The Bay Street Bull 5.2 by Robert Meloche

SPRING 2008 | $4.95

ARABIAN SIGHTS Dubai and Abu Dhabi create a travellers’ paradise

FINE WINE

THEBAYSTREETBULL.CA

Ontario now produces some of the world’s best wine

GOLF’S GREATEST The amazing career of Jack Nicklaus

IN THE ISSUE:

feat u res

THE WINE REVOLUTION 8 Ontario vintners make their mark on the world stage.

departments

UNDER THE DESERT SKY Dubai and Abu Dhabi create a traveller’s paradise.

CAR REVIEW Porsche Boxster RS60 Spyder.

LAS VEGAS COOL The latest and best on the Strip.

JACK OF ALL CLUBS The remarkable career of Jack Nicklaus.

GETAWAYS The luxurious pleasures of SeaDream yachting.

ON THE SHELF David Baldacci’s latest thriller delves into the secrets of those whose practice is to deceive.

FILM The best from Italian master Luchino Visconti.

UP FRONT 6 Clicquot Cooler, a Mediterranean jewel, a Phantom Rolls and more.

FASHION 38 Savile Row: London’s famed street of bespoke tailors.

THE ARTS 42 Will Toronto’s Luminato festival match its debut success?

COVER PHOTO: Japack Company/CORBIS

SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 3

IN THE ISSUE:

feat u res

THE WINE REVOLUTION 8 Ontario vintners make their mark on the world stage.

departments

UNDER THE DESERT SKY Dubai and Abu Dhabi create a traveller’s paradise.

CAR REVIEW Porsche Boxster RS60 Spyder.

LAS VEGAS COOL The latest and best on the Strip.

JACK OF ALL CLUBS The remarkable career of Jack Nicklaus.

GETAWAYS The luxurious pleasures of SeaDream yachting.

ON THE SHELF David Baldacci’s latest thriller delves into the secrets of those whose practice is to deceive.

FILM The best from Italian master Luchino Visconti.

UP FRONT 6 Clicquot Cooler, a Mediterranean jewel, a Phantom Rolls and more.

FASHION 38 Savile Row: London’s famed street of bespoke tailors.

THE ARTS 42 Will Toronto’s Luminato festival match its debut success?

COVER PHOTO: Japack Company/CORBIS

SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 3

s t o L t on r f r e t a W e t a v i Pr

PUBLISHERĘźS NOTE

BAY STREET PUBLISHING Vol. 5, No. 2

SPRING 2008

Photo: Ruslan Sarkisian

VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLISHER Fred Sanders EDITOR Catherine Roberts CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Leigh Anne Williams ART DIRECTOR Mark Tzerelshtein CONTRIBUTORS Moira Daly Chris Daniels Mike Dojc Wallace Immen David Lasker Marc Phillips Chris Powell Tin Thomas PHOTOGRAPHERS Ruslan Sarkisian Maggie Steber ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, TRAVEL Vanessa Lee DIRECTOR, ADVERTISING SALES Bill Percy advertising@thebaystreetbull.ca COMMUNICATIONS FACILITATOR David Rees The Bay Street Bull is published six times yearly and distributed in Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financial and business districts. Distribution method: hand-delivered, inserted, mailed and retail. Editorial + subscription + retail advertising enquiries 305 Evans Ave., Suite 305, Etobicoke, Ontario M8Z 1K2.

pring in Toronto has been cool, even chilly, so far, but trusting that better weather is on the way, we at The Bay Street Bull have turned our thoughts toward the pleasures of warmer days. Looking for great wine to enjoy? You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to look far from home. Our cover story, written by Chris Powell, profiles the Ontario wine industry and some of the wines produced in the province that are attracting the attention and admiration of wine connoisseurs internationally. If spring stirs your wanderlust, this is the issue for you. Writer Tin Thomas describes the wonders that await travellers going to the United Arab Emirates. If Dubai and Abu Dhabi donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t already have every amenity and attraction you might want, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s probably under construction. A bit closer to home, David Lasker tells you about the best places to stay, the finest dining, and the latest things to do next time you get the urge to go to Vegas. And if you are dreaming of sailing away somewhere, Wallace Immen recommends yachting on the decadent SeaDream I, where the staff understands the true meaning of personal service. For those whose favourite place is out on the green, Mike Dojcâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s survey of the remarkable career of Jack Nicklaus may provide a little inspiration. Arts writer Moira Daly gives you a sneak peak at some of the highlights of Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second annual Luminato festivalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including acclaimed international hits such as a South Asian version of A Midsummer Nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dream and the National Theatre of Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drama Black Watch as well as many Canadian premieres. And Chris Daniels reviews the latest page-turner by David Baldacci. In our continued commitment to be environmentally responsible, The Bay Street Bull will now be printed on FSC-certified paper. FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. It is an international certification and labelling system that guarantees that the forest products purchased come from responsibly managed forests. We are always interested to hear how you think weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing. If you want to write in about the issue, or have an idea that you think we should feature in the magazine, please address your letter to The Publisher, The Bay Street Bull, 305 Evans Avenue, Suite 305, Etobicoke, Ontario M8Z 1K2 or email me at publisher@thebaystreetbull.ca.

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Mediterranean Jewel Clicquot Cooler Designer Karim Rashid has a definite thing for pink. First, it was his pink Veuve Clicquot loveseat, and now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s his pink Veuve Clicquot Globalight isotherm cooler. Intended to surround bottle with light, the cooler is Rashidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interpretation of the French chandelier. (Though some would swear that he took his inspiration from a handbag.) The Globalight serves three functions: to cool, to light and to carry champagne. Each bottle can remain chilled for up to four hours. The cost of this limited-edition piece: US$4,500. The champagne must be purchased separately. clicqout.com

Panerai: Past & Present

Panerai makes some of the most coveted watches in the world. Founded in Florence in 1860 by Giovanni Panerai, the company is credited with perfecting the first underwater watches in the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;30s. And, according to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Paneristiâ&#x20AC;? (devoted Panerai collectors), it is the originator of the oversized-style. Until 1993, it was the official supplier to the Royal Italian Navy. Yet it remained in relative obscurity until Sylvester Stallone bought a Panerai Luminor in a jewelry store in Rome in 1995 to wear during the shooting of the film Daylight. Stallone so liked the watches that he ordered a batch with his signature engraved on the case back and offered them as gift to friends, including Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company rapidly gained popularity, becoming the official timekeeper of Ferrari in 1996. Now, an impressive slipcased volume entitled Panerai, published by Flammarion, details the fascinating history of these unique timepieces. flammarion.com

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Situated high above Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Amalfi Coast in the medieval town of Ravello, the Palazzo Sasso is an architectural jewel with Moorish influences that was built in the 12th century. Since opening as a new hotel in 1997, it has garnered a reputation for its old world charm. There are 32 rooms and 11 suites. All are decorated with handmade Vietri tiles, antique carpets, Frette linens as well as 18th and 19th-century furniture. With exceptional views of picturesque fishing villages and the sparkling Mediterranean Sea, the Palazzo has as much to offer outside its spectacular walls as within. palazzosasso.com

Christieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haul The U.S. economy may be on the skids, but you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that from the sales numbers being racked up at Christieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The famed auction house set new records at its spring postwar and contemporary art auction. While there were often only a couple of bidders on each piece, the total haul was US$405.4 million. The majority of the buyers were American but Russians were also out in force. The work that fetched the highest bid was Rothkoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s No. 15 (pictured above), which sold for $50.4 million. Lucian Freudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping brought in $33.6 million, setting a new record for a Freud sold at auction and restoring his reign as the living artist with the most expensive work sold at auction. (Jeff Koons claimed the title last November when his Hanging Heart sold for $23.6 million). christies.com

Phantom Rolls The ultra-rare 1933 Rolls-Royce Phantom II drophead coupe built for Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, was up for auction on eBay. Hutton was dubbed the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;poor little, rich girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; due to her enormous inherited wealth (US$50 million at the age of 21) and her incredibly bad luck with men (she was married seven times). She purchased the car for her first husband, the Russian Prince Alexis Mdivani. The car was one of only two ever made and cost US$20,000 at the time. Perhaps because of its tragic historyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Mdivani was killed while driving it in Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the historic Rolls had been driven less than 16,000 kilometres. eBay.com.

