Smiles of Innocence Memorial Charity 13 Dec 2012 6:41 AM (12 years ago)
The Smiles of Innocence Memorial Charity is an organization of caring individuals dedicated to promoting awareness and raising funds through various activities in the community. On Nov. 10, 2012, its Annual Gala attracted over 1,000 attendees at Le Parc Dining and Banquet hall in Markham, where guests enjoyed an entertainment-filled evening with performances by Sensations, Blue Soul and Brass Transit. The charity event also hosted silent and live auctions, as well as many raffles, including a $5,000 shopping spree prize at Radiant Fine Jewellers. The Smiles of Innocence Memorial Charity is an organization that supports high-priority programs at the Hospital for Sick Children. To date, it has raised over $2.5 million for the SickKids Foundation.
Ladies on the Links 13 Dec 2012 6:37 AM (12 years ago)
On Sept. 27th, 2012, the hard-working businesswomen of the Brampton Board of Trade tore up the links at Brampton Golf Club for the 12th Annual Ladies on the Links Golf Tournament. The Brampton Board of Trade thanks Dolce Media Group and other proud sponsors for their support of Brampton’s business community.
Gourmet Food & Wine Expo 13 Dec 2012 6:27 AM (12 years ago)
The 18th annual Gourmet Food and Wine Expo took place on Nov. 15 – 17, 2012, at the North Building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Guests had the opportunity to sample gourmet cuisine, as well as an assortment of 1,500 wines, beers and spirits. Expo highlights included an All You Need is Cheese Stage, a Connoisseur’s Corner, a Fine Wine Tasting Lounge, a Spiritology Pavilion and tutored tastings. The forthcoming Gourmet Food & Wine Expo will take place on Nov. 14 — 17, 2013 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Vaughan Film Festival 13 Dec 2012 5:49 AM (12 years ago)
Toronto, Cannes, Vaughan! The magic of the movies hit Vaughan this year when the city announced its first Vaughan Film Festival. Established by local filmmakers Antonio Ienco and Mark Pagliaroli, the VFF will celebrate local and international artists by selecting 20 to 30 short films to screen and crowning the Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Director with Golden Reel Awards.
Rocco DiSpirito: Rocco’s Road 10 Dec 2012 12:24 PM (12 years ago)
There’s a sizzle of spirit spilling through a Vaughan Chapters, and of its endless rows and stacked tables of literature, the open book is Rocco DiSpirito. He’s walking in brown leather shoes and fitted in an olive zip-up, weaving through a fidgeting crowd. A woman brazenly shouts out a dinner invitation to him, and he presses a mic to his mouth. “Buy a book or give me a hug,” he deadpans. A shameless grin spreads across her face as he wraps his arms around her. The audience inches close.
The American celebrity chef and bestselling author from New York City is in town to promote his latest cookbook, and while expounding the virtues of healthy food, he’s unabashed when confessing an erstwhile sweet tooth for saccharine cinnamon rolls. “I had an addiction to Cinnabon — it was harder to break than my crystal meth habit,” he jokes, the crowd doubling over in a fit of laughter. Continuing to quip and cajole and lightheartedly lecture on Japanese kale and kamut, he concludes his visit with personalized autographs and photos that stream through the Twitterverse.
However comfortable he appears to be in his own skin, DiSpirito surprisingly had difficulties achieving a level of assuredness that leaves audiences enraptured.
A few meals before, at Alimento Fine Food Emporium in Toronto, he’s sipping on espresso at a table tucked away from the lunch crowd. Vividly recalling his early days, the cordon bleu cook, food show host and former culinary judge was once gripped by self-consciousness. “I have to tell you of the days I was frightened over my own shadow. I used to practise Today segments in the private dining area of my restaurant: a host would play Matt Lauer and a hostess would play Katie Couric. When you have to be yourself on TV, the anxiety of worrying whether that self is the self everyone will like just gets to you.” He moderates the disclosure with a bon mot, his modus operandi. “I take medication now, so it’s much better.” At 46, his charm braises in a drum of alacrity.
