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Contents

ON THE COVER Second Acts: Version 2.0

The Double Life of Sharon Stone The megawatt actress opens up about Hollywood and a near-fatal stroke

Be Motivated

Mike Weir Remastered Back at the top of his game at 50

Be Healthy Spring’s Best Cookbooks Food, glorious food; and Shelf Life

Fitness Even small “snacks” of exercise can deliver big benefits

Gluttons for Punishment How the food industry exploits us, body and brain

Be Inspired

Breaking Up to Make Up Sometimes the kindest thing to do for a relationship is to give it a rest One Man’s Wonder on the Camino Way A pilgrimage that sows the seeds of appreciation

Last Word/First Word

Prophet of Zoom The pandemic Hall of Shame

C.A.R.P.

No Place to Grow Old The ongoing long-term care crisis

6 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

YOUR MONEY

Smart Strategies for Charitable Giving

A Charitable Recession Charity groups hope we return to our generous ways post-pandemic

ZOOM IN

Smart Charity Strategic donations to get the most bang for your charitable bucks Everyday Philanthropists Five Canadians who give time and a little money to causes The Salah Effect Social justice and his causes inspire Salah Bachir to take action

Zoom In Focus: Mark Carney; This Way Up; Mary Walsh, movies and music

IN EVERY ISSUE

From the Editor-inChief & Publisher Suzanne Boyd

The ER Diaries Dr. Zachary Levine

32 92

View Libby Znaimer Brain Games #77

ON THE COVER Sharon Stone photographed by Michael Muller, CPi Syndication. Creative direction/styling, Paris Libby; hair, Adir Abergel for Frame Agency; makeup, Kara Yoshimoto Bua for Frame Agency; styling assistant, William Rousseau. Dress, Bibu Mohapatra; necklace, Forever Mark. Here comes the sun. Try: UV 50 Day Screen Multi-Protection oil-free sunscreen, Clarins; Creamy Eyeshadow in Opal Pink and Lash Magnifying Mascara in Black, both Age Perfect, L’Oréal Paris; and Instant Light Lip Comfort Oil in Candy, Clarins.

PHOTOGRAPHY, LUCAPIERRO/GETTY IMAGES (SCALLOP)

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VOLUME 37, NUMBER 3

MANAGE YOUR ACCOUNT 24-7 SUBSCRIBE, RENEW OR GIVE A GIFT CHANGE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION CHANGE YOUR MAILING ADDRESS CHECK ACCOUNT STATUS PRINT SUBSCRIBERS: ACCESS YOUR FREE DIGITAL EDITION

FOUNDER MOSES ZNAIMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & PUBLISHER EXECUTIVE EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR

Suzanne Boyd

Vivian Vassos Kim Honey Arlene Stacey Stephanie White

CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR

SENIOR EDITOR Peter Muggeridge ASSOCIATE EDITOR Mike Crisolago ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Tara Losinski CONTRIBUTING DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR

June Anderson

CONTRIBUTORS Gabrielle Bauer, Trish Crawford, Leanne Delap, Lauren Emery, Ashante Infantry, Jason Kirby, Dr. Zachary Levine, Jayne MacAulay, Athena McKenzie, David McPherson, Barbara Olson, Alex Roslin, Johanna Schneller, Wes Tyrell, Nora Underwood CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jay Teitel SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS Gordon Pape, Libby Znaimer DIGITAL CONTENT DIRECTOR Cynthia Ross Cravit DIGITAL CONTENT COORDINATOR Andrew Wright PUBLIC RELATIONS & SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

CARTOON & JOKES EDITOR EDITOR AT LARGE

Hazel Picco

Moses Znaimer

Bryan Adams

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Zoomer magazine is published six times a year by ZoomerMedia Limited. It is distributed by publications mail agreement number 40050499. Indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index ISSN 2293-8583. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Copyright 2021. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities. Zoomer magazine is an independent publication and, unless otherwise clearly stated, its contents imply no endorsement of any product or service. Opinions expressed are those of the writers. In Canada, a one-year subscription to Zoomer magazine is $19.95 plus applicable taxes. Return undeliverable mail to: Zoomer magazine, 8799 Highway 89, Alliston, ON L9R 1V1.

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10 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

The Queen with Prince Philip on our September 2017 cover

seriousness of the matter. In a short statement, the Queen, while saying she was “saddened” and that they remain loved, gently disagreed with Harry and Meghan’s “recollections,” while Prince William stated, “We’re very much not a racist family.” The interview, however, has reinvigorated the cause of republicanism. Even before it, a survey conducted by Vancouver– based Research Co. found that 45 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they would prefer an elected head of state, the highest level in the last 12 years. Despite this, 70 per cent hold a “favourable view” of Her Majesty – a sign that a lifetime of duty and service does count for something. Duty and service are also the two words I would use to describe Zoomer’s longtime managing editor, Arlene Stacey, who has always worked above and beyond her “job description.” After a long and distinguished career in publishing, Arlene has opted to embark on a well-deserved retirement. While we’ve enjoyed her knowledgeable writing on food, wine and travel, Arlene’s behind-the-scenes work has been instrumental in keeping the trains running on time, and her institutional knowledge and skills in a variety of areas have been key to our success. I will regret not having her wise counsel, indefatigable work ethic and excellent editorial acumen enriching our masthead. But I’m not the only one. She will be greatly missed at the ZoomerPlex, and the often overheard phrase in the office of “Arlene will know the answer” will now be a fond memory indeed.

SPOTLIGHT JOHANNA SCHNELLER has spent 54 minutes with a lot of compelling actors (“54 Minutes With Sharon Stone,” pg. 36): Brad Pitt for Vanity Fair, Julia Roberts for GQ magazine, Michelle Pfeiffer for InStyle and, for Zoomer magazine, Diane Keaton, Emma Thompson and Kim Cattrall, to name a few. She writes the weekly “Bigger Picture” column in the Globe and Mail and co-hosts the CBC series The Filmmakers, where she interviews directors about Canadian film. And she was very glad to have all of that experience behind her when she inadvertently asked a question that sent Sharon Stone into a 10-minute monologue, complete with dramatic arm gestures. “Earlier in my career, I might have curled up in a ball when Stone wouldn’t let the subject go,” Schneller says. “But at this point, I was able to sit back and see what was fascinating and revealing – and true – in the passion of her response.”

PHOTOGRAPHY, RYAN EMBERLY (BOYD); TERI HART (SCHNELLER)

s I write this, the Royal Family is in crisis mode. The 99-yearold Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, has been hospitalized for more than three weeks, and Buckingham Palace is dealing with the fallout of the thronerattling interview Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, gave to Oprah Winfrey. The accusations – racism, callousness in the face of suicidal feelings, the Firm’s collusion with the tabloid press to falsely portray the Duchess in a negative light, the revelations that the heirs to the crown live in fear of said press and are trapped in the institution they represent – and the resulting Sturm und Drang across the pond and back is Shakespearean. And here, as the Bard wrote, the past is prologue. The Oprah sit-down hearkened back to how Diana, Princess of Wales, held the monarchy to account. She covertly told Andrew Morton for his 1992 book, Diana, Her True Story, how her self-harming was repeatedly ignored. In 1995, without the knowledge of her press aides, Diana recorded the Panorama interview with Martin Bashir that accused the palace’s “grey men” of undermining her and said Charles was not fit to be king. After their divorce, Diana dreamt of moving to California, where her second son, his wife and her grandson now intend to build a new fairy tale in their image. That the Sussexes are expecting a daughter was one of the few feel-good moments of their interview – that and the love and respect both Meghan and Harry demonstrated toward the Queen. In 1997, Diana’s own flawed fairy tale was cut short on that tragic summer night in Paris and, in the wake, the crown almost lost its bearings until the Arlene Queen righted the ship. Stacey As the fallout from the Sussexes’ interview roils on, the Royal Family has started to respond. With their motto of “never explain, never complain,” this in itself shows the

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PHOTOGRAPHY, JASON ALDEN/POOL/GETTY IMAGES

Mark Carney’s first day as governor of the Bank of England, July 2013

Investing in the Future

s an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Mark Carney was deeply enmeshed in an economic system that, by his own account, suffers from a crisis of values – namely that “market economies” have evolved into “market societies,” where price determines the value of everything. The economist explores this disconnect in his new book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, which he penned at his Ottawa home during the pandemic last year. The book, which came out March 16, is billed as a “practical manifesto” for achieving a more humane society. It explores how misplaced value is at the centre of the rise in inequality, populism, systemic racism and the health and economic crises now gripping the world

and how changing the market’s conception of value from price to sustainability can tackle climate change. These ideas aren’t new to Carney. As governor of the Bank of England, he warned that global warming would have a “catastrophic impact” on the financial system. Before he stepped down in March 2020 and moved back to Canada, he was named UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also tapped Carney to be his finance adviser ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Scotland in November. Now back in the private sector as vice-chair of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, Carney is developing a $7.5 billion climate-focused investment fund, where he’ll be able to put his manifesto into action. —Jason Kirby everythingzoomer.com

APRIL/MAY 2021

– 13

Zoom In Etc Talk about a gut check Researchers discover gut microbes that could predict how long older people will live.

Neil Young in 1970, a year before playing the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Conn. – the concert now being released as the album/ film Young Shakespeare

Italian weightlifter to Irish swimmer: “Hold my espresso” An Italian man, 59, sets a world record by dead-lifting more than 220 pounds for just over six minutes.

THIS WAY UP THE PEAKS AND VALLEYS IN THE JOURNEY By Mike Crisolago (AND DOWN)

Bringing the war home U.S. Army research shows exposure to shockwaves from explosions could lead to greater Alzheimer’s risk for soldiers.

eil, Youngest Neil Young’s latest live album and concert film, Young Shakespeare, features the earliest-known concert footage of the singer, shot on 16mm film in 1971. The Coal Miner’s Daughter remains Country Strong Loretta Lynn, who turns 89 in April, recently released her 50th studio album, Still Woman Enough, as a tribute to women in country music. In 2001, while the rest of us were glued to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? this guy was dreaming up a fortune A Toronto woman, 57,

14 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

won $60 million after playing lottery numbers that came to her husband in a dream 20 years ago. Well, that explains the diamond-encrusted collar and gold-plated chew toys An 84-yearold man died and left his $5 million fortune to his border collie. A Pittsburgh-area McDonald’s worker who refuses to retire turned 100 years amid fanfare from customers who flooded the restaurant with cards Though stuffing 100 candles onto a Big Mac was a little tough.

Someone’s been watching too much Mrs. Doubtfire Two Florida women, aged 44 and 34, get caught trying to disguise themselves as senior citizens to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine.

Robin Williams in 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire

PHOTOGRAPHY, DICK BARNATT/GETTY IMAGES (YOUNG); MARIE VANDERWEIDE-MURRAY/GETTY IMAGES (DOG); ALAMY/ALL STAR PICTURE LIBRARY (MRS. DOUBTFIRE)

“There once was a man from Ireland, who got bored being warm on dry land” A Limerick man, 66, breaks the world record for Oldest Ice Mile Swimmer after enduring a swim in near-zero waters.

