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Canwest News Service
YOU CAN HURRY LOVE: Maybe it was the excitement of watching Roberto Luongo's first shutout this season. Or maybe it was hearing her father, Phil Collins, sing In The Air — "I can feel it coming in the air tonight" — over GM Place's PA system. Whatever, city actress Joely Collins left the Oct. 25 Canucks-Oilers game, headed for St. Paul's Hospital and delivered Zoe Amelie (2.38 kilograms/five pounds, four ounces) before she and husband Stefan Buitelaar had planned to vacate their West Van house for a nursery-equipped downtown penthouse.
With his first grandchild arriving a fortnight early, Phil quit waxing a Motown-classics album, flew here and said: "Life has gone to a whole new level for me." Not for the Canucks, though. As Collins quaffed beer before the Buitelaars' TV, they lost 7-2 to the Anaheim Ducks.
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BRIGHTER LONGER: St Paul's Hospital's Christmas Lights will glow until Feb. 28 to please city residents and Olympics visitors. At a switching-on ceremony at the across-Burrard-Street Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel Thursday, foundation chair Paul Hollands said this year's Lights of Hope capital campaign will raise $1.85 million. He told attendees of funding a $2.2-million high-definition CT scanner, and of the RBC Foundation's recent million-dollar donation enabling nurse training. Gwyn Morgan and wife Patricia Trottier's $1.375-million gift will sustain a 25-year eye-surgery fellowship, Hollands said.
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GETTING THEIR GREENS: A first gala reportedly raised $25,000 recently for the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, a.k.a. the Cultch. Guests were greeted by executive director Heather Redfern, who fronted a $14-million campaign to renovate and enlarge the Venables-at-Victoria Drive complex. West-side chefs Pino Posteraro, Don Letendre, Harmandip Singh Gill, Warren Geraghty, Robert Belcham, Chris Whittaker and Thierry Busset provided the chow.
Addressing other appetites, poet Lorna Crozier, composer Leslie Uyeda, soprano Heather Pawsey and clarinetist A.K. Coope staged a world premiere of Sex Life of Vegetables & Other Delicious Distractions.
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GETTING THEIR BAX UP: With moneybags like Frank Giustra, Harald Ludwig and Paul Reynolds in Athena Bax's apartment-cum-art-studio Thursday, you could have bought the rest of Point Grey Road's golden strip with their pocket change. Instead, the moolah stayed not strayed as Bax — real name Baxevanakis — sold several "studio-priced" paintings of birds, horses and her usual ethereal-looking women.
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GOOD DEAL: The Canucks For Kids Fund's sold-out Dice & Ice gala saw hockey players deal cards and spin roulette wheels to net a reported $290,000 for the Canucks Autism Network and Canuck Place Children's Hospice recently. Hotel Vancouver executive chef Robert Le Crom served 720 guests duck-leg confit and smoked breast — take that, Anaheim — and beef tenderloin with blue cheese and potato fritters.
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POWER PEDAL: Vancouver magazine's Power 50 celebration for B.C.'s influential citizens went at the Vancouver Club this week. For once, podium finishers attended. They were Vanoc head John Furlong (No. 1) and Mayor Gregor Robertson (3). City Manager Penny Ballem (5) and condo marketer Bob Rennie (9) represented high-placed also-rans.
"This is really about our team," Furlong said when honoured. "We have influence, and when you have it, you want to use it as thoughtfully, as carefully, and the best you can." He discounted references to courage with: "Courage is for Jack Poole," the late Vanoc chair and seventh-placed awardee, "and Kandahar," meaning Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan
Sharing further distinctions, Rennie required facial stitches after a recent cycling accident, while Ballem broke her hip last year. "We sell together, we build together, but we don't bike together," Ballem said.
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PARRYDIDDLES: When late $100,000 donor Peter Toigo was remembered at a Variety Club gala Wednesday, a round trip for two to Burnaby-raised Michael Buble's New York concert fetched $10,500 at auction, whereupon manager Bruce Allen donated another trip and the second bidder paid $10,500, too . . . See www.joeaverage.ca for news of artist Joe Average's annual print sale . . . Richmond Hospital Foundation reportedly netted $230,000 from Fairchild Radio's recent Chinese-Canadian Telethon/Radiothon . . . Endorphin Junkies will collect cash and winter clothes for the St. James Community Services Society at their 511 West 7th personal-training centre today . . . See www.ifinance.ca/wonderfullife2009 for the Surrey Christmas Bureau's Dec. 4 gala to aid low-income families . . . .
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DOWN PARRYSCOPE: After urging us to hug trees and respect bears, a late neighbour got the order wrong.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456