In 2005, a series of fortunate serendipities came together at an opportune time for DiSpirito. He had just left behind the tizzy timetables and sleepless nights of the restaurant scene, was starring in a reality television series and about to launch his first book. Withdrawing from the pressure-cooked realities of a restaurateur allowed him the freedom to pursue the options swirling around him, leading him onto a road that reversed his self-neglectful lifestyle into one of self-renewal. “I was flirting with the idea of getting in shape and being athletic, but I never had time. Then a couple of things happened: The Biggest Loser asked me to be on the show, my chiropractor friend asked me to help him with a fundraiser, and my doctor told me I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol and I had to go on three medications. This all happened within nine months, and everything was pointing me down the same path. I could see where I was headed.”
Swallowing the valuable lesson that diet and exercise really work, DiSpirito has since shed 30 pounds, eating the food he loves while training for rigorous triathlons, Iron Man competitions and hopping on his bike for morning rides up the Upper West Side. The ingredients that shaped a turning point in his life gave spirit to his Now Eat This! empire, a fusion of books, TV shows and an NYC food truck that reflect his personal search for better health. “I had to figure out what I was going to eat. Athletes drink a lot of shakes, eat whole wheat bread with peanut butter on it and lots of bars. And I thought, ‘I’m not going to eat this crap for the rest of my life! I’m going to figure out how to make my food taste good.’”
His latest book, Now Eat This! Italian: Favorite Dishes from the Real Mamas of Italy, reflects his sojourn to Southern Italy to whittle down North American waistlines. There, the New York Times bestselling author wandered into the kitchens of local cooks, absorbing the simplicity of age-old techniques and the principles of preparing Italian food. “I had to go there and relearn and take those lessons to create dishes that were lower in fat and calories. I had to bring Italian food sensibilities into the Italian-American food culture.” The result is a cookbook of over 90 recipes — all under 350 calories.
Born to Italian parents, DiSpirito admits that it took him three decades to embrace his roots, a critical impasse self-described as the common awkwardness felt by first-generation kids. “You don’t know what culture you’re part of and it turns out you’re part of both,” says DiSpirito, who as a child would hide his lunches in the back of his cubbyhole at school. Weeks later he would find rotting salami sandwiches wrapped up in tea towels. “It took me 30 years to realize what a fool I was, because how lucky was I to have a mother making food for me every day?”
The Culinary Institute of America alumnus is the one now rolling up his sleeves — with a few tricks up his apron. Hosting his annual Christmas dinner last year for close to 60 family members, he blended hale and hearty ingredients in a traditional menu of fish and turkey, unbeknownst to his loved ones. “I’m totally down with lying and deceiving, especially when it comes to making people healthy. They didn’t even know. I deceived them and manipulated them and they were happy about it.”
Through his weekly syndicated TV show Now Eat This! with Rocco DiSpirito, he sounds the alarm of skyrocketing child obesity rates, encouraging families to prepare home-cooked meals and teach their kids healthy eating habits to avoid a lifestyle of weight issues. Growing up, DiSpirito paradoxically resented his parents for banning sugar at home. “We weren’t allowed to have soda and candy in my house; we used to fight with my father all the time. But now I understand why he did that. You have to invest in your kids from when they’re young. Never feed them the bad stuff and they’ll never know about it.” DiSpirito now rolls out pasta with sprouted wheat flour, grows his own vegetables and herbs, and pickles what’s left of his homegrown tomatoes. “‘Restaurant’ was a bad word in my house.”
As for how to achieve what may seem gastronomically impossible, the gourmet DiSpirito lets us in on a chef’s secret: seizing the possibility of the moment with raw emotion. “We are talking about people who are in touch with their passion place — your centre, your core, the place that aches,” he says, his fingers tapping the middle of his chest. “And you can taste it. Food absorbs and collects your feelings and your emotions and your energy and it’s reflected in the flavour.”
Click here for Rocco’s Red Snapper Puttanesca Recipe!
Joy Rides 9 Dec 2012 7:19 AM (12 years ago)
Winter is underway, and with it, those fluffy, fender-bender-causing flurries of calamity. While there’s no substitute for a level head and snow tires, this list of winter-ready autos can make life behind the wheel a little less frigid. So bring it on, Mother Nature — let it snow.