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Zoom In Etc

A WOKE AWARD SEASON

Gord Downie

The Junos at 50 EVERY GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY deserves some upgraded bling. For the 50th edition of the Juno Awards, winners will receive new gold and silver humanThe new Juno statuette shaped statuettes – the honours late designer sixth redesign since Shirley Elford, borrowthe inaugural Junos, ing from her design when fans gathered for the award used at the St. Lawrence from 2000 to 2010. Hall in Toronto to see Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray and Stompin’ Tom Connors take home walnut trophies shaped like metronomes. Last March, 72 hours before show time in Saskatoon, the awards show was cancelled when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. After a truncated virtual version unfolded in June, expectations are high for this year’s virtual celebration of five decades of Canadian music, where 15-time Juno winners The Tragically Hip, including late lead singer Gord Downie, will receive the 2021 Humanitarian Award. The festivities return to Toronto, where the first awards – then called RPM Gold Leaf Awards – were announced in 1964. The name change in 1971 honoured Pierre Juneau, the first chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, who implemented Canadian content rules for radio. The Junos have come a long way to live up to this year’s tagline All Our Sound, recognizing reggae and R&B-soul in 1985, rap in 1991, world music in 1992, francophone recordings in 1993 and Indigenous artists in 1994. The ceremony airs May 16 on CBC, which broadcast the first telecast in 1975. —Ashante Infantry with files from Mike Crisolago

16 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY JUNO AWARDS (JUNO STATUE); GP IMAGES/WIREIMAGE (DOWNIE); KRISTIAN DOWLING/GETTY IMAGES (OSCAR STATUE); JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX/GETTY IMAGES (ZHAO)

OU KNOW EVERYTHING is out of whack when Major League Baseball’s opening day lands before the Oscars. But so it is in the age of COVID. The Golden Globes Awards had the field to themselves in February and a chance to set the stage for awards season, but they ended up on life support after reports surfaced that the Los Angeles-based Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s voting membership comprised “around 90 international, no Black journalists,” as host Tina Fey said in her opening monologue. Co-host Amy Poehler twisted the knife, noting “a number of Black actors and Black-led projects were overlooked.” Wins by John Boyega, Daniel Kaluuya and the late Chadwick Boseman – and even having Spike Lee’s kids as this year’s ceremonial celebrity-spawn ambassadors – couldn’t save the organization from the skewering. Five years after #OscarsSoWhite and eight months after the racial reckoning that began with George Floyd’s incendiary killing by Minneapolis police, the Golden Globes seemed outrageously oblivious. That’s despite Chloé Zhao’s historic win as the first Asian director of a best picture for Nomadland; she’s only the second female director to win a Golden Globe for best picture since Barbra Streisand took home the statuette for Yentl in 1984. Myriad technical glitches and the fact that many didn’t see the films as most theatres were shuttered meant viewership sank to a 13-year low with 6.9 million people tuning in compared with 18.4 million in 2020. This year, others are eager to prove they’re woke and ready to change. The Academy Awards, rescheduled to April 25, pledged to overhaul their “representation and inclusion standards” to “ensure that all voices are heard and celebrated”; the Canadian Screen Awards (CSA), which air May 20, announced eligibility initiatives to ensure more Indigenous talent and films are represented; and after a “diversity review,” the British Academy Film and Television Awards (BAFTAS) pledged to recruit 1,000 new voting members from under-represented communities after an embarrassing all-white slate of 2020 nominees in leading and supporting roles. (No Oscar, CSA or BAFTA nominees were announced at press time.) Meanwhile, February’s Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations earned praise for their diversity. Of course, with the Oscars, SAGs, BAFTAS and CSAs – among other award shows – taking place within the next few months, we’ll soon know if they enacted significant change or if their words are as empty as Chloé Zhao the seats at a pandemic-era award ceremony. —Ashante Infantry and Mike Crisolago

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N DECEMBER 2019, mere months before the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into lockdown, Mary Walsh decided to take her show on the road. The Canadian comedian, 68, and fellow This Hour Has 22 Minutes alum Cathy Jones, 65, hopped a train and headed across the country for the second season of Broad Appeal: Living With E’s, their hit CBC series of digital shorts in which they play Mrs. Eulalia and Mrs. Enid, two seniors who offer “pre-posthumous lifestyle advice.” Speaking over the phone from her home in St. John’s, Walsh says her inspiration to take the “Mrs. E’s” on a trip came from two women she knows who began travelling when their pensions kicked in. “They were finally

18 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

kicking up their heels after a lifetime of working their guts out for everybody else. And I was really inspired by them. Like, ‘If not now, when?’” The trip yielded six new episodes featuring Walsh and Jones in the E’s trademark wigs, long coats and rain bonnets, dispensing witty nuggets of advice on aging – “The trick to getting old is to fake it until you’re cremated” – and interviewing notable Canadians along the way. Poet and activist El Jones teaches the pair how to rap in Halifax; in Toronto, they sit down with Margaret Atwood and implore her to write something upbeat, lest her fictional dystopian plotlines keep coming true; in Vancouver, they meet David Suzuki and liken him to The Picture of Dorian Grey – “You remain exquisite, and the Earth crumbles around you.” Interviewing people in character is old hat for Walsh, who ambushed Canadian politicians and celeb-

rities as Marg Delahunty – a.k.a. Marg, Princess Warrior – or one of her other alter egos on 22 Minutes for years. In fact, she’d previously waylaid Atwood and Suzuki, so this time around they were probably just glad they saw her coming. As an avid traveller, she was grateful for the opportunity to cross the country before the pandemic hit, and the trip opened her eyes to Canada’s natural beauty. She jokes about how she once viewed Vancouver as “one of those beautiful, empty, gorgeous women or men who just live on ‘Look at me. Aren’t I beautiful? Look at the mountains. Look at the ocean.’ I resented that because I thought, ‘Nobody cares about Newfoundland. We’re pretty good-looking, too.’” Now, of course, she loves Vancouver, adding, “Thanks be to God, I got older. I was given the opportunity because I could have died still resentful about everything.” Season 2 of Broad Appeal is available on CBC Gem. gem.cbc.ca

PHOTOGRAPHY, GABOR JURINA (WALSH); JUD HAYNES (POSTER)

Walsh, above, during her 2020 Zoomer cover shoot at the LSPU Hall in St. John’s, N.L., and, left, with Cathy Jones as Mrs. Eulalia and Mrs. Enid

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This spring’s crop of food books will inspire you to crack an egg and then some By Kim Honey

Sheet Pan Everything by Ricardo Larrivée (March 16) > Food Network Canada

star Ricardo jumps from the frying pan onto the sheet pan with his foray into the one-dish meal craze with Sheet Pan Everything. The Quebec chef and TV personality says cooking on a baking tray concentrates flavours, minimizes clean up and, because the pan is made of metal, allows for finishing off under the broiler, which adds more flavour from caramelization. It’s also a time saver, with Perfectly Broiled Striploin Steaks ready in 10 minutes and

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Liv B’s Easy Everyday by Olivia Beirmann (April 12) > I’m not a vegan, but after checking out this Halifax blogger and YouTube star’s second cookbook, I want to make the London Fog Sheet-Pan Cake with Vanilla Buttercream, inspired by Olivia Beirmann’s favourite coffee-shop treat, an Earl Grey tea made with

steamed milk and vanilla syrup. Liv B, as she is known, averages a million monthly views on her YouTube channel, where she made a vegan version of the viral TikTok fetaand-pasta dish. “Vegan on a budget, simplified” is the tag line, and this collection of 100 sheet-pan, one-pot and five-ingredient recipes contains treats like Sheetpan Pot Pie made with vegan puff pastry and tofu, which allows for “a great topping-to-filling ratio,” and a very intriguing recipe for Creamy Carrot Shells, where cooked carrots and cashews are whirred into a smooth pasta sauce with sautéed onion and garlic.

Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, Stories by Nigella Lawson (April 20) > It’s been 23 years since Nigella Lawson published How to Eat, and she has blown off the “celebrity chef” label since then. “My qualification is as an eater,” she says. Her 13th cookbook is billed as the story of her life, featuring 150 recipes the British TV personality turns to repeatedly, including Chocolate Peanut Butter

PHOTOGRAPHY, MONDADORI/GETTY IMAGES (ROCKY ROBERTS)

Omelette, Anyone?

Warm Greek Chicken Salad in 20. Ricardo being Québécois, there is Vegetable and Sausage Poutine but also other surprises like paella (the rice is cooked separately and tossed in for the last 10 minutes), raclette and even tiramisu. Vegetarians get some love with Asparagus Quiche, Cauliflower Tacos and Glazed Tofu, Edamame and Vermicelli Bowl. Ricardo even tells you not to panic when your sheet pan goes “boom” in the oven and warps; the thermal shock will subside when the metal cools, and it will revert to its usual flat shape.

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Cake, the Lasagne of Love and, the latest addition to her repertoire, Fish Stick Bhorta, a fried fish-finger hash inspired by a BritishBangladeshi journalist’s tweet and tweaked with pickled red onion. There are also essays, including odes to the anchovy (“the bacon of the sea”), rhubarb, and brown food (Marrowbone Meat Sauce and Boudin Noir Meatballs). I tried her version of Jim Lahey’s famous no-knead bread, once with water spiked with lemon juice and once with pasta water, and both turned out bakery-window worthy.

Road Trip Cooking by Arno and Mireille van Elst (Feb. 9) > Just in time for pandemic camping and cookouts, this Dutch couple – who run a catering business called the Holy Kauw Company – weigh in with Road Trip Cooking and some ingenious hacks. In

Paper-Bag Breakfast, grease from the bacon keeps the bottom of the bag from catching fire, while eggs cracked on top get sprinkled with curry powder. The bag is pierced with a stick and slung over the campfire for a five-minute meal. They bake bread from a mix in empty bean cans, make instant coffee in a hollowed-out orange and even seal the ingredients for a deconstructed apple pie in tinfoil and put it on the engine block for an hour while they drive their camper van to the next pit stop. Grilled veggies and meats are staples, but who ever thought of tying up a whole trout in wet newspaper with some thinly sliced fennel and dill? For the record, that’s dinner in 15 minutes. Eat With Us by Philip Lago and Mystique Mattai (April 6) > Married Toronto couple Philip Lago and Mystique Mattai – who run a blog called Chef Sous Chef – advocate mindful eating, where all your senses are engaged. “Pay attention to the way your hand feels on the knife, the sound of ingredients hitting the pan … the visual appearance of the finished dish, and the final taste that awaits you at the dinner table,” they write in the introduction to Eat With Us: Mindful Cooking to Make Every Meal an Experience. The recipes are organized around themes like comfort food, dining

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al fresco and lavish meals for celebrations, and range from Maple Nut Stovetop Granola to Fully Loaded Chicken Soup with ground chicken meatballs to Sparkling French Onion Soup made with three kinds of caramelized onions deglazed with sparkling wine. There’s a lot for vegans and carnivores alike, but I have my eye on a simple strawberry cake made in a cast-iron skillet. World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (April 20) > The late, great food explorer may be gone, but Anthony Bourdain is far from forgotten. His final book, co-written with Laurie Woolever, contains classic Bourdain quotes as well as reminiscences from friends and family. Although it’s not a cookbook, World Travel does satisfy two pandemicera cravings: travel and restaurants. Woolever, co-writer on Bourdain’s last cookbook, 2016’s Appetites, says in the foreword she had just one meeting with Bourdain in his Manhattan apartment about the project months before he died by suicide in June 2018, and he was busier

than ever, shooting episodes for his wildly successful TV show Parts Unknown. The book is an atlas and a travelogue, organized alphabetically by country, so you can quickly flip to Canada, for example, and find 17 pages on Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, with tips on where to eat, sleep and shop. It’s fun to flit from place to place, checking out where you’ve been and where you want to go, adding far-flung locales like Mozambique, Laos and Uruguay to your bucket list. It’s a fitting tribute to the man who put bad boy before chef in his bestselling 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and went on to captivate the world as he ate cobra hearts in Saigon, raw seal eyeballs in Northern Quebec and sheep’s testicles in Morocco for his TV shows A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations and Parts Unknown.

Join Zed, The Zoomer Book Club. Go to everythingzoomer.com/ zed-book-club.

first reading it in 2001. The biggest lesson is that only when you are present can you be happy. Reading this book gave me the gift of inner peace. Priceless.

Janet Zuccarini is a resident judge on the Food Network’s Top Chef Canada and CEO and owner of the Gusto 54 Global Restaurant Group, which operates award-winning restaurants, including the legendary Felix Trattoria on L.A.’s Venice Beach and Chubby’s Jamaican Kitchen in Toronto.

Michelle Obama

> What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year and why? Becoming by Michelle Obama. The Obamas are heroes to me – more so now that I live in Los Angeles almost full-time. Michelle Obama showed an admirable amount of candour and opened up about her personal life like no other first lady has ever done. One of the biggest takeaways for me was how

Eckhart Tolle Tara Westover

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Michelle overcame her own insecurities and fears. > What book can’t you wait to dive into and why? Educated by Tara Westover. This book has won a ton of awards, and many of today’s greatest thought leaders – Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Oprah – have all named the book as one of their faves. It’s a memoir and coming-of-age story detailing Tara’s journey from a Mormon survivalist family to her quest to get a college education. > What’s your favourite book of all time? The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. This book transformed my life and gave me tools I continue to use every single day since

Margaret Atwood

> If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would it be? Margaret Atwood – she’s a Canadian icon. The closest I’ve been to having dinner with her is serving her at my restaurant Trattoria Nervosa in Toronto’s Yorkville. —Athena McKenzie

PHOTOGRAPHY, JAKE ROSENBERG (ZUCCARINI, NERVOSA); COURTESY OF MICHAEL E. GERBER (GERBER); TOBIN GRIMSHAW (ATWOOD); SAUL LOEB/GETTY IMAGES (OBAMA); JONATHAN LEIBSON/GETTY IMAGES (TOLLE); MARLA AUFMUTH/GETTY IMAGES (WESTOVER)

> SHELF LIFE <

> What book completely changed your perspective? The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. This book changed my professional life in such a profound way, Michael E. Gerber shaping the way I operated as an entrepreneur. One of the takeaways is the concept of moving past being a “technician” – meaning revenue is reliant on your involvement personally. It is only when you can take yourself out of the minutiae that you can grow and lead your business.