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W I N E

The Wine REVOLUTION ONTARIO VINTNERS MAKE THEIR MARK

BY CHRIS POWELL

hroughout the 1980s and ’90s, Norm Beal was an oil trader closing multimillion-dollar deals for the likes of Syncrude Canada and Shell Canada. The job involved extensive travel, with Beal spending as many as 35 weeks a year in Chile, Argentina, the Caribbean and California. His only reprieve from the punishing limo-airplaneboardroom treadmill was to visit local winemakers; there, Beal cultivated a love of wine and the winemaking process. Given the current volatility in the oil industry, Beal figures he could have made a small fortune if he’d remained in the oil trading business. In the late 1990s, however, he made the decision to leave the oil fields for the vineyards.. “If you’re in the trading business more than 15 years, you should get out [either] because you’re no good at it, or you’ve made enough money that you don’t need to be in it anymore,” he says. For Beal, it was the latter, so he began casting around for a suitable location to pursue his dream. He considered California’s Napa and Sonoma valleys, even Long Island—which now produces an estimated 500,000 cases (5.5 million litres) of wine a year even though the first vineyard was only planted in 1973. Despite being born in Hamilton and raised in the Niagara region, he didn’t consider the area as a possible location; for him, the phrase “Ontario wine” conjured up an image of so-called “jug wines” like Baby Duck, which had been the hallmark of the Canadian wine industry in the late 1970s. (According to a 1978 CBC Radio report, the “sweet” “sparkling” and “bright Christmas red” Baby Duck was the country’s top-selling wine at the time, selling an estimated 8 million bottles a year). But at the urging of his viticulturalist sister, Beal spent a week or so touring Ontario wineries, talking to winemakers and sampling their product. “I was frankly blown away by the transformation in quality that had happened in 20 years,” says Beal, who is now chair of the Wine Council of Ontario. “To me, it was remarkable that

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[Ontario] could make such huge strides in quality in such a short period of time. It has taken the French 1,000 years, the Californians a couple of hundred years [to do] what we’ve been able to do in 25 or 30 years.” So, Beal went on to poach noted French winemaker Jean-Pierre Colas—winner of Wine Spectator magazine’s 1998 White Wine of the Year award for his 1996 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos—from the noted Chablis House Domaine Laroche in France’s Burgundy region and, in June 1999, broke ground on Peninsula Ridge Estates in Beamsville, Ont. Situated on 32 hectares, the winery features a restored 1885 Victorian manor named the William D. Kitchen House that has been converted into a restaurant offering prime views of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment. Beal was ahead of a wave of what he calls “real big Bay Street money” that has entered the Niagara region over the last decade. It’s a group that includes Moray Tawse, a partner in First National Financial LP (the country’s largest independent mortgage lender), who founded Tawse Winery and Tawse Family Vineyards in Vineland, Ont. The group, Beal says, has spent “big bucks building world-class wineries and bringing in world-class talent.” (Tawse employs, as a consultant, the internationally renowned winemaker Pascal Marchand, who had one of his wines place 19th on Wine Spectator’s list of the world’s best 100 wines.) It’s not that wineries have become a new plaything for deep-pocketed Bay Street types, but that they’re among the select few able to withstand the crushing financial pressures of the industry. “I think everybody loves the idea of agriculture and wine,” says Tawse from France’s famed Rhône wine region, midway through a two-week tasting tour.

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W I N E

The Wine REVOLUTION ONTARIO VINTNERS MAKE THEIR MARK

BY CHRIS POWELL

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Top: Cave Spring wine store Left: Cave Spring Riesling 2006 Photos: Cave Spring

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THERE ARE A LOT MORE WINERIES NOW THAT ARE DOING HIGH-QUALITY, 100% ONTARIO WINE. WE MAKE REALLY GREAT COOL-CLIMATE WINES.

Left: Tawse Winery. Below: Inniskillin Icewine Riesling 2005 Photo: Inniskillin.

venerable Inniskillin—which writer Mitch Frank says “helped start Niagara’s quality revolution” when it was founded in 1975. Two decades ago, wrote Frank, the appellation “Canadian wine country” might have been “considered a punch line—most Canadian wines were labelled ‘Cellared in Canada,’ which meant that a

corporation had imported bulk wine, blended it with a small percentage of local wine and bottled it. Today, the peninsula is better known for beautiful Rieslings, Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs and especially icewines produced by small, quality-minded wineries.” Such recognition helps the local tourism industry. “An

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IT’S CULTURE, HISTORY; IT’S EASY TO UNDERSTAND HOW PEOPLE COULD DREAM ABOUT HAVING THEIR OWN VINEYARD. THE REALITY IS, IT’S A TERRIBLE BUSINESS. IT TAKES UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNTS OF CAPITAL TO DO IT SUCCESSFULLY. THE BEST WAY TO MAKE A SMALL FORTUNE IN THE WINE BUSINESS IS TO START WITH A LARGE ONE.

Tawse developed a passion for wine as a student, working at what is now the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and Resort in Alberta. “We had [customers] who could afford to buy some of the finer wines in the world. Banff Springs has a good wine list, and we were always able to taste the wines as we were pouring them,” he says. Having made his fortune in the financial business, Tawse opened his winery and vineyard in 2005. It now produces an estimated 10,000 cases of wines a year, excelling at Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. The 2006 and 2007 vintages are “dynamite, the best ones we’ve ever done,” Tawse says proudly. “I love the wine business,” he adds. “You’re working with land, you’re working with agriculture, your customers are always happy. Wine is a joyous part of life. Mortgages are mortgages; no one likes to talk about them.” And like Beal, Tawse is committed to changing people’s perception of Ontario wine. “Historically, there’ve been a lot of people who’ve thought of Ontario wines as lower end, under $10,” he says. “A lot of imported blended wines that are mixed with Ontario wines have really hurt its reputation. But in the last five years, a lot of people have put real money into trying to make really great wine,” he says. “There are a lot more wineries now that are doing high-quality, 100% Ontario wine. I think we make really great coolclimate wines.” According to the Wine Council of Ontario, the province’s wine industry produced 56 million litres in 2005-06 (the most recent year for which figures are available), amounting to an estimated $500 million in sales. According to a KPMG study conducted in May, 2006, every bottle of Ontario wine sold in the province adds $4.29 in added value to the province’s economy, with every $10 million in sales translating into $13 million in economic activity. And while industries in Prince Edward County and along Lake Erie’s North Shore have all received accolades in recent years, Niagara remains the epicentre of Ontario winemaking. The May 15 edition of Wine Spectator magazine, widely considered the bible of wine publications, featured a travel section headlined “Niagara Rises” that devoted six pages to the Niagara region, spotlighting several area wineries including Cave Spring Cellars, Flat Rock Cellars and the

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“It’s culture, history; it’s easy to understand how people could dream about having their own vineyard. The reality is, it’s a terrible business. It takes unbelievable amounts of capital to do it successfully.” He cites a famous quote in the industry: “The best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start with a large one.”

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Top: Cave Spring wine store Left: Cave Spring Riesling 2006 Photos: Cave Spring

10 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

THERE ARE A LOT MORE WINERIES NOW THAT ARE DOING HIGH-QUALITY, 100% ONTARIO WINE. WE MAKE REALLY GREAT COOL-CLIMATE WINES.

Left: Tawse Winery. Below: Inniskillin Icewine Riesling 2005 Photo: Inniskillin.

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Top: Morning at Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery Below: Norman Beal. Bottom: Wine aged in barrels. Photos: Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery. Right: Royal DeMaria's 2000 Chardonnay Icewine: the most expensive icewine in the world.

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article like this, with the reputation and distribution of Wine Spectator in North America and around the world, is huge,” says James Treadwell of Treadwell Restaurant, a year-old Port Dalhousie restaurant that espouses the “farm-to-table” philosophy. Aside from the good press, Beal notes that the Canadian wine industry is “kicking butt” internationally. Canada recently won 13 medals at the 15th annual Chardonnay-du-Monde competition in France’s Burgundy region, up from nine medals in 2007 and 11 medals in 2006. The country’s most recent haul included a fourth straight gold medal for Royal DeMaria Wines’ Royal DeMaria 2000 Chardonnay Icewine. The world’s most expensive icewine, it was reportedly requested by Queen Elizabeth during her 2005 visit to Canada and purchased by Sir Richard Branson during an im-

promptu visit to the winery in Vineland, Ont. in 2003. Last year, Royal DeMaria made the 2000 Chardonnay Icewine the first entry into its Billy Myers Series (devoted to the longtime Niagara winemaker), with an opening price of $30,000 per bottle. A Saudi businessman was the first to buy, and he got a fantastic deal: with only 18 bottles remaining, the icewine is currently selling for $250,000, and the final bottle is expected to be worth $500,000. “If France can demand a price for quality, why not Canada?” reasons Royal DeMaria Wines’ owner Joseph DeMaria. If that’s too rich for your blood, you might want to consider DeMaria’s “Collectors Series,” which offers a 2002 Meritage Icewine for $10,000 a bottle, a 2000 Gamay Icewine for $4,200 a bottle and a 1999 Riesling Icewine at the budget price of $3,800 a bottle. Small wonder that Royal DeMaria bills itself as Canada’s icewine specialists. But while Canada is rightly renowned as one of the world’s best icewine producing nations, Beal also points out that wineries such as Cave Spring Cellars in Jordan, Ont. are producing Rieslings that “can make the Germans jealous,” and Tawse Winery is producing “absolutely outstanding” Pinot Noirs. “I’m really just amazed at the kind of progress we’ve made,” says Beal, who grew to love wine while travelling the world but came to truly appreciate it here at home.