Infiniti JX
Just because it’s like the Arctic tundra outside doesn’t mean luxury curls up to hibernate. The seven-seat Infiniti JX keeps the comforts roaring all winter with, among other things, three-zone climate control, leather seating and steering wheel, heated seats and a seven-inch information display. Intelligent all-wheel drive (AWD) adjusts power and handling to combat erratic weather while Infiniti’s Safety Shield, Blind Spot Intervention and Backup Collision Intervention keep an eye on traffic. Traction control and anti-lock brakes also come standard, and with this midsize luxury crossover’s remote starter, you’ll never have to sit shivering in the driveway. Starting from $44,900.
www.infiniti.ca
Jeep Wrangler
Be it a remote cabin or an annual ice-fishing trip, if you’re headed off the grid this winter there’s no more familiar off-roading face than the Jeep Wrangler. With 260 lb-ft of torque pumping from the 3.6-L Pentastar V-6 engine, Jeep’s Command-Trac part-time four-wheel-drive feature, best-in-class ground clearance, roll mitigation and anti-lock brakes, the Wrangler confidently handles whatever frosty tantrum Mother Nature may throw. Starting from $21,195.
www.jeep.ca
Volvo XC60
They get a bit of snow up in Scandinavia. So when the Swedes were producing the Volvo XC60, you know they put this compact crossover through the wringer. The T6 AWD version is ready to brave frosty conditions with its brawny 325 lb-ft of torque and options like heated seats, heated windshield washer nozzles, anti-lock brakes and traction control. Safety features — like City Safety, which monitors forward traffic and automatically brakes to avoid collisions, and pedestrian detection with full automatic braking — are also ideal for unpredictable roads. Starting from $46,900.
www.volvocars.com
Subaru Impreza
The daddy of all-season capability, the Subaru Impreza is an attention-grabber for car drivers wary of slick asphalt. Its low centre of gravity, rigid chassis and highly regarded symmetrical (AWD) system keep this winter warrior balanced and planted. Factor in anti-lock brakes, more airbags than a hot air balloon festival and its Top Safety Pick status from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and you can breathe easy when faced with a wall of white. Starting from $19,995.
www.subaru.ca
Audi A4
If you like to keep it classy even on the chilliest of days, the Audi A4 quattro will be a warm welcome. Audi’s quattro AWD system is heralded as one of the finest in the world, and when winter’s at its worst, you’ll be glad to have its grip. Coupled with heated seats as a standard and the 258 lb-ft of torque from the A4’s 2-Litre engine, you’ll arrive in road-salt-stained style, warm bottom and all. Starting from $39,700.
www.audi.ca
The Shoebox Project 8 Dec 2012 7:14 AM (12 years ago)
When the women and children at Red Door Family Shelter in Toronto awoke last Christmas morning to find nearly 200 shoeboxes stuffed with thoughtful presents from local women, they were shocked. “It’s a real gift to see that the community cares about them and cares about the crises they’re going through,” says Bernnitta Hawkins, Red Door’s executive director. What stemmed from a generous gesture has become a national initiative to spread joy over the holiday season to those who need it most. “It’s not a huge thing, but I do believe in it,” says Caroline Mulroney Lapham, co-founder of The Shoebox Project.
After a conversation in mid-November 2011, Mulroney Lapham was inspired to help her sister-in-law Jessica Mulroney extend her mother’s philanthropic mission to the streets of Toronto. “Her mother would put together shoeboxes filled with small items that women really enjoyed — little splurges — and she would ask her friends to do the same and deliver them all to a local shelter in Montreal. Jessica said she wanted to bring it here and I thought it’s such a nice idea.” So they banded together with fellow sisters-in-law, Vanessa and Katy Mulroney, and sent an email out to family and friends inviting them to participate. “We were worried for a while that we wouldn’t even get 100 shoeboxes, and low and behold, we got almost 400 without any kind of marketing,” says Mulroney Lapham, who was delighted to be able to share the shoeboxes with other local shelters across the city.
This year, the response has been even greater. From gift certificates and luxury makeup products to hair accessories and winter scarves, compassionate women have been packing boxes with love and bringing them to designated drop-off spots, where they will make their way to various shelters across the city. “A lot of these women have never had perfume or lotions that smell nice or fancy chocolates, so it really does make them smile and it also makes them feel like they’re not forgotten,” says Mulroney Lapham. “I think that people who are privileged in their lives, where they can give back and make a difference, they should try.”