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Zooming Fitness

HOME WORK E

XTRA POUNDS are probably the least of our pandemic worries, but the sedentary double-whammy from stay-at-home orders that restrict our movement and lockdowns that shutter gyms is all too real. We used to walk to the bus stop, climb stairs or run an errand at lunch, but now our work-from-home days are punctuated by trips to the kitchen. Fortunately, new research shows short bursts of activity can have a real impact on physical and mental health. As insignificant as they may seem, these “exercise snacks” can really add up. “Some people think exercise is this special thing we do in a special place after we change into special clothing,” says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton. “The big picture is it’s just about activity, and there are lots of ways to build it into your day.” While the Canadian government recommends 150 minutes a week of

moderate to vigorous aerobic activity in addition to bone- and musclestrengthening exercises at least two days a week, there’s no denying the cumulative effect of exercise snacks on everything from muscle strength to cardiovascular health to mood – and even weight. No specific equipment is necessary, and everything can be done at home. The best part? Everything counts.

HOME BODIES EVERYBODY’S SPENDING a lot of time indoors these days and, whether you’re listening to an audiobook, making a social call or need a break from the computer, you can rack up steps just walking around the house. Kick it up a notch by walking in a figure eight around furniture. “That way,” says Margot McKinnon, founder of Body Harmonics Pilates studio in Toronto, “you’re moving your ankles in a different plane. You’ll feel the side hip muscles and obliques work a bit more. It’s just more three-dimensional.” Wall sits – where you keep your back flat against a wall, slide down as if you were sitting in a chair and hold it for 30 seconds – are good for legs and butt. “Those brief 30-second efforts are really important,” says Gibala. “And they can add up over the course of the day.”

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You can add squats, jumping jacks, burpees, lunges and planks to your routine. To release neck tension, just hum for one or two minutes. That “primes the deep core system of support for the torso and spine,” McKinnon explains.

STEP IT UP IN ONE STUDY conducted at McMaster by Gibala and his colleagues, participants ran up three flights of stairs three times a day, three days a week – about 20 seconds of effort each time. After six weeks, their aerobic fitness had improved by about five per cent. “If you can get your heart rate elevated for a 10-minute period of time once during the day, that’s great,

“IT’S HARD TO CLIMB STAIRS AT A LOW INTENSITY. EVEN A FIT PERSON CAN BE A BIT WINDED AFTER SEVERAL FLIGHTS”

PHOTOGRAPHY, WESTEND61/GETTY IMAGES (LEGS); ASBE/GETTY IMAGES (STAIRS)

If your step count is in the double digits, maybe it’s time for some exercise snacks By Nora Underwood

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Zooming Fitness

SIT DOWN PILATES, A LOW-IMPACT exercise focused on strength and flexibility, is surprisingly adaptable to a chair and that means you can focus more on endurance and less on balance. Even with Zoom on, the movements in a five-minute series from McKinnon* will be barely detectable. But the result will be more mobility, flexibility, some

“THOSE BRIEF 30-SECOND EFFORTS ARE REALLY IMPORTANT, AND THEY CAN ADD UP OVER THE COURSE OF A DAY”

PEDAL POWER

strengthening and stress relief. Sit tall at the front edge of your chair with equal weight on the buttocks and aim for 20 repetitions of each movement. The series works everything from the feet to the top of the head and includes lifting and lowering your heels, pulling in your abdomen for 15 seconds, pulling shoulders back slightly and shoulder blades together and even rolling your tongue back in your mouth as far as you can.

STAND UP ALL YOU NEED is a pair of sneakers and a chair to do Chris Jordan’s new seven-minute standing routine.* Almost a decade ago, the director of exercise physiology at the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute in Florida devised the Scientific 7-Minute Workout, highintensity exercises that offer many of the benefits of endurance training in a fraction of the time. His latest routine does away with floor exercises, can be adapted to almost any fitness level and repeated if time is not a factor. Each of the 12 exercises – variations on squats, push-ups and planks with some cardio blasts – is done for 30 seconds with five seconds rest in between and includes marching or jogging in place, wall push-ups, a standing bicycle crunch and jumping jacks.

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THE OLD WISDOM was that exercise needed to be done in bursts of no less than 10 minutes each. But as Jordan discovered with the high-intensity workout and Gibala with the stair-climbing study, even a few seconds here and there can make a difference. At the University of British Columbia, scientists compared one group doing three 20-second sprints on a stationary bike with two minutes of rest in between with another group doing the same three 20-second sprints but with an hour of rest in between. After six weeks, both groups saw similar improvements in aerobic fitness. Last year, a team from the University of Texas in Austin went a step further to determine the shortest possible high-intensity interval that produced results. Three times a week, 39 healthy but sedentary men and women aged 50 to 68 sprinted on special bikes for four seconds 15 times with 56 seconds of rest in between. By the end of the eight-week trial, participants only required rest periods of 26 seconds between sprints, and their fitness had increased by about 10 per cent. Muscle mass and leg strength increased, and stiffness in their arteries had diminished – impressive results from only three minutes of exercise a week. Can you overdo exercise snacks? “Generally speaking, the more the better,” Gibala says, “but if you are just starting out, build up the number of snacks over time.” There is a point of diminishing returns depending on your age, fitness level and exercise regime, but the benefits are higher with fewer blasts of exercise. “The risk is not doing too much; the risk is continuing to do too little.” * For Margot McKinnon’s seated Pilates routine and Chris Jordan’s sevenminute standing routine, go to every thing zoomer.com/exercise-snacks.

PHOTOGRAPHY, RAFA FERNÁNDEZ/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES (WHEEL); IMAGEWERKS/GETTY IMAGES (CHAIR)

either through a continuous period of exercise or by doing these short, vigorous bouts,” says Gibala. Indeed, regular huffing and puffing is essential, although that means different things to different people. “You’ve got to get out of your comfort zone sometimes,” he says. “It’s hard to climb stairs at a low intensity. Even a fit person can be a bit winded after several flights.” Starting out might mean two or three flights of stairs in 20 seconds and working up to six. “Normalize to your own sense of effort,” cautions Gibala. “Don’t overdo it.” McKinnon notes that doing stepclass type exercises on the stairs – up a stair (or two) with one leg, then the other; down with the first leg, then the second, for example – will have benefits. And holding a can of soup in each hand will only increase the impact.

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Zooming Vitality

The ER Diaries

Dr. Zachary Levine gives us the 911

THE SYMPTOMS Aside from the back pain, she felt mildly short of breath but no chest pain, nausea, sweating or lightheadedness (associated with heart attack) and no headache, dizziness, focal weakness or numbness (associated with stroke or brain disease). THE TESTS Medical students are taught the PQRSTs of pain. In this case, Provoking factors were movement and deep breaths. Quality of pain was soreness with occasional sharp jabs. Region of pain was the mid-upper back. Severity was judged to be a constant four out of 10, but the sharp jabs could be as intense as eight out of 10. The duration of Time that she’d had the pain was three days; it had started intermittently but was now constant with occasional sharp jabs. She was not in distress but no position relieved the pain. Aside from a slightly elevated heart rate and respiratory rate, vital signs were within normal range. An EKG showed sinus tachycardia – a fast heart rate. This can indicate infection, pain or

30 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

gested a large blood clot in the lungs, called a massive pulmonary embolism.

other stress. Troponin (heart enzyme) was a bit elevated as was ddimer, a protein that can be elevated in patients with blood clots, stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease. An X-ray showed a bit of haziness in the upper left lung but no clear pneumonia. The patient’s pain improved with acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and she asked to go home – but then, she suddenly became pale and sweaty. Her heart and respiratory rates quickened, blood pressure dropped and oxygen saturation was now lower than normal. She was given oxygen by mask and fluid in her veins. A CT scan of the chest was not possible while vital signs were not stable. A bedside ultrasound showed the right side of the heart seemed to be larger than usual, indicating strain. THE DIAGNOSIS The upper back pain was worse with breathing, and the patient had shortness of breath, fast heart rate, elevated troponin (heart strain) and d-dimer (blood clot). Along with the ultrasound findings, it sug-

THE TREATMENT Treatment for a massive pulmonary embolism is thrombolysis (clotbusting medication given intravenously). This entails a significant risk of serious bleeding – not a decision to be taken lightly – but without treatment, the patient could die. All the evidence and the risk factors (smoking, immobility during the long car trip) were consistent with blood clot. It was decided to treat the condition as such. Medication was administered, and the patient continued to receive oxygen and fluids. Over the next three hours, blood pressure improved, heart rate decreased, breathing became easier and oxygen levels normalized. Once the patient was stable, she went for a CT scan of her lungs, which confirmed a large blood clot. THE OUTCOME The patient was monitored overnight, and there was no evidence of significant bleeding. She was discharged the following day and would take blood-thinning medication for at least three months before being reassessed by a hematologist. Dr. Zachary Levine is an emergency physician and associate professor in the McGill University Department of Emergency Medicine.

PHOTOGRAPHY, SANTI NUÑEZ/STOCKSY (DOCTOR); TTSZ/GETTY IMAGES (PULMONARY EMBOLISM)

THE CASE A 64-year-old woman presented to the ER due to upper back pain. The occasional smoker had no recent heavy lifting, surgery or trauma; no cough or sputum production or fever (which could indicate infection); no history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes; no cancer, night sweats or weight loss. She travelled by car to visit family recently.

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Zoom In View

A Shot in the Dark By Libby Znaimer

’M AFRAID MY HUSBAND, Doug, is setting himself up for disappointment. Every evening, he peppers me with details about the trip we’re supposed to take in June – if the pandemic has eased – and an even bigger if – if we are vaccinated, we will be able to go. Doug loves cars. He drives an entrylevel luxury vehicle he bought used 10 years ago. He’s been talking about getting a new one for three years, but there’s always something – retirement savings taking a stock market hit and big unexpected home expenses among them. Now that he is stuck at home with nowhere to eat out, play squash or attend events, he is feeling flush, and he’s not alone. According to BMO Economics, the household savings rate reached a whopping 27.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, compared to 1.4 per cent the previous year. It adds up to an eyepopping $150 billion in excess savings. (At the same time, there’s been an exponential rise in food bank use despite CERB and other government programs. Thousands of essential workers who keep our stores stocked and our supply chains running don’t get paid if they take a sick day.) Customizing his dream car has been a labour of love for Doug. Given all the people doing well while sitting out COVID at home, there’s also a waiting list for that same dream car. But Doug put down his deposit and got his place in the queue. It comes with a special perk. We can pick up the car in Germany and drive it around before it is shipped home. “I’m excited to see where the car was built,” he says. “It’s also a chance to do a European auto tour.” The date

is not negotiable. We are very aware of how lucky we are to have this ultimate First-World problem. But our vaccine conundrum is anything but. According to Our World in Data, at press time, Canada ranks 45th in the world in vaccination rates. We are among the richest, most advanced, best-educated and tolerant countries in the world. We have fallen behind Serbia, Chile and Cyprus among many others. Ontario had even delayed completing the vaccination of nursing home residents while many young healthcare workers got their shots ahead of them. This, as the province surpassed the number of long-term care deaths suffered in the first wave, and more than 1,400 care home residents died since our first shipments arrived in December. The authorities insist the refrigeration requirements and a stall in deliveries prevented them from carrying this out on schedule. But other countries, even other provinces, managed to do better. According to Gen. Rick Hillier, in charge of Ontario’s rollout, “We can’t lay out a specific time when an age bracket will have vaccines available.” Although bookings for those over 80 finally got going in midMarch, it was another blow for older people who are healthy but afraid to leave their homes. In the U.K., 80 per cent of over 80s have received their shots. In Israel, virtually all have. Our nephew and his partner, who are studying there, received theirs last week. They are 27 and 25. For me, the problem is an existential issue. We have failed to protect our elders, even as we knew the second wave was coming. We have

32 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

been unable to secure a timely vaccine supply, or even get our country on the exceptions list to European export bans. We are the only G7 country tapping into COVAX, an international fund intended to supply vaccines mostly for poorer countries. To me, this means we are not the nation of people we think we are. Throughout the pandemic, many of us have been looking at the U.S. with more than a little schaden-

“... if the pandemic has eased – and an even bigger if – if we are vaccinated” freude – shaking our heads at their outsize death toll, their inability to agree on financial help for those hit hardest, the conspiracy theories that have become so pervasive. Now they are way ahead in immunizing their people – and some of ours, too. Thousands of Canadian snowbirds received their shots in Florida and are happily walking the beaches. Doug is older so he will get vaccinated before me. The latest promise from Gen. Hillier has all Ontario adults receiving their first dose by June 20 – too late for that trip even if we are able to travel after a single shot. Libby Znaimer (libby@zoomer.ca) is VP of news on AM740 and Classical 96.3 FM (ZoomerMedia properties).