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THE RICH DELIGHTS OF DUBAI AND ABU DHABI

BY TIN THOMAS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAGGIE STEBER

ight lanes of traffic rush past a stretch of Manhattan-style skyscrapers on Sheikh Zayed Road. As doors open at the Mall of the Emirates, where sales of diamond-encrusted cell phones are brisk business, a polo match is already underway at Arabian Ranches, a suburban development designed for moneyed expatriates. This is morning in Dubai. And Dubai, it has been said, “is like no place on Earth. It is the world capital of living large.” It’s hard to believe that this was once a sleepy, sun-drenched village on the edge of the Persian Gulf, or that as recently as the early 1990s, much of it was near-empty desert. It now attracts more tourists than India, more shipping vessels than Singapore and more foreign capital than some European countries. Under the laser-sharp focus and steady hand of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (affectionately called Sheikh Mo), Dubai has modernized like no other country. And if he continues to have his own way, the Emirates—Dubai in particular—will wind up being one of the greatest pleasure centers of all time, a modern day Xanadu, if you will. Visitors to this part of the world can expect blue skies, plenty of sunshine and beautiful beaches. Dozens of luxurious hotels have sprung up along the territory’s meager coastline. Topping them is the Burj Al Arab, a mega-hotel shaped like the billowing sail of an Arab dhow, housing 202 sumptuous suites and made famous by an exhibition tennis match, played on the rooftop helipad, between Andre Agassi and Roger Federer. Canadians might have been a little miffed at seeing their iconic CN Tower displaced as the world’s tallest free-standing structure when the still growing Burj Dubai soared past the tower’s 553.33 metres on the way to an incredible 800 metre-plus summit, but they are visiting in numbers, revelling in direct service from Toronto by the two much lauded local carriers, Emirates (from Dubai) and Etihad Airways (from Abu Dhabi). Clusters of offshore man-made islands were built to provide more coastline—two groups shaped like palm trees, a third shaped like a map of the world. The Palm Jumeirah, dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, offers 4,000 beachfront lots while the Palm Jebel Ali, includes a ring of homes on stilts arranged to spell out a poem to Sheikh Mo.

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under esert DSky THE

THE RICH DELIGHTS OF DUBAI AND ABU DHABI

BY TIN THOMAS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAGGIE STEBER

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For those who want a break from the beach, Ski Dubai opened to offer indoor snow skiing, and there’s the ice skating rink in the Galleria shopping mall at the Hyatt Regency. Other diversions include Wild Wadi Park, one of the most technically advanced and creatively designed adventure theme parks in the world. Visitors can also see herds of Arabian oryx and gazelles on the island of Sir Bani Yas, a breeding station for endangered species of Arabian wildlife. Another theme park, Dubailand will be enormous, twice the size of Disney World, with 45 major attractions and 200 smaller ones. The first phase is due to open in 2010. Among the attractions will be Universal City, being built by Universal Studios; it will have at least 4,000 hotel rooms of its own. Exhibition City will open its first phase in 2009. It will have state-ofthe-art facilities for meetings, conferences and exhibitions with 19 exhibit halls, hotels, restaurants and apartments. Dubai Festival City, a leisure complex with facilities for golf and boating, 90 waterfront restaurants and, of course, hotels—Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza and Four Seasons— are due to open this year.

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emirates.com/ca

Photos: Sheikh Zayed Road cuts through a canyon of skyscrapers in Dubai. (page 14) A fisherman stacks lobster and crab traps just down the beach from the Burj Al Arab hotel. (pages 16-17) (top photo) After a wild ride over the dunes, tourists watch the sunset in a desert national park. (centre photo) Aerial view of one of two palm-shaped man-made islands built to expand Dubai's coastline. (bottom photo) Emirati boys enjoy juice during a mass wedding ceremony attended by grooms and men only in Ras Al Khaimah, an emirate about three hours drive from Dubai. Women celebrate separately.

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The Lagoons will be a residential community on a group of islands linked by bridges, but it will also be home to Dubai’s first opera house, designed by the controversial British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, as well as a planetarium, theatre, museum and art centre. The projected completion date is 2013. To handle the growing traffic, Dubai World Central International Airport is being expanded to handle 120 million passengers a year (Chicago’s O’Hare handled 77 million in 2007; London’s Heathrow, 68 million; and Toronto’s Pearson International, 31 million). And while Dubai has been busy forcing itself into the world spotlight, neighbouring Abu Dhabi has been quietly building a tourism infrastructure of its own that promises to be equally amazing. Fifty years ago, this was little more than a collection of palm-frond huts and a small community that survived on fishing and pearl diving. Today, Abu Dhabi is one of the fastest growing and most modern cities in the world. It already has a solid core of spectacular hotels, fine dining and high-end shopping. The intention, however, is to make Abu Dhabi a cultural centre in the region, anchored by two major projects: a branch of the Guggenheim Museum will be built, designed by Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry; and a branch of the Louvre, displaying works from the headquarters in Paris as well as from the Musée d’Orsay and Centre Georges Pompidou, is scheduled to open in 2012. From October to March, visitors can enjoy the traditional sport of camel racing. Heritage Village introduces visitors to falconry, or they can take a sailing trip in a traditional Arab dhow on the placid waters of the Gulf of Arabia. There are tours into the wilderness of the Hajar Mountains and overnight stays in a Bedouin-style tent deep in the sand dunes, some of which are hundreds of metres high. Shoppers can head to one of the many slick, ultramodern malls, or they can hone their bargaining skills in the souks (Arab markets). A day trip to El Ain, the Emirate’s Garden City, is another option. In the old days, it took five days to reach by camel, now it’s just a 90-minute spin along the freeway to this fascinating ancient city that actually straddles the border with the Sultanate of Oman. Attractions include a unique camel market, one of the last of its kind in this part of Arabia, and Jebel Hafeet, a 1,180-metre high mountain with spectacular views of the ocean and the outer reaches of the Rub Al Khali (The Empty Quarter), a forbidding stretch of desert. For the ultimate in pampering, there is the Emirates Palace, a stunningly beautiful, kilometre-long building. Built at a cost of $3 billion, it is one of the world’s most expensive hotels. And it does not disappoint. It has 302 rooms, 92 suites and vast, high-ceilinged public spaces. The furnishings are lavish, the suites are indescribably luxurious, and there are many fine restaurants. The superb Lebanese cuisine at The Diwan l’Auberge is not to be missed. Whether the Emirates represents a glitzy anomaly in the Persian Gulf or a model to be copied is for pundits to debate. For those seeking new experiences in culture and luxury, there exists in the new Arabia, on every corner, on every street, a host of sensuous pleasures.

Imagine 1,000 channels of on-demand entertainment, a flat-bed

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emirates.com/ca

18 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

Imagine 1,000 channels of on-demand entertainment, a flat-bed

You’ve arrived. New First Class private suites. Non-stop from Toronto to Dubai.

massage seat and fine dining room service. Introducing our new First Class private suite. Press a button, close your doors and float away.

Fly Emirates. Keep discovering.

300 international awards and over 100 destinations worldwide. For more details contact Emirates at 800-777-3999. Discover frequent ﬂyer beneﬁts at skywards.com

B U L L

R E V I E W

inding roads, sharp corners and steep hills are no obstacles for the Porsche Boxster RS60 Spyder. This gem is a roadster and sports car rolled into one. High performance, agility, a low centre of gravity and mid-engine design have always been core concepts of the Boxster. What is new is that the front and rear chassis now have McPherson-type suspension that ensures precise han-

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dling and directional stability. Sensors constantly measure the direction, speed and lateral acceleration. Then, the car’s stability system calculates the actual direction of the car’s movement and will make necessary adjustments, even in the case of deviations, selectively braking individual wheels. Style and functionality have always been a leitmotif for Porsche, and this Boxster is no exception. Like its

elegant predecessor, the 718 RS60 Spyder of the '60s, the interior is in natural Carrera Red leather. The roof is also in red, though black is an option and available at no extra charge. Giving the car an authentic roadster feel is the uncovered instrument cluster and the three-spoke sports embossed leather steering wheel. A wide cabin and comfortable seats means riding (top up or down) is a

pleasure. The additional exhaust system with a twinbranch tailpipe has increased the power output to an impressive 303 horsepower—an output that’s not only to be felt but also heard. With a speed of 274 kilometres per hour and an acceleration of zero to 60 in 5.1 seconds, this is a Porsche lover’s dream. One major drawback: there are only 1,960.

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B U L L

R E V I E W

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G E TAWAY S

LAS VEGAS

Photos: The glittering Las Vegas skyline. Photo: Las Vegas News Bureau. (inset) Mandalay Bay’s Eyecandy Sound Lounge & Bar. Photo: Eyecandy.

The latest and best on the Strip BY DAVID LASKER

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f there is one thing that’s constant in Las Vegas, it’s change. Much of it owed to Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson. Wynn transformed Sin City’s image by building grandiose luxo-casino-resort destinations such as the Mirage in the 1980s and following up more recently with the Euro-styled Bellagio and his namesake Wynn, the wavy-topped, concave-curving hotel familiar to television viewers from the opening aerial shots of CSI. Adelson is responsible for the Sands Convention Center, the Venetian and the just-opened, French Moderne-inspired

Palazzo. Like boat owners with “10-footitis” who compulsively keep buying a slightly longer yacht than their neighbour’s, the two Nevada titans constantly duke it out. They relentlessly up the ante for the hospitality industry in Las Vegas and, by extension, the world. Thanks to Wynn’s and Adelson’s influence, tourists now come to the Strip more for the luxury-resort lifestyle than for gambling. The era of the 99-cent shrimp cocktail is over. Instead, Glitter Gulch boasts some of the most impressive restaurants outside Paris.

more casual L’Atelier de Jöel Robuchon. The Mansion interior evokes the Art Deco glamour of 1930s Paris, with its crystal teardrop chandelier, 17-foot ceilings and purple velvet and black lacquered furniture. If the menu prompts indecision, try the 16-course tasting menu at $385. If you must slum it, have the Menu Découverte (Discovery Menu) at the Caesars Palace welcomed Michelin three-star French chef Guy Savoy in May, 2006. Newsweek called his eatery “the best restaurant in Las Vegas, and one of the finest anywhere.” The New York Times put it in its top-10 list of restaurants to open in the U.S. during 2006 and 2007.