In just one year, Mulroney Lapham and her sisters-in-law have developed a hands-on model that’s been adopted in six cities nationwide, including Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary and London. “The big dream would be that women in shelters all across Canada would have shoeboxes to open on Christmas,” she says.
Local drop-off locations include Royal LePage
— Your Community Realty’s Vaughan and Richmond Hill offices
(9411 Jane St. / 8854 Yonge St.). For content guidelines and additional drop-off spots across the city,
visit www.shoeboxproject.com.
Deadline for drop-off is Dec. 17, 2012
Turn, Turn, Turn – Must read books 5 Dec 2012 10:16 AM (12 years ago)
This is Paris by Miroslav Sasek
In the tradition of Miroslav Sasek’s This is children’s series, This is Paris paints a playful picture of the city for little world travellers. With colourful images depicting favourite corners of Paris accompanied by charming, informative text, This is Paris will ignite a passion for travel — and for the City of Love — in young readers.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Warm up your holiday season with Mitch Albom’s beloved tale of life, death and the meaning of both. Through the character of Eddie, a Second World War veteran now working at an amusement park, Albom flies readers to the heavens for an enriching glimpse of the afterlife.
Virginia Wolf by Kyo Maclear
Inspired by the friendship of author Virginia Woolf and her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, Virginia Wolf takes little readers by the hand and paints them a whimsical, magic-filled adventure that will open their minds and kindle their imaginations.
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela
Get up-close-and-personal with one of the 20th century’s most coveted icons. In his autobiography, Mandela invites readers to track his influential footsteps, from his beginning in the humble tribal environment of his ancestors to his legendary resistance against the apartheid of South Africa.
Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire! by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser
French fancy-pants Nancy Clancy is back with an entirely nouveau adventure that your little ones are sure to gobble up. With her usual playful flair and inviting illustrations, Jane O’Connor sends Nancy — and her miniature readers — on an inspiring quest to create the perfect poem.
Wish You Were Here by Francesca Cavaliere
When Vaughan resident Francesca Cavaliere lost her son to suicide, she made a vow to raise awareness on mental health. Wish You Were Here is a true story of a family’s journey through tragedy and newfound hope. Published by Vaughan-based Dolce Book Publishing Inc., part proceeds from Wish You Were Here will go toward supporting the Suicide Studies Research Unit, Mental Health Services at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
The Rolling Stones 50 by Mick Jagger , Keith Richards, Charlie Watts & Ronnie Wood
July 12, 1962 found a musical foursome playing the blues in London’s smallish Marquee Club. Now, at half a century old, The Rolling Stones have stirred up pop culture and their music has touched the walls of the world’s largest stadiums. In this memoir, the band members scrawl out their reminiscences.
Little Princes by Conor Grennan
When Conor Grennan makes the horrific discovery that the children at Little Princes Children’s Home in war-ravaged Nepal are not orphans but victims of human trafficking, he promises to deliver them safely home.
In Little Princes, Grennan shares his inspiring true tale
of mending broken families and chasing freedom.
Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin
There will be no need to try and escape the everyday after drinking in this novel by happiness expert Gretchen Rubin. In the wake of her bestselling novel The Happiness Project, Rubin logs her nine-month-long journey to rediscover the meaning of home, resulting in a hilarious, heartwarming piece of work that proves that there is no place like it.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
This classic dystopian novel will get your intellectual fires roaring. When America’s most productive minds retreat from society in protest of their government’s crushing regulations and taxations, the country falls to ruins — sending readers on a thrilling trek of mystery, philosophy, science fiction and romance.