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ALWAYS STAY CONNECTED

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2. Group activity – even if there’s no special occasion happening, you can still schedule video calls and enjoy a group activity. Here are a few ideas: watch a movie or TV show together, have a weekly book club, cook/eat together, play games or have a trivia night. There’s no limit to what kind of group meeting or hobby you can share. 3. Online classes – another way Zoomers can take advantage of video calls is by attending webinars and relevant online classes. You can learn to speak a new language, skills like photography and exercise in a ﬁtness class with friends and family. This is also an excellent opportunity to meet new people and socialize. Most people are still experiencing diﬃculties coping with the pandemic, lockdown

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The megawatt actress and new memoirist opens up about her hard-scrabble childhood, Hollywood and a near-fatal stroke, but don’t get her started on Meryl Streep, writes Johanna Schneller Photography by Michael Muller

OH DEAR. I THINK I’VE BROKEN SHARON STONE. We’re 36 minutes into what was supposed to be a 30-minute Zoom interview but, based on Stone’s – let’s call it reluctance – to let go of a badly phrased question, we are in no way ready to wrap this up. We’re talking about her new memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, which dropped March 30. In late September 2001, Stone suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a dramatic form of stroke, and an artery connecting her brain and body pretty much shredded. She underwent a lengthy, risky surgery called endovascular coiling to repair the artery with metal coils. She recovered, but it took seven years, and – this is a key point of the book – she’s not exactly who she was before. The stroke was a hinge event: her life rearranged itself around it, bisected into Before and After. She writes eloquently of both. “I wanted to do something not just good for my publisher and readers but good for me,” Stone says about writing her book, which took about two years. “I wanted to tell the truth.” Pause. “Within a few parameters.” She’s sitting in a loveseat with a fluffy, furry throw in a dove-gray

room in her West Hollywood home that once belonged to Montgomery Clift. There’s a large rectangular mirror in a gold frame, a vase of pink roses and, off camera, a dog named Bandit; she speaks to him now and then. She’s wearing a black-andwhite plaid dress – I catch a glimpse of bare knee when she tucks up a leg – and two pendant necklaces, and she’s sucking on a lemon lozenge. Her voice is reedier than her screensiren purr, and her frame is slighter. At one point, she stands and wraps her hands around her waist, to show me what “a tiny little person” she’s become, when she used to be, as she puts it, “ba-boom-ba.” Her blond hair is cut in a chin-length bob, and she rakes her hands through it as she talks, moving it from a shallow part on one side, to a deep part on the other, to pulled back without a part. Whichever way, it looks perfect. “I wanted to do a real search about my life,” Stone continues. “How did I get in that position” – here she heaves a deep sigh – “slabbed out on a table in a hospital?” For some shaky moments in surgery, she was legally dead, “and I think we can all agree,” she says, “that’s the hitting-bottom moment in someone’s life. When you’re dead.” I can tell she likes that line; she allows herself a little smile. Sure enough, she repeats it. “We

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everythingzoomer.com

APRIL/MAY 2021

– 37

PHOTOGRAPHY, MICHAEL MULLER, CPI SYNDICATION

STONE’S WAS AN OLDSCHOOL TRAJECTORY, FROM LOCAL BEAUTY QUEEN TO MODEL TO TV COMMERCIALS. In her film debut, she played a vision, kissing a train window in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980). She kicked the crap out of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven, and then posed for Playboy to convince Verhoeven to hire her for

his next project. That film, Basic Instinct (1992), hit like a thunderclap. I was living in L.A. then and I cannot oversell you on how huge that movie was. It was on every billboard, fodder for every late-night talk show. Feminist groups, angry at its depiction of Evil Bisexuals, stalked the blocks-long ticket lines handing out flyers with the spoiler, “Catherine did it.” (Catherine is Stone’s character, a diabolical novelist.) I watched Basic Instinct recently and, god, it’s misogynistic – and not only for the infamous no-underwearuncross-legs scene. Catherine’s sexuality is never hers; it’s only about how it titillates and threatens men. Hollywood in the 1990s was obsessed with vertical integration, conglomerates buying up studios to create product for their pipelines. The commodification of female bodies was part of that, and Stone’s body was commodified the most. Her nine-day brain hemorrhage ended that, too. She rattles off how it impacted her. She lost her longand short-term memory, directional hearing in her right ear and the ability to read and write for three years. One foot dragged. The right side of her face fell. “The Dalai Lama told me I reincarnated into my own body,” says Stone, a Buddhist who was introduced to the Tibetan spiritual leader by Richard Gere. “So to go back, to be back, emotionally, in that other person, is not something I even want to do. People want and expect her, and that just isn’t working with me.” She still has glamorous “Sharon Stone clothes” in one part of her closet and more casual “me clothes” in another part. (Though those modes sometimes meet in the middle: Stone famously wore Gap to the Oscars twice – a black T-shirt in 1996 and her then-husband’s white shirt in 1998 – becoming an icon of American fashion insouciance.) But then, as if I’d teased something awake in her, Stone enters her second galactic wormhole of our conversa-

38 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

tion. (We fell into the first one right off the top, when she spent six minutes assuring me that she wrote her own book. I never imagined otherwise.) This one lasts from minute 21 to minute 31, and it is epic. At the peak of Stone’s fame, she says, fans tore clothes off her body; they’d grab her breasts and buttocks. “I told the studio, ‘You will bring me Mossad bodyguards. Because we can’t keep calling SWAT.” She acts out the gesture the Mossad guards would use – hands out, elbows bent, like carrying a tray – when they wanted permission to touch her, explaining, “Israeli men treat women as peers.” The guards would literally carry her out of danger, “and they would have to be six feet tall because I’m six foot in heels.” She describes how crowds would surround her limo and rip off the mirrors, bumpers, licence plates and wipers; then they’d climb on the roof, and she’d crouch down as it caved in, “thinking, ‘I’m going to die in here.’” She’d finally get inside whatever venue and “I’d be like, [panting], and they’d safety-pin my dress together, wipe the sweat from my face and push me into the spotlight.” She recalls hosting Saturday Night Live, when haters rushed the stage, Lorne Michaels called for security, guards were escorting them out and the stage manager was counting her down, “LIVE in five, four, three …” She tells me about being on stage at the MTV awards with Michael Moore, “and we were covered in hundreds of laser sights because we were advocating gun control,” she says. “I said, ‘We’re in it now, motherf****,’ but we stayed on.” When they finished, bodyguards hustled them to armoured cars, which they’d driven “into the building and onto the stage.” She remembers a car following hers from the airport, repeatedly rear-ending her; a helicopter landed in her L.A. backyard, “and the windows are vibrating, and a guy hanging out the belly in a harness is

PHOTOGRAPHY, MICHAEL MULLER, CPI SYNDICATION

can agree dead is bottom.” In addition to spending a decade as Hollywood’s reigning goddess, Stone, now 63, has written short stories and song lyrics. “I’ve had three No. 1 hits around the world,” she tells me – not boasting, just stating. “One here, one in Germany, one in Argentina.” In her memoir, she packs images, memories and insights into some sentences yet also knows when to go colloquial, when to throw in a tough-gal wisecrack. She explains some things thoroughly; others she only hints at. That’s a tantalizing combination, candour and mystique – a movie-star combination. Her lean upbringing in rural western Pennsylvania comes vividly to life as does a family habit of leaving things unsaid (though she and her mother eventually discuss a huge thing they never admitted before, which we’ll get to). She acknowledges that her beauty made her a rarity – I appreciate that; so many actresses pretend they aren’t beautiful – and that her brain made her restless: A gifted student, she was skipped to Grade 2 when she was only five. She gives us delicious tastes of what her life was like. For example, one young man wooed her by driving into a lake, stopping just before the water sloshed in, and they sat with the radio on and the car lights dancing on the surface.

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PHOTOGRAPHY, MICHAEL MULLER, CPI SYNDICATION

holding this huge cylinder – it looks like a gun – and I’m in my underwear, crawling up my wooden stairs, terrified, my knees are bloody, and then I realize he’s holding a camera.” She is bouncing on the sofa during this story. “This is the way my life went for 10 years,” Stone says, “day after day after day after day of this kind of insanity. So no, I don’t want to go back and get in that part of my life, and ask, ‘How did you feel?’ Because how could I have felt? I felt like a person under siege.” I attempt to ease Stone’s agitation by lobbing what I think is a softball reference to a story in her book about working with Meryl Streep, deep in their careers, on Steven Soderbergh’s film The Laundromat (2019). But oh-ho-ho, I am so wrong, and we instantly plunge into a third wormhole, the deepest one yet. So before I get into that I will back up, to a moment of healing brought about by her memoir. In the book, Stone describes how her maternal grandfather sexually abused her, but she and her sister, Kelly, never talked about it until Stone began writing about it. That brought the sisters closer. Kelly then had a heart-to-heart with their mother, Dorothy, and told her about the assaults; Dorothy wrote Sharon a long letter and then came for a visit (hitherto, a rare occurrence) about a year into her writing process. “I didn’t know my mom. I didn’t have a relationship with her,” Stone says. “I didn’t understand her, I didn’t understand her life. I didn’t understand how she treated me. I thought she was a horrible person.” Stone read Dorothy what she thought was a final draft of her book. Then Dorothy talked for an hour and a half straight, and Stone recorded her. Then Stone rewrote the

book. “Dorothy told me her father beat her mother every day until the day she died,” Stone says. “I know she’d never said it out loud before.” Dorothy also told her daughter, “Now I see why you couldn’t look at me.” That stabbed Stone in the heart. The honesty broke down the wall between them. “We suddenly were not just mother and daughter,” Stone says. “We were two adult women, sharing this experience. I’m extremely grateful that my life is changing in this way. When you gain a mother” – she laughs – “you can’t really feel like you lost a lot. Not very many people suddenly get a mother, especially their own mother, when they’re 60.” In fact, Stone is welcoming more and more women into her life. “I’m really glad I know now that women are my friends, that my female colleagues are my friends,” she says. “I know it’s women who are here to heal us, and guide us. I know that we are moving into a female future. I want to work with women. I’ve spent my whole life working with men. That made the masculine side of me maybe over-strong.”

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY ILL-FATED QUESTION. In her memoir, Stone writes about how Hollywood – and society – pit women against each other. “It was put to us that there could be room for only one.” “I find that fascinating,” I say. “So when you finally got to work with Meryl Streep, you realized –” Stone stops me. “I like the way you phrase that, that I finally got to work with Meryl Streep,” she says. “You didn’t say, ‘Meryl finally got to work with Sharon Stone.’ Or we finally got to work together.”