Jöel Robuchon, a Parisian dining institution, recently launched in North America with two venues at the MGM Grand: Jöel Robuchon at the Mansion, the 2008 winner of the AAA FiveDiamond and Mobil FiveStar awards, and the

G E TAWAY S

LAS VEGAS

Photos: The glittering Las Vegas skyline. Photo: Las Vegas News Bureau. (inset) Mandalay Bay’s Eyecandy Sound Lounge & Bar. Photo: Eyecandy.

The latest and best on the Strip BY DAVID LASKER

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L’Atelier. The $135 experience starts with an amuse-bouche of foie gras parfait with port wine and parmesan foam and proceeds for eight more courses. Sit at the counter, and you can chat with your waiter while you watch your dinner take shape before your eyes. If you need to satisfy your red-meat cravings, then head to Stripsteak, celebrity chef Michael Mina’s debut steakhouse, located at the Mandalay Bay hotel. You might pair your six-ounce, Japanese A5 Kobe filet mignon, $195, with one of the wine list’s 1,900 grand cru magnums: Château Pomerol, $55,000; Château Margaux, $45,000; Château Lafite Rothschild, $34,000, and yes, those commas are in the right places. After dinner, there’s the obligatory show, such as Bette Midler’s The Showgirl Must Go On at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, or the Cirque du Soleil’s latest Vegas theatrical, Beatles-inspired Love, which has an indefinite run at the Mirage (Cirque fans beware: Love has more dance and less acrobatics than the traditional Cirque evening.)

Photos: (top) Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Love’ celebrates the music of the Beatles. Photo: Cirque du Soleil. (left top) The view of Stripsteak, celebrity chef Michael Mina’s steakhouse at the Mandalay Bay hotel. Photo: Stripsteak. (left middle) Tao — a restaurant and lounge inside the Venetian hotel. (left bottom) Body English nightclub at the Hard Rock hotel. Photos: Concierge.com.

The Ultimate golf trip doesn’t come in a package. It’s the perfect combination of your desires and our abilities. Ultimate Golf Vacations has the knowledge, contacts and passion for the game to make the most extreme golf dreams come true. What’s your sweet spot? From private plane weekends in the Carolinas to tackling Scotland’s legendary links; exotic Dubai and exciting Las Vegas to high-altitude tee-times in the Canadian Rockies – just name your Ultimate golf vacation and we’ll create it to your exact speciﬁcations.

When it’s time to work, you’re the pro. When it’s time to play, leave it to the pros at Ultimate Golf Vacations. Call or e-mail Ron Dawick, President, Ultimate Travel Group at 905-337-6824 or rdawick@ugv.net 1660 North Service Road East, Suite 101, Oakville, Ontario L6H 7G3

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TICO REGISTRATION NUMBERS #’S 4209821 & 5000061

24 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

TICO REGISTRATION NUMBERS #’S 4209821 & 5000061

G O L F

Then comes lounging around at a lounge. The Mirage has branded its guestroom tower with Love and Beatles Revolution logos. Beatles Revolution is the new lounge created by Cirque du Soleil and operated by INK, which manages several trendy nightlife complexes in Toronto, including The Guvernment, Ultra Supper Club and This is London. Revolution offers a Beatles-themed experience before and after the Love show. Well, for a little while after, anyway. Soon, the familiar hit tunes give way to a generic pounding rock beat at decibel levels so high you’ll have to text the other members of your party. But once the conversation ends guests can sit around tables with touch-screen tops, where they can trace patterns that are projected onto plasma TVs on the walls. Another club Eyecandy at the centre of Mandalay Bay’s casino floor, executes the concept in a more user-friendly way, with circular rather than rectangular tables, making it easier for the tribe to gather ‘round. Indeed, you may feel that you’ve stumbled upon a séance, what with all the laying on of hands on the tabletops, as everyone competes to draw the coolest squiggles. You can send the patterns to friends at neighbouring tables or send your iPod playlist to the deejay and hear your songs on the dance floor. After 10 p.m., guests start dancing on the tables, too. 26 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

Photos: (above) Qua Baths & Spa at Caesars Palace offers Roman-style baths, beauty treatments, massage and crystal body art. Photo: Qua spa. (top) Gondolas at the Venetian hotel. Photo: Dreamstime.com

Jocks who gravitate to sports bars will be thrilled by the 40/40 Club in the new Palazzo. Owner hip-hop mogul Jay-Z named it after one of baseball’s most prestigious achievements, 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season. Bleachers with elegant, contemporary Italian-styled sofas march up to a landing surrounded by sports memorabilia, including the jersey of legendary Boston Celtics basketball player Bill Russell. If your fast-paced holiday leaves you in need of therapeutic respite, the new Qua spa at Caesars Palace offers hot, warm and cold baths inspired by the style of baths in ancient Rome. In the city’s first Arctic Ice Room, guests can unwind after heat treatments using ice chips to cool, exfoliate and invigorate in the crisp 13ºC air. Qua’s final touch, to ensure that everyone knows you were a pampered guest, is the Crystal Body Art Room, offering customized designs of tiny Swarovski crystals “artistically adhered” to the body. Finally, if you’ve imbibed too much during your night on the town and succumb to the urge to get a tattoo, you can follow up with a visit to the brand-new Starlight Tattoo at Mandalay Bay. It is billed as the only tattoo parlour that also offers tattoo removal. And that gives a whole new meaning to the Chamber of Commerce chant “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.”

Jack

of All Clubs

THE REMARKABLE CAREER AND MAGIC OF GOLF’S GOLDEN AMBASSADOR

BY MIKE DOJC

his month at the Players Championship the PGA bestowed Jack William Nicklaus with the highest honour left in its golf bag—the tour’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The 68-year-old Nicklaus, proud father of five and grandfather of 21, is often regarded as the greatest golfer to ever grip a club. Sure, arguments can be made for others who dominated their eras: trailblazer Bobby Jones (19231930) and the man with the golden swing Ben Hogan (1940-1960) knew no equals during their respective heydays. But Nicklaus’s quarter-century reign as golf’s pre-eminent player from the early 1960s up until the mid-’80s puts the Golden Bear on top of the all-time leaderboard by a couple of strokes. SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 27

G O L F

Jack

of All Clubs

THE REMARKABLE CAREER AND MAGIC OF GOLF’S GOLDEN AMBASSADOR

BY MIKE DOJC

81 the following year and are breaking 70 while your voice is still changing at 13, the tingly sting of the golf bug can bite you like fire ants at a Georgia pig pickin’. The terms “natural” and “prodigy” are thrown out way too loosely by fawning sportswriters looking for the surefire way to explain off-the-charts performance. Nicklaus’s majestic long and high lofting drives and his pinpoint iron shots did not come as the result of punching a winning genetic lottery ticket. Nicklaus’s ambition exceeded his greatest tape-measure shots. As a young buck, he would sky 500 practice balls a day at the Scioto Country Club driving range in Columbus, Ohio, hitting from dawn to dusk. Nicklaus wouldn’t even let the elements deprive him of his golf fix, clearing a spot from which to hit balls in the dead of winter. After trouncing the field at the Ohio Open in 1956 as a teenage sensation, there was no turning back for Nicklaus.