Books available at Amazon.ca
Michael Snow: The Transformer 5 Dec 2012 10:06 AM (12 years ago)
It’s tough to keep up with Michael Snow. The 84-year-old juggernaut of art, who over the years has entranced the public imagination with such iconic works as the odyssey of grandiose geese in Flight Stop at the Eaton Centre, the sculptural gazers that toast the facade of the Rogers Centre in The Audience and the landmark film Wavelength, continues to provoke and stretch artistic paradigms in Canada and beyond. Unrelenting in his ability to transform and shape our visual perceptions of art, his current master strokes include “Objects of Vision,” an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), In This Way, a video installation featured in the National Gallery of Canada’s exhibition “Builders,” and a glowing canvas display that will climb its way up the Trump Tower in Toronto, illuminating a spectrum of light and Snow’s innovation and resilience. With works housed in prestigious galleries the world over, the thriving, decades-long career of Snow is a portrait of his permanence. The pluralist sees beyond single artistic realms, comfortably drifting through mediums, flowing through time with experiential art as new and relevant today as if unveiled decades ago.
What inspired you to create the 14 works that constitute “Objects of Vision,” your exhibit on display at the AGO?
It’s an assembling of works from various periods. I won the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, and one part of it is that you can have an exhibition at the AGO. And for many years I’d been thinking about attempting to bring together these separate sculptures that had been made at different times. The Gershon Iskowitz Prize was an opportunity to finally bring them all together and see what they kind of said to each other.
Explain the interactive approach you apply to your works.
A sculpture is the art of an object. One of the things that you consider is how the object that you’re making is going to be seen, and by the term “objects of vision,” I meant that the works, each of them in their own way, guide the spectator around them, or in looking at them, and sometimes in a fairly simple way. There’s the piece called Transformer, which is a suspended tree actually sharpened at one end. It’s a kind of horizontal thing, and it guides you in looking at it that way. The way sculpture is presented, whether it’s suspended or whether it’s on the floor is all part of what’s interesting about it. For example, Abitibi was made with two sheets of varnished plywood bolted together and between the two of them a grey epoxy resin. When it congealed, it made the whole thing stand up vertically. So, the process that made the thing stand there, it’s like a kind of a vein, but the veining is around the edges rather than on the surface. Part of the interest in the piece is how and what was done to make it stand up. It’s much more interesting to see it rather than hear me talk about it: they all involve many different ways of perceiving, like the piece called Blind, which is four eight-foot-by-eight-foot rectangles of different weights of screening, or meshes, that when looked through — wherever you look, from this side or that side or through two or three of them — and if you move, you see it differently. It’s very involved, and the very abilities of it are built-in. But it is part of how you, as a spectator, situate yourself.
Art is often a reflection or commentary of the times. What are some significant moments that have influenced or inspired your work?
It’s really hard to sum that up because I’ve been doing what I do, whatever it is, for quite a long time, and I can’t sort of isolate any kind of individual stimulus of any kind, other than getting started and wanting to try to make art.
As a builder, is it your intention to convey a moment, a cultural insight, a mood?
No, it’s to make an experience for other people. It’s not an experience for me — of course, it is on the way in making it, because I have to find out what it does — but really, it’s to make a particular kind of experience that otherwise isn’t available.
Do you find that your approach has changed over the years?
Well, I work in many mediums. Everything that I’ve done, I think, is sort of individual, and they came up out of different periods or different occasions. For example, I’ve done a lot of public sculpture, a lot of public art, like the flock of geese in the Eaton Centre. And there’s going to be a new project, actually, called Lightline, which will be on the Trump Tower at Bay and Adelaide. It’s still not completely ready, but we hope to have it started pretty soon. It’s a work that uses a vine of light that goes 60 storeys up the corner of the building and is visible for miles and miles. This is going to be a new work, and it’s completely different from anything I’ve done before.
How have you managed to adapt to cultural shifts and demonstrate them through art?
Well, I don’t adapt to anything, I just keep on going, fortunately.
Perhaps artists have adapted to you?
Well, it depends. There’s an exhibition that’s on at Ryerson [University] right now — I have a completely new piece in that, too, which is a production work. And a lot of what I’ve done in the last 10 years has been gallery projection works, films and effect, which are shown in a gallery rather than in an auditorium. So, I don’t know — I keep wandering away from your question, but it’s just that — my stuff has had such a variety that it’s kind of hard to pin down.
As a prominent artist for over 50 years, how have you remained relevant all along?
[Laughs]. That’s kind of an impossible question. I — I just keep on doing what I do, and go from one thing to the next, and hope it’s of interest.