“Good point,” I start to say – “Because that’s the way her life went, she got built up to be, ‘Everyone wants to work with Meryl,’” Stone says. “I wonder if she likes that?” “You’re right,” I start to say – “The way you structured the question is very much the answer to the question,” Stone says. “The business was set up that we should all envy and admire Meryl because only Meryl got to be the good one. And everyone should compete against Meryl. I think Meryl is an amazingly wonderful woman and actress. But in my opinion, quite frankly, there are other actresses equally as talented as Meryl Streep. The whole Meryl Streep iconography is part of what Hollywood does to women.” “I hear you,” I start to say, but Stone is on a roll. She starts listing names. “Viola Davis is every bit the actress Meryl Streep is. Emma Thompson. Judy Davis. Olivia Colman. Kate Winslet, for f***’s sake. But you say Meryl and everybody falls on the floor.” “I actually agree with you,” I start to say – “I’m a much better villain than Meryl,” Stone goes on, “and I’m sure she’d say so. Meryl was not gonna be good in Basic Instinct or in Casino,” for which Stone earned an Oscar nomination. “I would be better. And I know it. And she knows it. But we’re all set up to think that only Meryl …” – here Stone’s voice goes all breathy, and she stretches out her arms in an arabesque, left arm forward – “is so amazing …” – right arm forward – “that when you say her name …” – left arm forward – “it must have been amazing …” – right arm – “for me to work …” – left arm – “with her.” “I’m so sorry,” I start to say – “That’s how you’re set up to ask the question. That’s how we’re set up to think,” Stone says. Breathy voice everythingzoomer.com

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– 41

HOW ABOUT ACTING? DOES STONE APPROACH HER WORK DIFFERENTLY NOW? “I don’t have an agent or manager or lawyer,” she says. “If a director wants me, they’ll find me. If you want to hire me, you have to want me. At 63, you’ve seen what I can do. I don’t want to be on a list or a name to help finance a project. I want to work because I’m the best person for a job.” In her most recent projects, which include the limited series Mosaic, a guest appearance on Better Things and a mischievous role in Martin

42 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

Scorsese’s pseudo-documentary Rolling Thunder Review, she is as singular and hypnotic as ever. Due out soon are a romance costarring Andy Garcia and a drama written by Lena Waithe. Stone’s long-term publicist, Cindi Berger, chooses this calm moment to give me the “last question” warning. “What are you glad you know now? What are you sure of?” I ask. “I love being a mom,” Stone says immediately. She has three sons, Roan, 20, Laird, 15, and Quinn, 14. “I’m really grateful to have caught up with myself. I know that we have to be in the day that we’re in. If COVID has taught us nothing except that we should be present, then we’re learning something. I know I will live authentically. I’m hoping this effort I made will encourage others to live authentically.” Stone seems open, so I sneak in one more: “What would you say to your younger self?” “I went to university when I was 15,” Stone replies. “I would say to her, ‘I know this is all terrifying, and you don’t feel ready. And nobody is helping you.” Another shaky sigh. “But don’t ever, ever doubt your instincts. When you doubt your instincts, you’re going to get hurt. Any mistake you make following your instincts will be okay. “And I would keep saying that to myself every step of the way,” she continues. “Every mistake I made came from trying to think ‘logically’ – I should be doing this or that. And for everything I did right, I thought, ‘This is really gonna be hard, and everybody is gonna think I’m crazy, I feel sick, I have no idea what’s going to happen, and it all looks, ugh. But I know it’s what I’m supposed to do.’ And that’s the thing that turns out okay.” I know a good final line when I hear one. I open my mouth to thank her. But Stone keeps going. “I’m doing that now by writing this book, by not having any representation, by telling these horrible truths,” she concludes. And then, at minute 52, she can’t help herself. “And even by saying that – though Meryl Streep is fabulous – the idea that she’s the queen, and only she, has gotten absurd. I know that sounds sacrilegious. But it’s enough already.” So close to a clean getaway! But Sharon Stone is Sharon Stone, somewhat broken but unbowed. She wouldn’t want it any other way.

PHOTOGRAPHY, MICHAEL MULLER, CPI SYNDICATION

again: “Because I could never … touch the heights … We’re all labelled the Queen of Something. I’m the Queen of Smut! She’s the Queen of That! We all have to sit in our assigned seats. Are you kidding me? If we worked in a supermarket, she can’t always be the No. 1 checkout girl. We’re all doing our jobs. Everybody gets to get better, and everybody gets to sometimes have that not great a day. Even … Meryl.” “Absolutely,” I start to say – “That phrasing has been taught,” Stone says. “We’ve been taught that everybody doesn’t get a seat at the table. Once one is chosen, nobody else can get in there.” That seems to end the storm. The set-up that Stone is objecting to – that one woman or one person of colour is “enough,” and everyone else has to vie for scraps or settle for being less-than – is rife in every profession, and it’s demeaning, unfair and incorrect. But I feel she’s made the point – thoroughly! – and we should move on. How does Stone feel about #MeToo? “It can’t just have been this blip in Hollywood, where one guy [producer Harvey Weinstein] went to jail,” she replies. “Harassment is everywhere. Until there are real laws, #MeToo was just the opening sentence. I’m sure Meryl has a story. But I’m also sure if Meryl told you her story, she wouldn’t be being Meryl, and she wouldn’t be getting those jobs. Meryl can’t be the envelope pusher. Because then she wouldn’t get the jobs. Meryl’s a smoother. That’s what she does.” Again, Stone isn’t wrong; Streep has been criticized for her silence around #MeToo. But the clock is ticking, and I still have a stack of questions.

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SECOND ACTS

MIKE WEIR

REMASTERED At 50, Canadian Golf Legend Mike Weir tells David McPherson how changing his mental and physical approach is helping him thrive on and off the course

THE MASTER Weir tees off on the 18th hole en route to his historic Masters victory at Augusta, 2003; (opposite) the eight-year-old Sarnia, Ont., schoolboy; Weir in 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY, DAVID CANNON/GETTY IMAGES (TEE OFF)

ARCH 2020. North America is in the

early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses close. Families are separated. Isolation and loneliness set in as imposed quarantines keep loved ones apart. The Masters, a spring tradition, had been cancelled for the first time since the Second World War. Which meant professional golfer Mike Weir, who became a household name in 2003 when he was the first Canadian ever to win the iconic tournament, was enjoying some downtime at home in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City where he lives with his girlfriend – former Bachelor contestant Michelle Money – and her daughter, Brielle. After a decade of battling physical and personal issues and watching his game collapse, Weir not only turned 50 last May but he also began plotting his comeback and rediscovering the groove that made him the most successful Canadian golfer of all time. For most of us, golf is a leisurely pursuit that can be enjoyed regardless of our fitness level. But professionals, especially those like Weir who are battling both age and chronic physical ailments, must devote long hours in the gym and on the course to remain competitive. But putting in the hard work doesn’t guarantee success – even the most promising comebacks can fall apart in the blink of an eye, as we witnessed recently with Tiger Woods. Woods, who engineered a near-miraculous comeback by overcoming a host of personal setbacks (including debilitating back problems as well as a messy divorce) to return to the top of his game – shocking the golf world by winning the 2019 Masters – now faces the likely end of his brilliant career after sustaining multiple leg injuries in a horrible late February car crash. While Weir’s story may never be the subject of an HBO documentary, he can understand some of what Tiger has gone through. After that epic 2003 season, when he won the Masters, tied for third at the U.S. Open and tied for seventh at the PGA Championship, Weir finished the decade winning several tournaments and carding multiple top-10 finishes. However, in 2010, with neck, elbow and lower back injuries hampering his swing, his career went into a dramatic tailspin. After missing the cut in 14 of 18 events in the 2015-2016 season and withdrawing from three others, he took a leave to focus on his family. Off the course, he struggled with personal issues, including the breakdown of his marriage and eventual divorce from Bricia, his wife of 21 years. Turning 50 was not only a milestone birthday for Weir, but it provided him with a new goal to focus on – he was now old enough to join golf’s senior circuit, the PGA Tour Champions. During the pandemic pause, with all professional golf

events on hold, Weir began to prepare in earnest. Before the break, he had played in a few events on the Korn Ferry Tour (a circuit just below the PGA Tour) and happily discovered that his game was returning to form – he tied for 17th at the LECOM Suncoast Classic in February, his highest result at a PGA Tour-sanctioned tournament since 2014. Advances in equipment and innovations in technology in the last 15 years, combined with a disciplined focus on personal fitness not practised by a previous generation of pros, allows golfers like Weir to compete well into middle age. “All aspects of fitness are important, and you need to have a balance,” Weir explains in a February interview from his home in Utah. “To still be powerful, you have to be limber, supple and explosive. And good cardiovascular health is also important. I run, sometimes bike, hike and ski.” He focuses on strength training by regularly lifting weights and stretches with a foam roll daily. “I concentrate on areas that are commonly tight on me and most golfers,” he adds. “My hips, back, neck and forearms. I also try to get a massage at least once a week, sometimes twice. Recovery is very important as we get a bit older.” During the months he was grounded in Utah, Weir lifted weights at least three times a week, hit balls into his indoor net and played practice rounds at nearby courses. He also made sure to keep his mind sharp and reduce anxiety by taking long hikes in the nearby Wasatch Mountains, which his golf schedule did not normally allow.

IT’S NO WONDER WEIRSY, as fans know him, is feeling rejuvenated and ready to embark on this exciting new chapter in his career. “I’ve done many things

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GOOD SPORT At six, already

“MY RANGE OF MOTION IS BETTER, and I have less tightness in my back,” says Weir of his rejuvenated game. “This allows me to play consecutive weeks and increase my ability to practise longer as well. Guys work very hard on the Champions Tour, so if you’re not capable of that you will get passed by easily!” Hard work has been a defining feature of Weir’s golf career since the Bright’s Grove, Ont., native began making headlines at the Huron Oaks Golf Club in Sarnia, Ont., where he played as a teenager. While his peers worked summer jobs, went to camp or just hung out, Weir practised endless hours. As a leftie, he felt at a disadvantage competing against right-handed players who dominated the sport. Since

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a winner with the 1976 Sarnia T-ball champions; (far left) playing Pee Wee Hockey for

Sarnia Township, 11; (top right) at 20, Weir won the Ontario Amateur Championship; (right) at 16, Weir captured the 1986 Junior Boys Championship. then, Phil Mickelson (a three-time Masters champion) and Bubba Watson (two-time Masters champion) have proved left-handed players can win at golf’s highest levels. But when Weir was a teenager, the only professional southpaw that had won a major was Bob Charles. When he was 13, Weir wrote to his hero, golfing legend Jack Nicklaus, asking the Golden Bear whether he should switch to playing right-handed. Nicklaus not only took time to write Weir back but advised him to “stick to your natural swing – stay left-handed. The fundamentals apply to both sides of the ball, left- and righthanded, and good luck in your dreams.” That encouragement from Nicklaus was all the motivation Weir needed to pursue his career. He won the Canadian Juvenile Championship in 1986 and the Ontario Junior Championship two years later. After starring for the Brigham Young University golf team, he joined the Canadian Tour where he spent five grinding years, driving from coast to coast, playing in small towns and frequently living out of the back seat of his car or staying in cheap motels. In 1998, he finally achieved his dream when he tied for 26th in the qualifying tournament and earned his PGA Tour card. Tom Lehman – a five-time PGA Tour winner over a successful 26-year career – recalls playing a round with Weir not long after the young Canadian had joined the tour. “He reminded me of a young Nick Price [the

PHOTOGRAPHY, GOLF CANADA (JUNIOR BOYS CHAMP)

over the past few years to prepare for this moment,” Weir says. “First, I assembled a great team [including coach Mark Blackburn, a past member of Golf Digest’s 50 Best teachers list, and Jason Glass, a B.C.-based strength and conditioning coach] that helps prepare my game technically, physically and mentally. Physically, I addressed some limitations that come with getting older, in particular mobility … that’s been a primary focus.” He feels his game has become more fluid and finds he has more energy than he has had in many years. And the early results on the Champions Tour show that his dedication, resilience and preparations are paying off. In just his second start, he tied for 10th at the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship, and through 12 events in the 2020-21 combined season, he has notched four other Top 10 finishes (including finishing second at the Cologuard Classic) and earned more than US$700,000, good for 15th place on the tour. Even better, he’s averaging 286.8 yards off the tee – remarkably only two less than the 289.2 yards he averaged during his prime on the PGA Tour.

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C E L E B R AT I N G

45 YE ARS OF STAIRLIFTS 1975-2020 ES

B L I S H E D 18 6

WHILE WEIR HAS LIVED IN THE U.S. for more than three decades, he has never forgotten his roots. He still relishes his role as a

Receiving the Order of Canada from then-Governor General Michaelle Jean, 2009

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mentor to the latest crop of Canadian PGA Tour stars and he’s humbled that they see him as a hero – and look to him for advice – just like he once viewed Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and others. “A lot of the younger guys look up to Mike,” Hearn says. “He is a tremendous role model. It’s amazing to watch as he continues to work hard and is seeing success again. It’s no surprise because through all his struggles in recent years, I’ve seen how hard he continued to work.” Last November, when the postponed Masters was finally held, Weir returned to the scene of his past glory – winners get a lifetime invitation to join the tourney – to play a practice round at Augusta with three Canadians: Corey Conners (who was 11 when Weir won the Green Jacket), Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor – giving them tips on how to navigate the course’s treacherous putting surfaces and difficult holes. His advice paid off; Conners finished tied for 10th and Taylor tied for 29th. While Weir finished tied for 51st, it was his best showing at Augusta since 2014. In April, Weir will tee it up at his 22nd Masters. He’s enjoying life at 50 and if he maintains good health and keeps up his high level of play, he could enjoy another 10 years on the Champions Tour. After all, Hale Irwin, who is 75, is still playing on the senior circuit. Despite all the success and accolades he has earned in his career – winning eight PGA Tour events, career earnings of US$28 million, playing on five President’s Cup teams, winning the Lionel Conacher Award for Canada’s Best Male Athlete three times and receiving the Order of Canada – Weir remains resolutely focused on the future. “I’m more of a look-forward-and-live-today type person,” he says. “But many things come to mind: special victories, my relationship with my children [daughters Elle and Lili, both in university], my family and many dear friends. What has sustained me through 30 years of playing professional golf is my love of the game, the gratitude for doing something you love for a living and the many relationships along the way.”