MAJOR # 1

PHOTOS: Jack Nicklaus hits out the bunker on the 4th hole during the Par 3 contest prior to the Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 5, 2006 in Augusta, Georgia. Photo: Getty Images Left (bottom): Champion golfers Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus pose with their golf clubs before a practice round at the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, September 1962. Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS. Left (top): Jack Nicklaus at the British Open Golf Championship, 1978. Photo: Leo Mason/CORBIS Opener photo: Jack Nicklaus oversees his golf course design work at the Polaris World site on February 1, 2006 in Murcia, Spain. Photo: Steve Read/Getty Images Next page: US team captain Jack Nicklaus tips his cap on the 18th hole during the third day four-ball matches at the Presidents Cup at the Royal Montreal Golf Club in Montreal, Canada, September 29, 2007. The US leads the International team 14 1/2 to 7 1/2 going into the final day of singles matches. Photo: Andrew Gompert/ EPA

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In his prime, Nicklaus swung his clubs with such control and confidence, it was almost as if he made mental metrologic adjustments in head depending on the distance and trajectory he required and then just made it happen. And J.W.’s ability to conjure up wondrous strokes on demand didn’t stop once he reached the putting green. Many pros throw up (golfer parlance for letting your nerves get the best of you) when the pressure is on. Buckling just wasn’t the Bear’s way. Faced with a treacherous double-breaking 40-footer on the 16th hole of the 1975 Masters, Nicklaus knew he could find the line, concentrated intently, and then tapped his ball hole-ward bound. As a kid, Jack was a jock of all sports excelling in every game he got a whiff of, from track & field to table tennis. But when you shoot 91 from the men’s tees at the tender age of 10, shave that down to

“Everybody says there’s only one favorite, and that’s me. But you better watch the fat boy,” quipped Arnold Palmer to the press when they asked him who would win the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Palmer’s backhanded compliment might seem churlish to those unfamiliar with Nicklaus, but even his wife Barbara called him “fat boy” back then, a vast improvement over “Blobbo,” which was what his Ohio State fraternity brothers called the big boned blonde kid with the crew cut who could have easily played fullback for the Buckeyes. Remember this was a decade before he’d stop popping shrimp cocktails like candy, lose the paunch, and let his golden locks grow long. Now let’s return to the tournament. Deadlocked at one under par after four rounds in Oakmont, Nicklaus proved the King’s little pregame shoutout to be right on the money, as Fat Jack went on to outduel Palmer by three strokes in the deciding 18-hole playoff. “Now that the big guy’s out of the cage, everybody better run for cover,” warned Palmer when it was over, tipping his hat to the 22-yearold rookie, 10 years his junior. This was Jack William Nicklaus’s first victory as a professional golfer, and achieving the milestone in Palmer’s home state of Pennsylvania in front of a gallery of golf fans almost uniformly enlisted in

“Arnie’s Army” made the accomplishment even more of a watershed moment. Palmer’s conciliatory quip proved to be quite a prescient prediction; it also marked the start of the golfing titans’ 50-year rivalry that continues to this day. But golf fans didn’t immediately embrace the upstart. Unlike Palmer, a downto-earth magnetic character who was fully aware that he was in the sports entertainment business, Nicklaus was often too keyed into the golf to realize that his was a television sport. And while Palmer was always acknowledging and connecting with his gallery of fans while blasting off shots with joyful abandon, Nicklaus came off as more aloof. Nicklaus wasn’t much of an extrovert, and when he emerged on the scene, he had what we’d characterize today as an image problem. He seemed to walk the fairways with tunnel vision. Not only did he tune out everything around him, but his powers of concentration were so jacked up before each swing that it was as if he was plotting a multivariable regression line to the hole and using an internal anemometer to factor in wind speed. So, with whom would you rather play a round in the early ‘60s? Someone like Palmer who marched to his balls and stroked his clubs with the vim of a lumberjack wailing away at a giant oak trunk, or with Nicklaus, a master technician who

had shot-making down to a science and often wore the equation-mulling expression of a professor of algebraic topology while hovering over his lie? It's not surprising that despite topping the PGA money list for the last time in 1963, Arnie’s star and brand power would pay much higher dividends than Jack’s or any other golfer’s over the decades, continuing to reap fruits long after Palmer’s playing days were over. Palmer picked up his last PGA tour win in 1973, yet in the 1980s his star continued to rise, banking at least $5 million annually from endorsement contracts, more than any other athlete in the world until the Michael Jordan advertising slam-dunk finally knocked Palmer down a few pegs in 1991, easily trumping the celebrated golfer’s $9-million take that year.

JACK ATTACKS While Palmer was pitchman supreme, on the golf course Nicklaus was, to crib the LL Cool J lyric, something like a phenomenon. His 18 major victories dwarf Palmer’s seven, and by the time the ‘70s rolled round, every golf fan from Pebble Beach to Hilton Head was familiar with the infectious ear-to-ear smile that would crease Jack’s face whenever he holed one. But more infectious still, for the sportsobsessed hoi polloi, was the fact that he was a winner.

FIVE GOLDEN NICKLAUS NUGGETS 1

Jack earned $33.33 for finishing in his professional debut at the Los Angeles Open in 1962 after finishing tied for 50th.

Jack is so money that the Royal Bank of Scotland released two million fivepound notes with a picture of Jack smiling, wearing a familiar argyle sweater and clutching the claret jug. He was only the third living person after the Queen and Queen Mother to be depicted on Scottish currency.

In 1963, Jazz pianist Billy Maxted wrote a song honouring his friend Jack called “The Golden Bear.” Appropriately, the song is on an album titled The Big Swingers.

If Jack knew he could only play one more round of golf in his life, he said he’d play it at Pebble Beach.

At the 1980 U.S. Open, a 40-year-old Jack Nicklaus became the only golfer to win a major championship in each of three decades. Six years later at Augusta he added “oldest golfer to win a Masters” to his long list of records. SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 29

MAJOR # 1

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FIVE GOLDEN NICKLAUS NUGGETS 1

Jack earned $33.33 for finishing in his professional debut at the Los Angeles Open in 1962 after finishing tied for 50th.

In 1963, Jazz pianist Billy Maxted wrote a song honouring his friend Jack called “The Golden Bear.” Appropriately, the song is on an album titled The Big Swingers.

If Jack knew he could only play one more round of golf in his life, he said he’d play it at Pebble Beach.

“I AIMED SIX INCHES LEFT OF THE HOLE, PLAYED A SIX-INCH BREAK, HIT IT AND THE BALL WAS GOING ALONG AND EVERY OTHER PUTT GOING THAT WAY MISSED THE HOLE, BUT THIS ONE GOBBLED IT IN. IT WAS LIKE PAC-MAN.” From 1962 to 1986, the brilliant ballstriker finessed fairways, deftly plotted out approaches and putted with jitter-less confidence, amassing 73 PGA wins, including a record 18 major titles. The epic scope of his career accomplishments in the game of golf could be used either to teach kindergarten math or alternately to re-jig the Twelve Days of Christmas song for golf fans: • 12 years played on the senior circuit • 11 Jack Nicklaus-designed golf clubs dot South Carolina • 10 Champions Tour titles • 9 Jack Nicklaus-designed courses in his home state of Ohio • 8-time PGA Tour leading moneywinner • 7 runner-up finishes at the British Open • 6 Masters • 5 PGA Championships • 4 U.S. Opens • 3 British Opens • 2 U.S. Amateurs • 1 NCAA Championship Nicklaus’s impressive wardrobe of green jackets and his hefty haul of glistening Wanamaker trophies, claret jugs and other symbols of golfing grandeur alone elevate the golfer into a league of his own. But, to get a true sense of the extent of Nicklaus’s leaderboard supremacy in major championships, it would be negligent not to note that he also accumulated a record 19 runner-up finishes. Major Sundays when the Golden Bear was not in hunt were indeed far and few between.

FAREWELL MY BIRDY At 2005 British Open, a 65-year-old Jack Nicklaus walking with a bit of a hitch, thanks to an artificial hip, gave it one more go at the old course at St. Andrews. There could not have been a more appropriate place for Nicklaus to wave farewell to competitive golf than in Scotland’s golf Mecca. This was the same stage that twice ended three-year major championship droughts for Nicklaus, first in 1970 and then again in 1978. And so on the second day of the tournament, there was a palpable sense of destiny in the air at St Andrews as Nicklaus strode to meet his ball, which lay 15-feet from the 18th cup on a slight downhill slope. “I knew that hole would move wherever I hit it,” Nicklaus commented afterward. 30 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

“I aimed six inches left of the hole, played a six-inch break, hit it and the ball was going along and every other putt going that way missed the hole, but this one gobbled it in. It was like Pac-Man.” Draining the putt wasn’t enough to make the cut and play on the next day. So as far as the tournament was concerned, the putt was of no consequence, but it did give Nicklaus a final 72 on the round, good enough for even par, which is a mighty fine way to cap off a legendary career.

THE PARADE OF HONOURS The PGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award is just another in a long string of similar honours Nicklaus has been receiving with increasing frequency in the past couple of decades. Such recognition can be bittersweet for athletes, a sign that while they may be legends of the game, their greatest contributions to their sport are well behind them. Nicklaus is an exception. He’s still making golf history. As beautifully as he once shaped the flight-path of a golf ball from left-to-right, he has extended his legend with a vibrant second career, helming one of the most sought after golf design firms in the world. It’s been more than 30 years since he unveiled Oakville, Ontario’s Glen Abbey, his first solo design masterpiece. More than 300 other courses have since opened up to the delight of golfers in 30 countries and dozens more are on the drawing board. Nicklaus course designs fetch up to $2.5 million per

course, and Golf Digest estimates his yearly income (not including investment returns) at $20.9 million, a real testament, not only to his fairway-contouring aptitude but also Nicklaus’s staying power. And while his entrepreneurial rival Arnie still makes more coin, the gap between the two has been closing fast in recent years. At this late stage in the game, when both have private jets and museums named in their honour, there really is no more residual envy left over from their playing days, though you can bet Arnie is a tad jealous of the greater acclaim and higher price tag Nicklaus’ fairway-contouring designs receive over his own. Outside of golf course architecture, Nicklaus’s other business interests include Nicklaus equipment, Nicklaus Apparel and Nicklaus Academies. Tiger Woods already has 13 major championships in the bag and should surpass Nicklaus’s magic 18-major mark in a few years time. However, no matter how many of Nicklaus’s records disappear into the ether of sports history, his sprawling fairway footprint assures that his legacy as an architect and ambassador of the game will one day share even marquee space with his athletic achievements. He didn’t just play the game better than anybody else in his generation, he also has proved himself to be one of the game’s most dedicated stewards, working to assure that the future of golf will continue to be golden.

