City Councilor Sam Sullivan and
Dr. Sharon Fong (right) acted in the play at Chan
Centre.
Grace Choi accepted the $500,000
take when Dr. Francis Ho's Physiology of Murder play
premiered.
Founding record producer Brian
Watson fronted Jesse Zubot and Steve Dawson at their
CD-release party.
Simmi Uppal and Ginger Jawanda
flanked Bollywood superstar Sunil Dutt at benefit
banquet.
Dr. Harjinder Dhaliwal, here
with cancer specialist-wife Jiti Gill, chaired Nargis
Dutt Cancer Foundation benefit.
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SHARON FONG, the family physician who also records R&B
songs in Mandarin and Cantonese, sang the Cranberries' Dreams
at the UBC Chan Centre for the Performing Arts Friday. She
might as well have warbled Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
because the show she appeared in reportedly raised half that
sum for the Mount Saint Joseph Foundation.
It was a one-night-only staging of the play The Physiology
of Murder, which physician Francis Ho wrote and directed for
the occasion. Dr. Ho also made sure prominent hospital
supporters individually coughed up far more than $68 or $88
for their tickets.
Foundation chair Grace Choi and Providence Health Care
president Carl Roy said the night's haul will help replace
hospital equipment and fund 24-hour emergency operations.
The murder mystery, which was presented in the Cantonese
dialect, cast several prominent local folk in amusing roles.
Ho himself appeared as Colombo, sporting a store-fresh
raincoat rather than the stable-floor garment Peter Falk wore
in the TV series. Quadriplegic city councilor Sam Sullivan,
who not only speaks fluent Cantonese but writes reputable
poetry in the Chinese language, played Ironside, a TV role
that belonged to New Westminster-raised -- but not disabled --
Raymond Burr. Playing Sherlock Holmes was former diplomat Jan
Walls, who heads Simon Fraser University's David Lam Centre
for Communication and the varsity's Asia-Canada program.
Wall also had some snappy lines offstage. When Sullivan
suggested others should learn the Chinese tongues, and I said
I was still struggling with English, Walls suavely
interjected: "We're all struggling with your English,
Malcolm."
- - -
BARRIE MOWATT had no governmental aid for the first two
international sculpture festivals he staged at his
Georgia-off-Jervis Buschlen Mowatt gallery. But former federal
Liberal candidate Bill Brooks prodded Heritage Minister Sheila
Copps, who in turn prodded Public Works Minister Ralph
Goodale, and Communications Canada will likely provide
$150,000 to bring Canadian and British works in rotation to
the October-May festival.
Mayor Philip Owen backed the funding pitch when support was
needed. Now, with the deal done, Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry
is said to be looking to get some credit.
Fry, who is said to expect a front-bench cabinet gig after
Jean Chretien takes the trapdoor, will soon have a Canadian
monument of her own to show off. That's party leadership
seeker Paul Martin, who'll attend a wallet-squeezing wingding
at Fry's 14th-and-Yew home Wednesday evening.
- - -
JESSE ZUBOT, the Prairies-raised fiddler, and city
fretmeister Steve Dawson are continuing the scramble to fame
that began with a 1998 Vancouver Sun Community Concert
performance. At the packed Vancouver East Cultural Centre
Saturday, they launched their 13-tune CD Chicken Scratch.
Sunday night, they were on stage at the career-consolidating
Monterey Jazz Festival.
The two events were related.
Feted San Francisco producer Lee Townsend snapped up Zubot
and Dawson up after hearing their first CD, Strang, and others
put out by Brian Watson's Maximum Jazz label here. Townsend
(he produces jazz guitarist John Scofield) leveraged the
Monterey gig and also had acoustic country bluesman Kelly Joe
Phelps sing on a couple of Chicken Scratch tracks. Zubot and
Dawson will scratch Phelps' back by playing on his next
album.
Meanwhile, Dawson's mom Carol still brings the chow for
Z&D post-release receptions. And Kevin Mooney, who staged
the defunct Sun concert series, shows he's still shaking
things up. He handed out bottles of the hickory smoked tomato
ketchup he and partners Chris and Amanda Chatten produce,
along with herbed olive oil and tomato-and-herb vinaigrette,
at Shaughnessy, their VanDusen Botanical Garden
restaurant.
- - -
SUNIL DUTT, the Indian-movie superstar, was at a Hyatt
Regency hotel banquet Sunday, helping top off the $180,000
funding for a bus-based mobile medical unit that will operate
from the Guru Nanak Mission Hospital in Punjab.
The do was staged by the local chapter of the Nargis Dutt
Cancer Foundation, which commemorates the 1981 death of Dutt's
actress-wife (their son Sanji is a Bollywood star now
too).
Attendees included such community pillars as Asa Johal
(daughter-in-law of Manjit Johal who heads the foundation's
board here), Avtar Gosal, Sudesh Kalia and board secretary
Balbir Jawanda.
"We're putting a younger generation in charge," the latter
said, waving to the likes of daughter Jinda -- she prefers
Ginger --who co-chaired the do, Mission Hill wine salesperson
Simmi Uppal, who emceed, and eye-surgeon Harjinder Dhaliwal,
36, who was event chair.
Dhaliwal's wife Jiti Gill, 30, is a hematologist and
oncologist at Surrey's Fraser Valley Cancer Centre.
Other attendees looked like an advertising spread in The
Indo-Canadian Voice newspaper, with lawyers Ujjal Dosanjh,
Sraj Singh Gosal, Narinder Kang and Randeep Singh Sara much
evident. Ditto Liberal MLA Rob Nijjar.
While being photographed with Dutt, the unmarried Jawanda
and Uppal made it clear the arranged-wedding era is over for
them at least. A certified general accountant who runs the
finances of her dad's Quadra Coast Services trucking firm,
Jawanda laughed: "We don't give the dowries; we want the
dowries."
- - -
GORDON GIBSON was celebrating a win-win week when he and
wife Kilby nipped into Francesco Alongi's Don Francesco
restaurant last Wednesday. The writer, conservative thinker
and former B.C. Liberal party leader had just had his
Vancouver Sun column reinstated, and Gordon Campbell's
Liberals had dealt him 60 days at $1,200 day to lay the
framework for citizen involvement in electoral reform.
But Don Francesco chef Tom Tran set a challenge Gibson
couldn't surmount. It was a serving of the
fruit-and-herb-stuffed, 12-hour-roasted duck dish Anitra
Vignerola, which is so big it could be translated as Ducks
Unlimited. Whatever, even trencherman Gibson had to skip the
final half-pound or so. But, like a honeymooner who falls a
hair short of his amorous target, he appeared to be well
compensated by his exertions.
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