into beef tenderloin entrées. Wearing a salmon-emblazoned aquamarine gown with flying-fish wings and gillnet-boat headgear, greeter Alex Williamson had some attendees recall her housekeeper-bartender days at Queen Charlotte Lodge. Those fancying more upcoast fishing had only to tag Helijet board chair Alistair MacLennan, who’s parked a 12-passenger copter on the ballroom’s adjacent apron.
PARRYNOIA: This week’s doings leave former CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi guilty only of having written a painful-to-read book about his earlier years.
GATE EXPECTATIONS: The Lions Gate Hospital Foundation made its 16th yearly trek to the Capilano Golf & Country Club recently, then cruised downhill $1,303,818 richer. That was the reported net for an event that Heather Buckley and Catherine Konantz chaired to put the foundation within $1.2 million of its $5-million goal to build a youth mental-health facility on the hospital’s North Vancouver campus.
KATE EXPECTATIONS: Folk waited a year for Kate Duncan to recruit 20 designer-maker colleagues to participate in another four-day ADDRESS exhibition-cum-pop-up effort in the Armouries District’s Waterfall Building. Duncan showed her own Japanese-hinting furniture there, along with pieces by Steve Pollock, Nicholas Purcell, Propellor, Shipway, WoodReform and Fabulous Furnishings founder Celina Dalrymple. The latter’s couch pleased onlookers along with her equally wood-exposed platform-heel shoes from Guess by Marciano.
CARR SHOW: Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s annual graduates’ exhibition kicked off with Chancellor Geoff Plant fronting a reception on the Granville Island Hotel’s sunswept patio. Emily Carr will soon migrate east to a campus on the False Creek flats, which Plant said “will be a purpose-built stage for one of the world’s great art-and-design universities.” The move may see future receptions occupy such closer but less chic hotels as the American, Biltmore, Cobalt and Ivanhoe.
Plant inadvertently created his present gig. After a stint as B.C.’s attorney general, he headed the Campus 2020 report that resulted in the Malaspina, Fraser Valley and Kwantlen colleges becoming universities, followed by Capilano and Emily Carr.
At the reception, Emily Carr president Ron Burnett welcomed Janice Kerbel, the Toronto-born, London-resident artist who stud- ied at UBC and Emily Carr and is represented by global gallerist Catriona Jeffries. Like Emily Carr university, the latter has come a long way since occupying a third-floor downtown space 25 years ago.
TO SPARE: The Maserati of Vancouver dealership recently showed a transatlantic luxury SUV to its dominantly transpacific clientele. With a 428-horsepower Ferrari engine, the $110,000-to-$150,000 Levante model should please power lovers. Then again, as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution began agonizing China in 1966, $4,000 would put Canadians into an eight-seat, 500-horsepower Chevrolet wagon capable of making great leaps forward all by itself.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Although the loonie pitter-patters around US78 cents, its pre-Confederation version hit an all-time high of $2.78 in June 1864.