Sail Away SeaDream takes yachting to luxurious heights BY WALLACE IMMEN

ailors have a term for it: yacht envy. It’s that deflated feeling you get when you pull into a harbour and realize the boat you’ve spent millions to buy and even more millions to keep shipshape and staffed is eclipsed by some grander floating palace. I’m on a yacht whose guests never have the feeling of inadequacy. It may not be the newest or the sleekest, but it just may be the most opulent afloat. My ride, the SeaDream I, is bigger than the alpha yacht of the cosmetics tycoon in port as we visit the exclusive St. Bart’s harbour. We’ve got more water toys than the flotilla of the oil sheikh anchored nearby as we stop at Virgin Gorda. And we’re continually being circled by space-challenged bareboats that require all on board to pitch in with the chores of hoisting sails and preparing meals. Poor them. >>

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SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 33

Sail Away SeaDream takes yachting to luxurious heights BY WALLACE IMMEN

32 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 33

It may not be the newest or the sleekest, but it just may be the most opulent afloat We’ve got a right to swagger—all the personal space anyone could want, as well as the ultimate in personal service: a ratio of nearly one crew member for each of the 110 passengers. The individual attention begins on arrival as the jovial Scandinavian captain for this one-week cruise from Puerto Rico stands at the top of the gangway to welcome us aboard. A crewmember totes my carry-on, another hands me a cool hand towel to freshen up with, and a waiter arrives offering flutes of champagne. I instantly feel like a privileged guest rather than a mere passenger. It’s this personal approach that prompts an instant camaraderie on board. SeaDream attracts a crowd of well-travelled raconteurs, characters and self-made successes, accustomed to mingling in business and social settings. Connections come easily as guests get acquainted. “You know Fred? I went to school with Fred. His wife was my sister’s best friend.” And it is indeed a well-connected crowd: “Barack and Michelle? I’ve known them for years.”

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Talk inevitably gets around to how one could swing becoming master and commander of this sleek ship, inviting 100 friends and associates along for a private celebration, since it’s the perfect size for chartering. But if you’re looking to book SeaDream you’d better have patience. You’ll need to plan at least a year in advance to secure the captain and crew. You’ll also need around US$400,000 for a weeks jaunt in the Caribbean and up to about US$500,000 for a week in Europe. The ship had a previous life as Sea Goddess I, but it has been vastly improved by new owners, who completely rebuilt and renamed it a few years ago, adding more than an entire deck of passenger space without upping the number of staterooms. That means even though the ship is full on this voyage, it never seems like it. There’s always a perfect place in the shade, or the sun, for lounging or dining at any time of the day. Fine cabinetry throughout the ship evokes the feel of the classic wooden yachts of the 1930s. The varnished rails gleam. The teak decks display a patina of attentive care. The crystal is hand blown by a Norwegian specialty glassmaker, the toiletries are by Bulgari and the linens are from Belgium. And through the aid of large mirrors, ample lighting and built-in drawers below the beds and sofas, the suites are marvels of space maximization.

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Photos: Dining room (top) and the Top of the Yacht bar (bottom). Page 34: Salon (top), Aerial view of pool area (centre) and Sea-Doo fun (bottom). Page 32: SeaDream I at Gustavia, St. Bart’s. All photos: SeaDream.

SeaDream has been the inspiration for generations of luxury ships, all of them much larger and more hyped, but never as intimate or satisfying. One of the great treats of SeaDream is to sleep on deck. I’d advise signing up right away for the front double bed at the bow because the experience is so popular. Falling asleep under the stars at sea is heavenly. Being on a ship that is relatively compact allows us to visit places mega ships can’t reach, such as the tiny, sun-drenched Culebrita Island off Puerto Rico. Not even sailboats visit here regularly because the coral shoal that surrounds the island, rich with sea life and colourful shells, is shallow. But SeaDream can pull in close and its passengers can go ashore by Zodiac to an uninhabited pearlescent beach. Exclusive ports of call such as St. John, St. Martin and St. Barthélemy are carefully selected to avoid more congested locations such as St. Thomas, St. Maarten or Martinique. The ship stays late into the evening in most ports and overnight in St. Bart’s, so that guests can enjoy restaurants and salsa into the night at clubs that don’t come alive until after 11 p.m. On the ship there is always a cocktail party atmosphere each evening as well. The dress code is “yachting casual,” which means no jeans, no shorts and no t-shirts. Polo shirts are about as dressed down as the men get. On evenings when there’s a captain’s reception, a jacket, with or without a tie, is the preferred choice for men. Women wear dresses or suits.

Dining aboard SeaDream is every bit as extraordinary as dining in the Michelin starred eateries ashore. Each menu features SeaDream signature dishes. The head chef on this ship is from India. His curries are not to be missed, and his bread and butter pudding topped with a gold leaf is ambrosia. I’ll be dreaming about it for months. The culinary gems of evening receptions are the kilogram-size blue tins of caviar at the centre of the hors d’oeuvres. The caviar is also a featured delight of the “champagne splash” on the final day of the trip. Waiters in immaculate white uniforms haul a treasure chest of champagne bottles to the white sand beach on the island of Jost Van Dyke. The champagne is served in flutes from a bar that rides the waves as guests bob in the water. The chef gamely dives in as well, serving caviar with all the garnishes on surfboard tables. The week ends all too quickly, and chances for a voyage in Europe, where the ship spends the summer months are slim unless you have already booked. Many of the SeaDream cruises for 2008 are filling up, and the cruise director reminds guests to book early because staterooms are already disappearing for 2009.

Getting on board SeaDream Yacht Club’s two ships offer itineraries from five to 12 days and sail in the Mediterranean during the summer and fall and the Caribbean in winter and spring. Rates start at US$3,499 a person for a seven-night trip, if booked on the “best fare” rate. Airfare as well as port taxes and fees are extra. For more information visit: seadreamyachtclub.com.

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F A S H I O N

The Perfect THE BRITISH REMAIN THE MASTERS OF LOOKING SMART BY MARC

PHILLIPS

ucky is the man whose body proportions conform to the template of readymade sizes. The truth is that most men make a huge tradeoff when choosing an offthe-rack suit, no matter how expensive or well-known the brand. If the suit jacket is broad enough to button around a stout waist, chances are that it droops at the shoulders and hangs around mid-thigh. And the trousers will no doubt be baggy around the butt. Not an attractive silhouette. For the man who wants the perfect suit, there really is only one option: bespoke. And when it comes to bespoke, there is really only one place: Savile Row. “One of the things we British don’t do well,” says management guru and best-selling author Richard Templar, “is dress casual. We can’t do shorts or T-shirts, Hawaiian shirts or sarongs. We do, however, do smart extremely well.” That’s why men the world over continue to flock to London’s famed Savile Row, a street where smart reigns supreme. Whether the tailor you’ve chosen has come by way of a recommendation or you have made a leap of faith, the first thing you must let your cutter know is the purpose of the suit. Sounds obvious. It’s not. Often, when faced with a dizzying array of exquisite fabrics, one’s imagination tends to wander. Stay focused. A well-cut suit will not erase the faux pas of wearing an inappropriate fabric at the wrong time of year or wearing the wrong jacket at the wrong time of day. Once the fabric, measurements and style details are taken, there is the first fitting or “skeleton baste.” This means that the main parts of the suit are sewn together using a simple, white cotton “basting thread” and using only the minimal interior construction, such as canvas, shoulder pads and wadding. Although first fittings are quite basic, they allow for more and larger inlays (seams) to be used. This enables the cutter to check the basic fit, and also allows more chances for later alteration, should there be a major error in the pattern. After the first fitting, the garment is then completely taken apart, re-cut and given back to the tailor to be prepared for the next fitting.

Photos: (top) Suits from Henry Poole & Co.—double-breasted chalk stripe worsted suit and dark blue, tropical worsted, single-breasted suit with waistcoat; (bottom) Stepping inside the elegant Henry Poole shop. (Opposite page) The fashionable Savile Row near Piccadilly Circus in central London. Photos: Henry Poole. SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 39

F A S H I O N

The Perfect THE BRITISH REMAIN THE MASTERS OF LOOKING SMART BY MARC

PHILLIPS

Photos: Suits from Norton and Sonsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;singlebreasted tweed, brown double-breasted stripe, and sky blue singlebreasted check. Photos: Norton and Sons.