PASSING THE TORCH Tiger Woods presents Weir, 33, the Green Jacket after the Canadian won the 2003 Masters Tournament; (right) with his childhood hero, Jack Nicklaus, at the Masters in 2004 everythingzoomer.com

PHOTOGRAPHY, CANADIAN PRESS/ADRIAN WYLD (ORDER OF CANADA); DAVID CANNON/GETTY IMAGES (GREEN JACKET); REUTERS/SHAUN BEST (NICKLAUS); MATTHEW STOCKMAN/GETTY IMAGES (UTAH CHAMPIONSHIP)

South African-born golfer who dominated the sport before Tiger arrived],” recalls the 61-year-old Lehman. “He was straight off the tee, accurate with his irons, a fantastic putter and chipper … he was like a mirror image of Price but from the other side of the ball. I knew this guy was going to make a big splash.” Lehman’s prophecy came true on April 13, 2003, a date etched in the memories of Canadian golf fans, when Weir defeated American Len Mattiace in a one-hole playoff to become the first Canadian – and the first lefthanded golfer – to win The Masters. With that stunning victory at the Augusta National Golf Club, Weir became a national celebrity. Kids from St. John’s to Victoria traded in their hockey sticks for golf clubs. The win also inspired future generations of Canadian PGA Tour players, starting with David Hearn and Graham DeLaet and continuing today with Mackenzie Hughes and Corey Conners. Hearn, 41, who was born in Brampton, Ont., and turned pro in 2001, remembers exactly where he was when Weir won at Augusta. “I had just finished a full season on the Canadian Tour,” recalls the PGA Tour professional from his home in Boca Raton, Fla. “We played an early practice round somewhere in Arkansas and got back to our hotel in time to watch every one of Mike’s shots on the back nine. We were glued to the TV. It was one of those days every Canadian can relate to. We were so proud, and it was also so inspiring. He became the model for how to practise, prepare and play.” Fellow Canadian golfer Graham DeLaet says Weir is the reason he became a professional golfer. “His Masters win was the biggest factor in me wanting to turn pro after college.”

FORE-EVER THE PLAYER Weir, 50, at the Utah Championship, June 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY, REDMAL/GETTY IMAGES

STRATEGIES & SOLUTIONS

PHILANTHROPIC NATION

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME CAUSE & EFFECT HOW YOUR CASH IMPACTS THE GREATER GOOD

SMART MONEY HOW ESTATE PLANNING CAN BENEFIT ALL

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A CHARITABLE RECESSION YOUR GIVING

After a bruising year marked by declining donations and an embarrassing scandal, charity groups are hoping Canadians return to their generous ways. Peter Muggeridge reports

national health organizations to small local volunteer-run outfits, all rely on a business model that’s largely based on our ability – and willingness – to give. In normal years, we are happy to oblige – to the tune of $17 billion. According to most recent Canada Revenue Agency figures, in 2018 five million of us claimed a charity

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tax credit, contributing nearly $10 billion in donations to 86,000 registered charities. On top of that, we give another $7 billion in cash donations to various fundraisers (such as the Salvation Army “kettle” campaigns, bidding on silent auctions, subscribing to seats at the orchestra or renewing our “Y” memberships) that we don’t claim on taxes.

PHOTOGRAPHY, MICROSTOCKHUB/ GETTY IMAGES

ith COVID-19 causing such massive health, social and economic convulsions, the demand for charity is at an all-time high. But in one of this pandemic’s many bitter paradoxes, a steep drop in donations means many organizations can’t fulfill their missions. Amid so much economic anxiety, it’s no surprise many Canadians are tightening their belts and cutting down on discretionary spending. “You can’t give to charity when you’ve lost your job and your financial security is up in the air,” concedes Kate Bahen, managing director of Charity Intelligence, a Toronto-based group that analyzes how charities use our donations. Meanwhile, lockdowns, physical distancing measures and stay-athome orders have cancelled lucrative fundraising events like walks, galas and door-to-door campaigns and, although charities supporting arts, culture, recreation and sport were hit the hardest, the Cancer Society and Heart and Stroke Foundation have also had to scale back on staff and services as the number of people requiring food banks, mental health assistance and domestic abuse shelters is way up. “It’s a bad math equation for charitable organizations,” says Bruce MacDonald, CEO of Imagine Canada, a national group that lobbies the federal government on behalf of charities. “They’re simply not keeping pace.” From big corporation-backed

MacDonald couldn’t put a figure on the financial impact of the pandemic on charities, but in April 2020, Imagine Canada estimated donations could decline by $4.2 to $6.3 billion. Last summer, it polled 1,089 of its 30,000 member organizations across the country, and MacDonald says 68 per cent of charities reported a decline in donations

since the start of the pandemic. The plunge in philanthropic support was also captured in an Imagine Canada online poll conducted on Dec. 5, 2020. Heading into the holiday season, when many people traditionally write big cheques to their favourite causes, almost half of 1,252 respondents were still planning to give to charity during the holiday

season (down 11 per cent from previous years), but 36 per cent said they were planning to give less because of “financial difficulties related to COVID.”

he sector suffered another blow in June when the WE Charity scandal began dominating headlines. The inter-

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national children’s charity, founded in 1995 by brothers Marc and Craig Kielburger, had just been awarded a $19.5 million contract to recruit student volunteers to take part in the government’s Canada Student Grant program. But after the Opposition got hold of media reports about Liberal connections to the charity – including speaking fees paid to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family and two trips former Finance Minister Bill Morneau took on WE’s dime (but paid back, though he still resigned) – the government cancelled the contract. A federal finance committee probe into the affair was cut short after Trudeau prorogued Parliament in mid-August, but a new inquiry continues to turn up more damning allegations against WE. With a labrythine structure that even one of its own board members didn’t understand and an eye-popping $40 million dollars worth of real estate, WE is accused of shuffling money between its for profit and not-for-profit companies. Further, that it employed questionable record-keeping and fundraising tactics, including using multiple donors to fund the same program. The fiasco not only spelled the end of WE Charity’s Canadian operations but also bruised the reputation of the entire charitable sector. “It sent a tremor to the foundation of trust of the whole charity sector,” says MacDonald. “Many people began to ask: ‘How’s my favourite cause stacking up?’”

ahen says all the negativity surrounding charities may have been a blessing in disguise because it has forced us to become better-informed givers. Before supporting a cause, we’re now researching organizations to ensure they use our money wisely and they make a real social impact. To help, Charity Intelligence’s web-

site (charityintelligence.ca) offers its annual Top 100 Rated Charities report, which analyzes organizations using a host of metrics, including “transparency, results reporting, need for funding, cents to the cause, and demonstrated impact.” “We’re trying to inform Canadians where their charitable dollars can do the best work possible,” says Bahen, who has noticed an uptick in website traffic and a “pivot” in our giving habits. “Before, Canadians would often give to big charities, brands they could trust,” she says. “Now they’re looking to support community groups that dedicate their resources to essential frontline services – like food banks, shelters or crisis lines.” To help charities survive, Imagine Canada is urging Ottawa to bail out the sector and provide either stabilization funding or by offering to match public donations, similar to what governments do during fires or natural disasters. MacDonald also suggests that Canadians who have weathered the financial crisis relatively unscathed might kickstart a philanthropy blitz similar to the spending frenzy some economists are predicting will unfold once the pandemic is behind us. “Our sector is hoping that as the pandemic fades and the economy reopens, donor generosity will surge,” says MacDonald. “Our hope is that the return to ‘normal’ will spark confidence among Canadians who haven’t been financially affected by the crisis, or who have perhaps not donated as much during the pandemic. A surge in donations could make a significant difference for organizations and the communities they serve.” Ultimately, MacDonald feels Canadians have a social responsibility to care for the less fortunate. “These organizations provide necessary services in our communities,” he says. “Society has a role to play in making sure they’re available.”

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THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED

86,000 REGISTERED CHARITIES IN CANADA

TOTAL DONATIONS IN 2018, 5 MILLION CANADIAN TAXPAYERS CLAIMED $9.8 BILLION ON THEIR TAX RETURNS (Source: Statistics Canada)

COVID EFFECT IN 2020, CANADIANS DONATED AN AVERAGE OF $317 ANNUALLY, A DROP

40%

OF FROM PRE-COVID-19 TIMES (Source: Imagine Canada Sector Monitor Survey conducted in November and December 2020)

TOP 5 CAUSES CANADIANS SUPPORT SOCIAL SERVICES

41% RELIGIOUS

31% HEALTH

26% EDUCATION

19% PUBLIC BENEFIT

16% (Source: Canada Helps - The Giving Report)

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SMART CHARITY YOUR GIVING

Strategic donations maximize both gifts and tax breaks. Peter Muggeridge explains how to get the most bang for your charitable bucks made to a registered charity by Dec. 31, 2020 or any unclaimed donations from the previous five years. Remember, this is a non-refundable tax credit, so you can only use it to reduce the tax you owe. (Hint: Using the CRA’s charity tax calculator will help determine whether it makes sense to claim your spouse or common-law partner’s donations.)

FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL RATES

to a worthy cause and less to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), here are some strategies to keep in mind. (As some are more complex than others, you may want to discuss them with a financial adviser.)

WHAT CAN YOU CLAIM? Donations of cash, securities or bequests to a registered charity will generate a tax receipt. However, don’t expect a receipt if you receive something in return for your donation, such as a meal, Girl Guide cookies, lottery tickets or membership fees.

WILLS AND BEQUESTS “It’s very simple to include a gift to a charity for a specific dollar amount or a percentage of your estate,” says Kovacs. When the donor dies, their estate receives the tax credit. He says a good rule of thumb is to generate one dollar in tax savings for every two dollars you donate. “I had a client who left $10,000 in her will to a local animal shelter. This saved her estate $5,000 in taxes.”

DONATING SECURITIES PAPERWORK When you file your return, claim your tax credit for any donations

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Kovacs also illustrates how donating listed Canadian stocks, ETFs or mutual funds can eliminate cap-

PHOTOGRAPHY, NINA VARTANAVA/EYEEM/GETTYIMAGES

t stands to reason that more Canadians would give to charity if they knew about the tax advantages. “By using charitable-giving strategies, you can minimize your taxes and maximize what you’re giving to causes that benefit the community,” says Andy Kovacs, a Markham, Ont.based Sun Life financial planner. Better yet, you don’t have to be rolling in it to become a savvy philanthropist. “You can create very significant gifts with small amounts,” notes Mark Halpern, a Torontobased financial planner and CEO of WEALTHInsurance.com, a firm specializing in risk management and insurance solutions. So if you want to give more money

The federal charitable tax credit rate is 15 per cent on the first $200 you donate and 29 per cent on everything above that. Provinces also provide charity tax credits, though their rates vary. For instance, if you live in Quebec (the province that offers the greatest incentives to give) and donate $1,000, you will receive a combined federal and provincial tax credit of $494, whereas those living in Ontario (the province that offers the least incentive) would only receive a combined credit of $361.38 for the same amount.

ital gains tax. “One client originally bought stocks for $10,000 and over the years its value appreciated to $50,000. Had he sold the stock at market value, he would have triggered capital gains tax on the $40,000 appreciation. However, by giving the stock ‘in kind’ to a charity, he avoided capital gains and received a tax receipt for the full $50,000. This saved him about $35,000 in taxes.”

had a $500,000 life insurance policy he wished to donate to his alma mater. An independent actuary valued the policy at $290,000, which he donated to the university. In exchange, he received a charitable donation receipt for the entire $290,000 and saved himself $145,000 in taxes.”

TOP REASONS WHY CANADIANS SAY THEY GIVE COMPASSION FOR THOSE IN NEED

89%

PERSONALLY BELIEVE IN A CAUSE AND WANT TO HELP

85% CONTRIBUTE TO OUR COMMUNITIES

79%

DONATING RRSPS/RRIFS This is a strategy well suited to highincome donors, where they name a charity as the beneficiary of an RRSP or RRIF in order to eliminate tax owing on the registered money due upon their death.

DONATING INSURANCE Halpern, an expert in the use of life insurance for philanthropy, explains how this strategy worked for a client: “A retired accountant in his mid-60s

PERSONALLY AFFECTED BY AN ORGANIZATION’S CAUSE

61%

GIVING BY THE AGES Average donations by age group 35-44 give $562 a year 45-54 give $553 a year 55-64 give $687 a year 65–74 give $674 a year Over 75 give $811 a year (Source: Statistics Canada for 2018)

RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS OR BELIEFS

29%

INCOME TAX CREDIT

23% (Source: Imagine Canada Sector Source report)

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EVERYDAY PHILANTHROPISTS

hey cuddle donkeys and knit gnomes and donate what they can. They are the everyday philanthropists whose good deeds bridge the gaps in Canada’s social safety net. Whether they dig out $10 from their wallet or volunteer a few hours a week, they pay it forward by giving time and money to causes that have touched their lives. There are so many ways to lend a helping hand and you don’t need deep pockets to make a difference. Just look around your community and see who needs assistance, suggests Marco Amati, who runs a hot lunch program in Nova Scotia. “It’s rewarding to open your heart.” Here are some compassionate Canadians who are responding to those in need.