Let’s go back to the beginning. Did you always know what your calling was?
Well, things happened. When I was in high school, I started playing music, playing jazz. And then I continued to do that and sometimes for a while I made my living from it, and I continued to do it. I studied art at the Ontario College of Art and Design here, and then by — a kind of maybe too-long story to tell — but by a very happy accident I was asked to take a job learning how to do film animation, this was around 1954. And I hadn’t had any involvement with film before that, but all of a sudden I was introduced to film, and that really changed everything that I did, because I basically became a filmmaker.
And you had no experience whatsoever?
No, I hadn’t even really had any interest in it — it just turned up. How can I make this long story short? I had an exhibition of drawings, my first exhibition, and this man [George Dunning, who animated and directed the 1968 Beatles film Yellow Submarine] saw it, and phoned me up and said that he liked it, and that he wanted to meet me. When I met him, he said he liked it because he thought that whoever had done those drawings was somebody who was interested in the movies, and that he had a film company, and that he would like to offer me a job — which I was very desirous of at the time; I was trying to find my way. He thought I would be a good animator, and I did animation for a while, but it introduced to me the whole field of film, which became my main medium, I guess.
What’s up next for you?
I’m having a meeting this afternoon about a great big show I’m having at the Philadelphia Museum [of Art], which is a very distinguished museum in modern art history. The curator’s coming this afternoon, and this is one of several meetings in the last couple of years. The show will be in about a year from now, and it’s going to be a retrospective of my work with photography.
You’ve contributed works of art that have dramatically affected the art scene. What has been your biggest life achievement yet?
I think my biggest achievement is that I have been an artist for many years, and apparently I’m continuing to do good work, and some people think it’s great. It’s really nice. Actually, it’s more than nice.
Michael Snow’s “Objects of Vision” exhibit at the AGO has been recently extended to March 17, 2013.
ago.net
Los Cabos: Between the Ocean and Sand 5 Dec 2012 9:53 AM (12 years ago)
The morning sun begins its ascent, enticing a brilliant wash of new hues over the Pacific Ocean’s rising tide. To my left, a series of graceful white caps release as they kiss the shoreline. To my right, the endless desert expanse exhales with sublimity. The setting is Los Cabos, Mexico, but this isn’t any ordinary stroll along the beach. The once-in-a-lifetime view flashes into my frame from atop a camel’s back as he steadily meanders across a refined blanket of sand that glistens like silk.
This moving Baja experience is just one pinnacle of a multitiered outback and camel safari excursion conceived by Cabo Adventures. After saying good-bye to my new four-legged friend, I arrive at a local ranch to taste and savour delicious regional cuisine. From handmade tortillas to spicy salsas and beans, this culinary stop casts a spell on my palate. True to the flavours of Mexico, the stirring jaunt concludes on a spirited note with a tequila-tasting session. When I arrive back at the Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar Golf & Spa Resort, I feel alive, accomplished and in awe of all I’ve seen.
My excitement is eclipsed by a state of unparalleled relaxation bestowed by the SOMMA WineSpa at the Fie-sta Americana Grand Golf Resort. The massage I receive after sipping the house special is unique to any other. The oils and aromatherapy being used, such as the ever-popular wine mud, have the essence and aroma of a Mediterranean vineyard. I’m informed that these wine-based products consisting of pips and pulp benefit the body through antioxidants that are absorbed directly through the skin. This is my first time being exposed to what’s known as Vinotherapy, and I leave hoping it’s not my last.
Later, a tour of downtown San José del Cabo reveals a quiet, historic locale with a vibrant culture, sundry culinary scene and inspiring Spanish architecture. I roam the art district, which is entrenched in indigenous beauty, and discover a street lined with open doors that expose otherwise clandestine interiors burst-ing with innovative design. I end up at Don Sanchez Cantina restaurant to enjoy the delicious contemporary Baja fusion they’ve become known for. A combination of surf and turf, accompanied by live Mexican music and after-dinner salsa lessons carries me into the night.
With a destination as vibrant as Los Cabos, it’s impossible to point out all the treasures that exist between the vast ocean and sandy expanses, but if you take the time to explore, you might be amazed at what you’ll find.