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The next step is the forward fitting. At this stage, your jacket will have the outside pockets on, the canvas will be inserted, the lapels will be hand padded (sewn), the facings (cloth lapels) will have been made and the lining and inner pockets will be complete along with other detailing. The suit is checked for break over shoe, seat of trouser and drape. The third fitting is called â&#x20AC;&#x153;finish bar finishâ&#x20AC;? (fin bar fin). At this stage, the suit will be completely finished apart from buttonholes and hand felling (sewing). Advice will be given on how to best care for the suit and maintain its shape. A two-piece suit usually takes from four to eight weeks and costs approximately ÂŁ2,000 ($4,000) plus taxes. Looking for a tailor? Here is quick rundown of a few stalwarts of the Row. Henry Poole & Co., the acknowledged â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;founders of Savile Row,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; first appeared on the street in 1846. This is a top quality house that has remained a family-run business since its establishment in 1806. Its designers created the first tuxedo. They also specialize in court dress. One of their most notable clients was Winston Churchill. Hardy Amies was set up by English dressmaker Sir Edward Hardy Amies. He was awarded a Royal Warrant in 1955 by Queen Elizabeth as her official dressmaker, a position held until 1990. Amies has also designed costumes for films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. Norton & Sons was established in 1821 by English tailor Walter Grant Norton to make clothes for the young gentlemen of London. The firm gained a reputation as a sporting tailor, making clothes for rugged gentlemenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;men such as Lord Mountbatten. Given its long history of tailoring for clients bound for Africa, India and the near East, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no surprise that Norton & Sons have developed an expertise in lightweight tropical clothing. H. Huntsman & Sons has been located in the heart of Savile Row since 1919. Over 20 cutters and tailors now work on the premises, many who have been with company for more than two decades. The company created the one button coat (a hybrid of a classic riding coat and a dinner jacket). It has an incredible library of sales ledgers and measurements of clients such as Lawrence Olivier, Bill Blass and Queen Victoria. Anderson & Sheppard was founded in 1906 at No. 30 Savile Row. While the company no longer resides on the Row (it moved in 2005), one would be remiss not mentioning them. The houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cutter Frederick Scholteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fluid style created what was to become the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;London cutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x201D;achieved by producing a high small armhole with a generous upper sleeve, allowing the jacket to remain close to the neck while freeing the arm. Clients have included Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Prince Charles and Tom Ford. There are also a couple of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;modernâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; houses. Ozwald Boateng and Richard Anderson are known as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;in-crowdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tailors. Though celebs like David Bowie and Sir Richard Branson are said to be among Boateng admirers, these new houses are often disparaged by the more established shops. However, If you are into bright colours, narrow lapels and skinny trousers, then look no further.

KXb\ X e\n Zflij\ è i\alm\eXk`fe% KXb\ pfli dè[# Yf[p Xe[ ^Xd\ kf X n_fc\ e\n gcXZ\% =è[ pfli i_pk_d n_\e pfl Yffb X ^fc] gXZbX^\ Xk K_\ N\jkè Ki`cc`ld ?flj\# 9cl\ DflekXè% Â&#x203A; :_ffj\ pfli fne ^fc] Ycl\ dflekXè ^\kXnXp gXZbX^\ ]ifd (+. Photos: (top) H. Huntsman & Sons at 11 Savile Row. (middle) Richard Anderson at 13 Savile Row. (bottom) An expert tailor measures and prepares to cut. Photos: Savile Row Association

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Photos: Suits from Norton and Sonsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;singlebreasted tweed, brown double-breasted stripe, and sky blue singlebreasted check. Photos: Norton and Sons.

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T H E

A R T S

TORONTO’S OMNI-ARTS FESTIVAL ATTEMPTS TO FOLLOW ITS DEBUT SUCCESS BY MOIRA DALY n internationally acclaimed South Asian version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an Inuit throat singer’s unique collaboration with an award-winning string quartet, and the National Theatre of Scotland’s lauded drama about soldiers stationed in Iraq are just three of the performances that organizers of the second annual Luminato festival hope will help the event avoid the sophomore jinx. Scheduled to run in venues across Toronto from June 6 to 15, the multidisciplinary smorgasbord is already the largest festival of its kind. With more than a million people attending last year’s inaugural edition, organizers are aware that expectations will be high for this year’s self-proclaimed exploration of art and creativity. “Obviously, you set a bar in your first year,” says Chris Lorway, Luminato’s vice-president of programming. “But we know that what we have planned for this year is very strong.” Part of that of confidence doubtlessly stems from the fact that several of the high-profile events at this year’s festival have been hits with audiences and critics elsewhere. Tim Supple’s vibrant production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream wowed audiences in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta before receiving a rapturous reception in England, which included two runs in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival. The play showcases a cast of 23 performers from the across the subcontinent, including actors, dancers, singers, musicians, acrobats and martial arts experts. Seven subcontinental languages are spoken, with about half the production performed in English. Nunavut, an offbeat musical collaboration between Canadian throat-singing sensation Tanya Tagaq and the avant-garde Kronos Quartet, was hailed as mesmerizing when it was performed in Los Angeles in early May. At Luminato, it will share the bill with other northern-

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T H E

A R T S

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MARAVAL’S WOMEN What do Cynthia Dale, Olivia Chow and Adrienne Clarkson have in common? Besides being famous for their achievements in the arts and politics, these women are three of the subjects that French artist Pierre Maraval has photographed for his Mille Femmes exhibition, which will make its Toronto debut at this year’s Luminato festival. The exhibition will be comprised of 1,000 portraits of creative and inspiring Toronto women and is part of a global series created by Maraval, which has already had exhibitions in Paris, Montreal and Cuba. Luminato organizers initially selected 500 Toronto women based on their achievements. Each of those women, in turn, chose a peer or rising star in their field to be photographed. Before posing for Maraval, the subjects were asked to select a particular word that they would like their photograph to illustrate. Clarkson, for example, who posed for her photograph in a canaryyellow suit, chose “forever.” Maraval’s aim is to knit together women who are in a common situation in society. He believes that women best illustrate the concept of community because of their historical struggle to be equal participants in society. “The link between women is stronger than the link between men,” he has said. “Men don’t interest me that much.”

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themed offerings, including Tundra Songs, a meditation on Nunavut’s changing seasons incorporating the sounds of howling sled dogs, cracking sea ice, and clicking caribou hooves, by Nova Scotia-based composer Derek Charke, and the world premiere of a new work by the Swedish duo Hurdy-Gurdy, commissioned by Luminato. Black Watch, a National Theatre of Scotland drama based on interviews with soldiers from a renowned Scottish regiment who served in Iraq, is another proven winner. Since its smashing debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 it has been acclaimed as one of the most important artistic works of the 21st century and won Britain’s Writers’ Guild Award for Best Theatre Play in 2007.

There are fewer heavyweights in the world premiere category compared with last year’s festival, but that is counterbalanced by an impressive lineup of Canadian premieres. Among the performances that will make their international debut are: Where the Blood Mixes, the story of a man from the N’lakapamux nation of Lytton, B.C. on the cusp of reuniting with his young daughter, by Vancouver-based N’lakapamux playwright Kevin Loring; Rocket and the Queen of Dreams, an exploration of the dream world of a young boy who is afraid of monsters, by playwright David S. Craig; and Sanctuary Song, an opera/dance fusion that traces the life story of an elephant poached at a young age from the jungles of Indonesia by Toronto artists Marjorie Chan and Abigail Richardson. In contrast, two of last year’s hottest international debuts, Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy), by Spamalot creators Eric Idle and John Du Prez and Book of Longing, a collaborative concert work by Phillip Glass and Leonard Cohen based on Cohen’s 2006 poetry collection of the same name were already in progress at the time the first Luminato was announced, explains Lorway. “It takes three years for commissioned works to get into the hopper,” he says. “Right now, we’re seeding works for 2010 and 2011.” That extended timeline is indicative of an approach to programming that is less reliant on production partners to create content and more focused on thematic consistency, Lorway explains. “Last year, we didn’t have a team in place,” he admits. “This year, we have more of a bird’s-eye curatorial view which allows us to make connections between events.” One of those thematic “ribbons,” as they are known in Luminato parlance, is war and the war on terror. In addition to Black Watch, the program includes two works by Canadian

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Right: Deepa Mehta from South Asian Expressions. Below: Rocket and the Queen of Dreams; Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq, Nunavut; and Parachute Club. Photo: Sophie Giraud Page 42: The Fiddle and the Drum (Photo by Charles Hope) and opposite page (page 43): Black Watch Photos: Manuel Harlan Page 44 Top: Mozart Dances (Photo by Stephanie Berger) Bottom: Joni Mitchell's Green Flag Song Photo:Violet Ray

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WHERE IS YOUR “OBVIOUSLY YOU SET A BAR IN YOUR FIRST YEAR, BUT WE KNOW THAT WHAT WE HAVE PLANNED FOR THIS YEAR IS VERY STRONG.” singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell touching on these issues. The Fiddle and the Drum, a collaboration between Mitchell and Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître, will feature 25 dancers, 12 songs and projections of Mitchell’s paintings. The festival also boasts the Canadian premiere of Green Flag Song, a photographic exhibition composed of 60 triptychs of digitally modified images, printed on canvas, that Mitchell originally photographed from a malfunctioning television set in her home. Other events that could be grouped under this theme are a planned panel discussion on the rise of the political graphic novel, and the Canadian premiere of Homeland, a “concert-poem” by American multimedia performance artist Laurie Anderson. The programming will reflect lessons learned from the inaugural Luminato in other ways as well. Rather than front-end loading the premieres as was done last year, major works will be spread throughout the festival’s 10-day run, Lorway says. Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum will open on the closing weekend, for example, while the residency of the renowned Brooklyn-based Mark Morris Dance Group will extend throughout the festival. Funding for the festival has been stabilized thanks to a $15-million infusion from the Ontario provincial government. The money, announced in April at a Canadian Club lunch 46 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

honouring Luminato co-founders David Pecaut and Tony Gagliano as Canadians of the Year, will be used to commission works for future years, organizers say. Still, the accolades for Luminato don’t tell the entire story. One major criticism of last year’s inaugural edition was that it was too corporate and not organically related to the city itself. Lorway argues that the criticism is unfounded, but the expansion of Luminato’s community outreach programs and the inclusion of StreetScape, which will feature canvasses painted on abandoned or empty walls in the city, appear to be attempts to address these criticisms. More significantly, the question of what Luminato is really all about continues to gnaw at the edges of its multidisciplinary tapestry. Last year’s guiding principles of collaboration, diversity and accessibility have been supplemented by an invitation to “see, hear, feel, move and share.” For Lorway, however, the perceived lack of focus speaks more to inclusion than confusion. The feeling that the festival is trying too hard to be all things to all people is something he can live with – and may actually be the point of Luminato. “When you read the blogs, everyone has a different sense of what Luminato is for them,” he says. “That, to some extent, makes me happy.”