FACE OF HUNGER WHO John Bond, 73, moved clear across the country in 2007 when he retired from pharmaceutical sales, from Vancouver to Sydney, N.S. Cape Breton faces economic challenges with an unemployment rate of 14 per cent in March 2020, and the popula-

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tion of Sydney has shrunk by eight per cent in the last 15 years as young people leave to find work. Nonetheless, it’s his wife’s hometown, and there is family close by, including a beloved teenage grandson. Eager to become an active part of his new community, Bond jumped at a pastor’s request to sit on the board of a community hot-meal program. THE CHARITY Loaves and Fishes, founded 39 years ago, feeds roughly 200 people a day. Its annual budget of $210,160 comes mainly from small donations, while just seven per cent comes from

the provincial government. There are just two full-time staff with many more volunteers buttressing the operation. Roughly 70 per cent of the clients are over the age of 50, reports executive director Marco Amati. THE CONNECTION To fulfill his board duties, Bond spends time at the former community hall where Loaves and Fishes provides hot nutritious lunches 365 days a year – no questions asked. Bond, who visits twice a week to talk to people and thank the volunteers, describes seeing the face of hunger that “would break your heart. This was the first time I’ve had an understanding,” says Bond, who also donates money, although he prefers not to say how much. “I’ve never been hungry.” WHY HE GIVES In 2002, doctors discovered Bond had a rare colon cancer usually diagnosed when it’s beyond treatment. Given a clean bill of health after an operation, “I just knew my life had been inexplicably extended, and I needed to be thankful and to do that by giving back to others in either a personal or organizational way,” he says. loavesandfishescb.com

DANCES WITH DONKEYS THE DONORS Bob and Judy Taylor fell in love at the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada – with the donkeys. The retired couple, both 62, visited the Guelph, Ont.-area farm about 12

PHOTOGRAPHY, ALEXSL/GETTY IMAGES (HEART); COURTESY JOHN BOND

YOUR GIVING

You don’t have to have deep pockets to make a difference. Trish Crawford talks to Canadians who give time and a little money to causes that have touched their hearts

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non-registered investment account, is the most tax efficient way to support charity because the capital gain has a zero-percent inclusion rate. Publicly traded securities include stocks, bonds, mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) listed on recognized stock exchanges. If you sell the securities and then donate the cash proceeds to charity, you pay tax on 50% of the capital gain. If you donate the securities in-kind, the taxable capital gain decreases from 50% to 0%. In both scenarios, you would receive a charitable receipt for the amount donated. However, with the in-kind donation of securities, your taxable income is signiﬁcantly reduced. Fred, a client of Abundance Canada, has always donated a percentage of his annual income to charity. When a homeless shelter in his city launched a fundraising campaign to construct a new building, he decided to give them an extra $50,000 above his annual support. As Fred excitedly told a friend about the project over lunch one day, his friend said writing a cheque might not be the most tax efficient way to give. He suggested Fred consider donating publicly traded securities instead. Among other assets, Fred had a non-registered investment account that included a stock worth $50,000, with an adjusted cost base of $20,000. If he sold the stock and donated the cash proceeds directly to the charity, Fred would incur a taxable capital gain of $15,000 (50% of the $30,000 total capital gain) However, if Fred chose to donate the stock

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years ago and were charmed by the curious, social, smart animals that loved having their ears scratched. “They are soft and smell good,” says Judy, adding it’s the result of donkeys plunging their faces into fragrant hay while feeding. “They are like big curious pets.” THE CHARITY The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada in Puslinch, Ont., has a $1 million annual budget that covers salaries of eight staff who care for 100 animals seized by the SPCA due to abuse or neglect or given up by owners who don’t want them or can’t look after them. They house them and grow high-fibre feed on two adjacent 100-acre farms, while another 66 are fostered by area farmers trained in their care by sanctuary staff. THE CONNECTION Every year, they sponsor two donkeys named Zeus and Chaplin for around $75 apiece as Christmas presents to each other, but they’ve given hundreds over and above that since COVID-19 hit. “We hear of needs for specific donkeys that they don’t have the funding for, so we will cover those costs,” says Judy, who adds they are buying special boots for two

KNITTED GNOMES WHO Melanie Achen, 53, found the crafty camaraderie of the West Coast Knitters Guild helped fill the void the B.C. former public health nurse felt being so far away from her knitting-savvy Saskatchewan relatives, who taught her the craft. Knitting lends itself very well to community engagement, says Achen, who is currently working on a Bernie Sandersinspired sweater for herself. THE CHARITY Nova House is a 10bed women’s shelter run by Chimo Community Services that has been serving the Richmond, B.C., area for 45 years. The programs include transition housing from its shelter, a crisis line staffed by 200 volunteers, legal and counselling services for children and elderly, and anti-bullying initiatives. Donations account

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for 25 per cent of Chimo’s $2.3 million annual budget. THE CONNECTION The Guild raises $2,000 a year for Nova House, partly through an annual craft sale. Achen forgoes “precious” sweaters that require expensive yarn and a lot of skill and makes small, inexpensive things – like 15 little gnomes she sold for $20 each in less than two hours last year. There was $300 raised, just like that. While there was no Christmas craft sale last year due to COVID-19, the guild raised money through yarn sales and member donations. Achen also supports Doctors Without Borders, the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. WHY SHE GIVES “I am personally drawn to supporting charities that support women in need and have volunteered in the past with organizations that are focused on women’s health and welfare.” chimoservices.com

DEVOTED COUPLE THE DONOR Joe Sealy’s marriage was a match made in entertainment heaven. The former member

of the Blood, Sweat and Tears band and current pianist with the Colin Hunter band was married to hair and makeup artist Judi CooperSealy for 46 years. She worked on famed Canadian shows SCTV, CODCO and Kids in the Hall,

PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY BOB AND JUDY TAYLOR (TAYLOR); COURTESY MELANIE ACHEN (ACHEN); COURTESY JOE SEALY (SEALY AND COOPER-SEALY)

donkeys whose hooves hadn’t been properly cared for. They have given untold hours to the sanctuary, which preCOVID they used to visit twice a week to clean stalls, feed and fondle. Judy, an amateur violinist, even played Simple Gifts and Amazing Grace to the beasts, and the couple led tours for school groups and visitors. “This is our passion,” says Judy. “They are our loves.” WHY THEY GIVE “Everyone can help where they have an interest and feel the need,” says Judy. thedonkeysanctuary.ca

There’s now more than enough data to compare Canada’s COVID-19 record with that of other developed countries.

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH OUR GOVERNMENTS’ PERFORMANCE?

C.A.R.P. IS DEFINITELY NOT. We led the world in the percentage of COVID deaths in nursing homes. We trailed the world in getting our hands on COVID vaccines and getting those vaccines into the arms of our most vulnerable population. What we’ve seen from many governments is the same: reaction rather than leadership, and always too little, too late. AND WHAT’S NEXT? YOU ALREADY KNOW. We’ll get through it, somehow, and governments will hope we forget their appalling record. BUT C.A.R.P. WILL NOT FORGET. We intend to make COVID — and what it revealed about how governments treat seniors — the major election issue in both federal and provincial elections coming up. And if there's one thing politicians fear the most, it's angry voters. This is exactly the right time to force politicians and bureaucrats to wake up and start producing results.

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sometimes drawing him into her work – like the time Sealy played the piano in a Casablanca sketch on SCTV. THE CHARITY The Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care, started in 1989 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, supports 2,200 patients at home and 267 in the hospital. It’s a free service supported by the hospital and Ontario Ministry of Health, but it also gets a share of Mount Sinai’s private donations, which totalled $65 million last year. That money went toward tablets, so patients could connect with families during the pandemic, and portable ultrasounds. THE CONNECTION Cooper-Sealy, who cut actor Martin Short’s hair and specialized in special effects, died in 2018 at 77 from Lewy body dementia. For the last six months of her life, a palliative care team from Mount Sinai tended to her on a hospital bed in the living room of her home, where she died with her husband by her side. Sealy, 81, is grateful for the care she received and the kindness of being able to call them – and not 911 – when she passed away. He directed donations in her name to the hospital after her death and continues to give monthly donations to Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. WHY HE GIVES “Firstly, I tend to give to hospitals where I have received treatment,” says the Toronto musician and record producer, who also donates to Princess Margaret Hospital and Doctors Without Borders. “Then I give monthly to Save the Children because I have a soft spot for children.” tlcpc.org

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HANDY MAN THE DONOR Saskatoon businessman Jim Rhode, 53, has the tools and a workshop to help an ever-expanding group of charities in his hometown. The owner of the Davis Machine Co., which provides power generators to various sectors including the oil and gas industry, belongs to service clubs that depend on him to help with everything from building school skating rinks to serving Christmas meals. THE CHARITY Care and Share, founded in 1997, works with 20 inner city schools in Saskatoon. More than 5,000 children benefit from recreation programs, babysitting and bike-safety training, reading assistance and essentials such as coats or lice shampoo. More than 85 per cent of the annual budget of around $200,000 comes from donations. THE CONNECTION As a volunteer at a Care and Share Christmas lunch in an inner-city school, he and his family were struck by polite requests for seconds of vegetables, not the gravy or pop. Rhode replaced the soft drinks with juice at his own expense of $3,500, and picked it up and delivered it, too. He also stores the charity’s 30 bikes and a large trailer for its ride program and provides an employee to deliver and pick them up from schools. WHY I GIVE “I am passionate about family, supporting my community and assisting grassroots initiatives that might not otherwise succeed.” careandsharesaskatoon.com Go to canadahelps.org for lists of agencies to support.

PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY JIM RHODE

Photo credit: Anne T. Leite/Oxfam

Make ending poverty part of your life story…

SPRING INTO

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VOLUNTEER NATION As well as donating money, Canadians also volunteer their time and expertise by sitting on boards, driving door to door with hot meals for the sick and shutin, knitting for craft sales and building community skating rinks. Almost 13 MILLION CANADIANS PROVIDED ABOUT 1.7 BILLION HOURS to charities, non-profits and community organizations. These hours of labour – which are not deductible – averaged 131 HOURS A YEAR. (Source: Statistics Canada )

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To take your first step, or to donate, visit toronto.bigbrothersbigsisters.ca or call 416-925-8981.

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WHO VOLUNTEERS AS WITH DONATIONS, THE VOLUNTEERING SPIRIT INCREASES WITH AGE: GEN-XERS (born 1966 to 1990) averaged 120 hours a year, BABY BOOMERS (born 1946 to 1965) averaged 153 while the oldest group (born 1918 to 1945) clocked in at 222 hours. (Source: Statistics Canada)

THE TOP CHARITABLE SECTORS WE VOLUNTEER FOR 1 > HOSPITALS 2 > RELIGIOUS GROUPS 3 > SPORTS AND RECREATION 4 > ARTS AND CULTURE 5 > LAW, ADVOCACY, POLITICS (Source: Statistics Canada)

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TOP CHARITIES (Ranked by donations received) 1 > WORLD VISION CANADA $247,140,000 2 > CANADIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY $224,390,000 3 > THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS $167,599,000

4 > JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL $129,094,000 5 > CANADA HELPS $114,788,000 6 > PLAN INTERNATIONAL CANADA INC. $98,095,000 7 > SALVATION ARMY $96,447,000 8 > CANADIAN CANCER SOCIETY $93,347,000 9 > UNITED WAY OF GREATER TORONTO $87,338,000 10 > HEART AND STROKE FOUNDATION OF CANADA $87,187,000 (Source: 2018 Globe and Mail CharityCAN Study)

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THE SALAH EFFECT

hen Salah Bachir threw himself a 65th birthday bash last October, it was a virtual celebration to put all other COVID-19 birthday bashes to shame. Instead of the requisite Zoom call, which would have required several computer screens to view his legion of friends, family and beneficiaries, the Toronto philanthropist saw an opportunity to do what he does best. He combined the party with the annual fundraiser he organizes for The 519, a Toronto organization that supports the LGBTQ community. Then Bachir, The 519’s honorary patron, exponentially amped up the entertainment factor. Attendees were treated to a private digital extravaganza with messages from Elton John and his husband, producer David Furnish, Margaret Atwood, the Barenaked Ladies and Andrea Martin, not to mention performances by a lineup of legends including k.d. lang, Patti Lupone, Carole Pope, Ben Vereen and Alan Cumming. By the end of the night, the president emeritus of Cineplex Media had raised $500,000 for The 519, which supports some of Toronto’s most vulnerable and marginalized residents. Although Bachir retired last year, he’s still an executive consultant for Cineplex as well as the president and CEO of Phamous Characters, a sponsorship, branding and events company

he has run for four decades. The 519’s executive director, Maura Lawless, says Bachir’s birthday fundraiser was their “largest and most successful” annual event ever, but his sprawling network of deep pockets has a lasting legacy as well. “The other kind of intangible element is that through his involvement, corporate partners and other philanthropic supporters have developed longer-term deeper relationships” with the centre. Affectionately dubbed Gala Salah for his larger-than-life-of-the-party presence on Canada’s schmancy rubber-chicken dinner circuit, Bachir recently told his Instagram followers he’s more than happy to stay home these days. “For the record, I do not miss dressing up for parties,” he wrote on Feb. 24, posting a picture taken two years ago at an Oscar party in L.A. where he is decked out in the eye-popping jewelry he favours – usually an extravagance of pearls but, in this case, a blingy three-strand necklace, a massive lapel brooch and an armful of sparkly bracelets. That diamond-studded Oscar party picture was taken just months before he had several surgeries “and had to relearn how to walk three different times,” the kidney-transplant recipient wrote. “And I am alive. So in perspective, every day is better than the last.” Everyone who has worked with Bachir on myriad fundraisers going back to the 1980s knows he has a few edicts, including “We should all be having more fun,” says Nancy Lockhart, who met him in the early ’90s when they both sat on the Canadian Film Centre board.