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TRUTHS BY CHRIS DANIELS

here is a line in David Baldacci’s fast-paced, globetrotting new thriller The Whole Truth (Grand Central Publishing) that reveals the motto of one of the book’s villains: “Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?” With that as the novel’s premise, Baldacci hasn’t just written an entertaining pageturner but also a warning about the devastating consequences of powerful forces in society manufacturing such “truths.” Nicolas Creel is the force in this case, and he’s the head of the world’s largest defence contractor and Forbes Magazine’s 14th richest person on the planet. The attention paid to the Osama bin Ladens of the world hasn’t been good for weapons sales, so Creel decides the best way to reverse the slide is to reignite the good old-fashioned Cold War. He turns to Richard “Dick” Pender, an expert in manipulating the media to influence public opinion. Baldacci has great fun with Pender: a character who we’re told started his career in the White House press office and brags that every administrative official “kissed his ass” for coming up with the idea to embed reporters with troops in Iraq, so that they could report the “truth” from the point of view of the Pentagon. Creel and Pender’s firm set up the groundwork by staging an elaborate propaganda campaign spread via the Internet that positions the Russian government as mass murderers— an actor poses as a tortured Russian whistleblower on a video and bogus intelligence leaks make their way into seemingly every person’s e-mail inbox. But when the campaign takes a violent twist that sets the stage for a conflict between Russia and China, it brings together two unlikely, but very winning, heroes. The first is Shaw, who works for a secret multinational intelligence agency but desperately wants to get out of the game and start a new life with the woman he hopes to marry—the only trouble is the agency won’t let him leave, at least not alive. The second is Katie James, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is chasing the story that could revive her career—a career sabotaged by alcohol and guilt about the death of one of her story subjects. That is the plot, and it’s a good one at that, but it is the premise—the idea of making up facts and passing them off as the truth, to not only the public but foreign governments— that most intrigues. Baldacci says the term for this is perception management, and that it has become so prevalent that some public relations firms now offer it as a service. Baldacci 48 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

Photo: Michael Priest and Ruslan Sarkisian (books)

makes a distinction between perception management and ordinary public relations practices of promoting a positive image of a client or putting the best possible spin on a situation. “PMs [perception managers] are not spin doctors because they don’t spin facts,” he writes. “They create facts and then sell them to the world as truth.” If Baldacci is to be believed, those practicing perception management use many of the techniques featured in The Whole Truth. And there’s good reason to believe Baldacci, as, over the course of his 14 previous consecutive New York Times bestsellers, he has befriended folks in pretty high places. He spent nine years as a trial and corporate attorney practicing in Washington, D.C., before his 1996 knockout debut Absolute Power announced his arrival as yet another lawyer-turned-suspense-writer. Although he now resides in his native Virginia with his wife and two kids, he still does much of his research and writing in Washington. “I am surrounded by spooks, Homeland Security and people that run the spy satellite system for the U.S., a big government defence contractor,” he says. “So I tend to keep my blinds closed at all times and think about what I say on the phone.” Some of those same “spooks” are often the sources he uses to inform his novels. In fact, Baldacci says he undertakes about three to four months of research for each novel, and that he does most of the research, particularly the one-on-one interviews, himself. Among his sources are former and current secret service agents, a former member of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, a former chief of Homeland Security and several former presidents, he says. Baldacci is so familiar in inner government circles that he says executives from government agencies visit him with the hope that he’ll fictionalize them and their agency in his next book. Some agencies and government contactors have even asked him to develop execution plans for doomsday scenarios, so that they can analyze and guard against similar, real-life plots. Baldacci says his first assignment was to tell an agency how he’d go about bombing a Super Bowl. It is perhaps no surprise that Baldacci decided to put a spotlight on perception management, as it seems to be his take on how the U.S. and its allies were pulled into the Iraq war by the Bush administration. The Dick Pender character reads as if he’s loosely based on John Rendon, or at least the characterization of him in a 2005 award-winning Rolling Stone article called “The Man Who Sold The War.” Rendon heads up the Rendon Group, which the article charges was secretly awarded a $16-million contract by the Pentagon to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. James Bamford’s article details how Rendon’s firm helped sell the war by using the media to convince the public that Saddam Hussein was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Rendon denied the accusation. Questions about how closely Baldacci’s art imitates life aside, The Whole Truth and its fascinating premise wouldn’t work unless it could deliver the goods as a thriller. On that front, it’s loaded with action, plot twists and even a little bit of romance. And while the villains could have been better developed, in Shaw, Baldacci has crafted a hero in the vein of Jason Bourne, a winning but ultimately flawed protagonist, possessing the kind of character that one would only hope exists in real life to help fight for the truth as it really is.

Baldacci’s Best Absolute Power (1996) begins with an aging cat burglar who, trapped behind a secret wall, witnesses a brutal murder directly implicating the president of the United States. Baldacci’s gripping debut novel dares to ask the question how far the government will go to protect the president, as his trusted aides orchestrate the coverup. The Simple Truth (1998) takes readers behind the scenes of the U.S. Supreme Court, a battleground of egos, intellects and power, as a cop-turned-lawyer and his colleague try to unravel the truth about military prisoner Rufus Harms, who has evidence to suggest he has been wrongly imprisoned. Trouble is, anyone that has anything to do with Harms—or the appeal—mysteriously dies. The Camel Club (2005) is named after a group of four eccentric friends—led by a former government agent named “Oliver Stone”— who study conspiracy theories. When the Camel Club witnesses a murder, they uncover a plot of apocalyptic proportions. More than just a thrill ride, The Camel Club probes American foreign policy and its role in Middle Eastern terrorism. The Collectors (2006) is the second of three books featuring the Camel Club, in which the crime fighters investigate the mysterious deaths of the Speaker of the House and the director of the Library of Congress. That leads to the discovery that someone is selling America to its enemies, one classified secret a time. Stone Cold (2007), the latest in the hugely popular Camel Club series, has “Oliver Stone”, both feared and respected in Washington, meet his match in the ruthless assassin Harry Finn, who is pursuing a personal vendetta. Stone Cold is a compelling tail of revenge, murder and conspiracy.

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ON THE SHELF

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TRUTHS BY CHRIS DANIELS

Photo: Michael Priest and Ruslan Sarkisian (books)

SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 49

Photo: Federico Pattelani/Corbis

The Maestro Luchino Visconti was an Italian movie and theatre producer whose realistic representation of people caught in conflict with modern society contributed significantly to the postwar revolution in Italian filmmaking and earned him the title of father of Neorealism. Born to a wealthy and large aristocratic family, Visconti was well acquainted with the arts: his mother was a talented musician, and his father often hired performers to appear at their private theatre. He had a solid classical education that included studying cello for 10 years. In 1936, at the age of 30, thanks to the intercession of a common friend, Coco Chanel, he went to Paris to work for director Jean Renoir. And so began his illustrious career that lasted nearly four decades, produced 20 films, three internationally recognized operas and an Academy Award nomination in 1969 for The Damned. This summer, Cinematheque Ontario will offer a retrospective of Visconti’s work. Featuring 14 films and running from July 18 to August 23, Maestro: The Films of Luchino Visconti shows the director’s consummate and consuming cinema in all its paradoxical and opulent splendour. Visconti’s fascination with the moral disintegration of families and the end of dynasties gave birth to a string of masterpieces including: the chronicle of a Sicilian aristocratic family’s downfall during Italian unification, The Leopard (1963); the melodramatic masterpiece of fraternal jealousy, Rocco and His Brothers (1960); and the moving study of Bavaria’s mad king, Ludwig (1972). The series also includes the rarest of Visconti’s films, The Stranger (1967), the morbidly languid Death in Venice (1971) and his sensational opera prima Obsession (1943), an adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice.

50 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

toll free 1-888-376-7779

DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR ,YOUR COTTAGE OR AT HOME.

Photo: Federico Pattelani/Corbis

50 | THE BAY STREET BULL | SPRING 2008

toll free 1-888-376-7779

DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR ,YOUR COTTAGE OR AT HOME.