They are dear friends to this day; Bachir and his husband, artist Jacob Yerex, offered unwavering support when her husband, real estate developer, art collector and philanthropist Murray Frum, died in 2013. When it comes to galas, she knows where Bachir stands. “Speeches can be boring as hell. You’ve paid the money and then you get punished. Salah is about bringing on the entertainment.” Every colleague interviewed for this story shared Bachir’s golden rule of galas: “No live auctions! Never a live auction!” Bachir was born in Lebanon and emigrated to Canada in 1965 with his family when he was 10, where they settled in Rexdale, a northwestern Toronto neighbourhood. “I grew up playing hockey and lacrosse,” he says. “I still watch the NFL religiously. People have trouble reconciling that with the guy who wears pearls. Well, jewelry makes the man, I always say.” And how did he discover his signature accessory? “[The late arts patron] Bluma Appel invited me to a lunch where all the ladies were wearing pearls,” he says. “The next lunch, I wore my pearls, too. I told them I wanted to fit in!”

itting in versus standing out has been part of the narrative tension of Bachir’s life since the family immigrated to Canada. In Rexdale in the ’60s, “There were two WASPs between the Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavs and us, the Lebanese. My mother broke barriers, taking stuff from her garden back and forth to the neighbours.” One of his earliest memories is from Lebanon, when his mother and grandmother would give food to those who had none. “I remember my grandmother bak-

PHOTOGRAPHY, GEORGE PIMENTEL

YOUR GIVING

For one man of means, social justice, raising big dollars and awareness come straight from the heart By Leanne Delap

GALA NIGHTS Bachir at the 2019 CAFA Awards; scenes from several years of The 519 Galas to benefit the Toronto LGBTQ community centre; with his husband, Jacob Yerex

ing pita bread and telling me someone needed it more.” Bachir’s passion for social justice is deeprooted. His father was a union man, and he grew up going to the Labour Day parade. “Watching the Vietnam War on TV, the assassination of MLK, that shocked you awake.” When Bachir was 15, he stood outside the Dominion grocery store in the Rexdale Plaza to raise money for U.S. labour leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, who was making an appearance in Toronto near the end of the Delano grape boycott to protest the exploitation of California farm workers. “It’s kind of funny because I love grapes,” Bachir says. He collected about $150, and $50 of that came from his dad.

“I gave it to Chavez shyly. He told me how much $25 would mean to a family of migrant workers. And he told me something I will never forget: he said that the money I gave him was $150 more than the cause had that morning.” Bachir remembers bemused parents of his friends bringing him cookies whenever he was protesting outside the Dominion, whether he was boycotting produce or calling attention to na-

tive rights, South African apartheid activist Steve Biko’s assassination or the testing of American cruise missiles over Canada. “My mother was relieved when I was going out somewhere else rather than to stand in front of the grocery store where she shopped.” But it was his student days at Waterloo University – where he studied history and political science – that reinforced how food can unite people for the greater good. After he and fellow Marxistcurious students occupied the student newspaper for nine months.

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an ad that read: “‘I do’ means the same whether you are straight or gay. Let your MP know you support our Charter of Rights and Freedoms”). He also launched the Scene loyalty program and Cineplex magazine. “We don’t go in for celebrity gossip,” he says, citing the secret of his publishing success. His health issues with kidney disease led to a longtime association with another beneficiary of his charitable giving, St. Joseph’s Health Centre. While receiving dialysis at one of its clinics, he decided patients needed a serene space. He wanted to raise money and raise it fast, so he got on his phone and organized the Non-Gala Gala in 2013. “Don’t buy a dress. Don’t get a sitter. Don’t pay for parking. Don’t have a bad meal,” he said in an email to a vast network of contacts from his gilded Rolodex. “Just send me the money.” That effort netted $250,000, which was used to spruce up the hospital’s dialysis and chemotherapy clinics and buy TVs to help patients occupy the time as they spent hours each week hooked up to the machines that clean toxins from their blood. He later upped the ante, raising $2.5 million for entirely new clinics. Bachir, whose kidney transplant occurred in 2019, has had dialysis “all over the world” and thus is especially proud of the Bachir Yerex Family Dialysis Clinic at Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Renal Centre. The couple has even donated some of their art collection to adorn the beautiful new space. The list of causes Bachir has thrown himself into is

is commitment to LGBTQ causes is close to his heart. As an Arab son, he struggled as a closeted gay man. When he came out to his father when he was about 30, his dad asked if his mother knew. “I said I had already told her,” Bachir says. “So my father then goes, ‘Wait, I thought I was your best friend!’” He was reticent to come out to work colleagues and his sports pals but recalls his relief at a Super Bowl party he threw in that era. A friend, sensing his nervousness, said, “Sal, come on, I know you are gay. No straight guy ever catered a Super Bowl party from Fenton’s,” referring to the longshuttered, swanky Toronto restaurant beloved by the upper crust for its leek and Stilton soup. Bachir, a man of entrepreneurial verve, watched his brother open a video store and decided to start a trade magazine when he saw an opportunity. He added on a video trade show, then video awards galas. He worked with Universal and Disney on home video releases, eventually joining forces with Famous Players, which merged with Cineplex. His innovation, according to Marketing magazine, was to revolutionize and legitimize the in-cinema business, building blockbuster ads with clients and inserting a few powerful social justice-themed public service announcements (including the Bachir as Grand time in 2005 when he Marshal of Toronto’s got death threats for 2016 Pride Parade

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long and always personally meaningful. He is a founding member of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) and raised money for Casey House – Canada’s only freestanding hospital for HIV/AIDS patients – as well as the LGBTQ Inside Out film festival, the Canadian Film Centre, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where he is the chancellor. He threw a Wild Bird Ball for the Pelee Island Bird Observatory and, in 2016, he served as Grand Marshal of the Pride Parade, surrounded on the float by men in gold bikinis. He received the Variety Club Heart award in 1996, the Canadian Centre for Diversity Human Relations Award in 2012, the Order of Canada in 2017 and the Order of Ontario in 2020. Of these last two honours, which come with a lapel pin, he quips, “I learned that if you wear brooches” – he does, as often as possible, original commissions – “the pin goes over the brooch.” Bachir and Yerex usually live in a condo overlooking Toronto’s waterfront, where 3,000 works of stellar art surround them, including deep dives into the portfolios of Attila Richard Lukacs, Betty Goodwin, Stephen Andrews and an array of some 60 Warhols. He and Yerex and their Havanese dog, Max, have been dividing their time during the pandemic between their condo and their country house in Paris, Ont., once owned by the town’s mayor. Built in 1842, Alexander Graham Bell was a guest, “though you’d think the phone would work better than it does out here, with that pedigree,” Bachir jokes.

achir is endearingly direct in all his communication, his friends report. Andy Pringle, a friend since the early 2000s, relates his

PHOTOGRAPHY, FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS (BACHIR AND JOHNSTON); COURTESY ST. JOSEPH’S HEALTH CENTRE FOUNDATION (LOUNGE, BACHIR AND YEREX); GEORGE PIMENTEL (LOCKHART, DANIELS AND BACHIR, CHAMPAGNE, FLOWERS, PRINGLE); COURTESY KATE DANIELS (SIGNAGE); ROBERTO MACHADO NOA/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES (PRIDE)

When the administration “closed it without due process,” Bachir joined the International Students’ Association. “We threw potluck suppers to gather votes,” he says. “It taught me you can break a lot of barriers through food. You can build support for things, find kinship. You disarm people – they feel better having eaten something.”

fearlessness around what fundraisers call “making the ask.” Pringle, a former bond trader and current chair of the board of CANFAR who is married to journalist Valerie Pringle, recalls visiting Bachir in hospital after one of his surgeries. “Jacob said to me, ‘I wonder which of you will hit the other up for money [for a cause] first?’ I won because Salah was flat on his back.” Kate Alexander Daniels produced The 519 gala last year alongside Bachir. “Underneath the jewels and sparkle and shine and glamour that appears to you is actually an extremely humble, decent, authentic, loving warrior who will stop at nothing to do what’s right for the causes that he looks at and sees need help,” says the philanthropist and president of the strategic communications and production company Daniels/O’Hagan/ Stephenson. That said, Alexander Daniels says Bachir “is tough as nails.” The two have worked on event productions since the late ’90s at the CFC and later on AGO gala productions and the Governor General Arts Awards in Ottawa. “Salah takes no prisoners, nor does he have to. He is so fiercely intelligent, strategic, accomplished and capable.” From his new stay-at-home life, Bachir steps up where he is needed, segueing seamlessly from a video forum on diversity with an MPP to a board meeting to a sponsorship negotiation. Does he ever get flummoxed by the sheer number of his charitable commitments? “Of course I get overwhelmed. That’s what all those friends are for,” he says, “and I know to ask for help.” In the end, he’s still that kid protesting outside the Dominion in Rexdale. “If there is something I can do and I’m not doing it, I get angry and frustrated.”

PATRON, DONOR AND VOLUNTEER FUNDRAISER Bachir’s countless initiatives for the St. Joseph’s Health Care Foundation include the Bachir Yerex Family Dialysis Centre and honouring Murray Frum (Nancy Lockhart’s late husband), and the Bachir/Yerex Community Renal Centre, where the couple celebrated Bachir’s 65th birthday with their cut-out figures (above).

FRIENDS AND BENEFITS Nancy Lockhart (above), Valerie and Andy Pringle (left) at 519 Galas and Bachir with Kate Alexander Daniels at the CAFAs (right)

Bachir receiving the Order of Canada from then Gov. Gen. David Johnston, 2017

N O P L AC E T O

POLICY

With the second wave of COVID-19 exacting a toll in seniors homes, Alex Roslin investigates why we continue to fail our most vulnerable citizens

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PHOTOGRAPHY, THE CANADIAN PRESS/DARRYL DYCK ILLUSTRATIONS, GETTY IMAGES

G R OW L D

CANADIAN PROVINCES WOEFULLY UNDERFUND HOME-CARE SERVICES, FORCING THOUSANDS OF SENIORS INTO LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES WHERE THEY’RE MORE VULNERABLE TO COMMUNICABLE DISEASES

NO ONE CAN SAY we didn’t see it coming. The second

A resident of the Lynn Valley Care Centre seniors facility in North Vancouver, which recorded Canada’s first death from the virus on March 8, 2020

wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was widely prognosticated long before it hit. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that seniors residences would, again, be ground zero of the pandemic in Canada, much as they were last spring when eight in 10 Canadians who died of COVID-19 lived in long-term care and retirement homes. It was one of the most disastrous records in a world replete with disaster. Yet, prepare we did not. At least not very well. From infection control to understaffing, despite some amelioration, the problems behind the seniors homes horror show are in many cases unaddressed more than a year since the pandemic started last March. After a lull in cases last summer, COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths shot up across Canada in the fall, soaring back toward the highs seen last spring. In some provinces the second wave was worse than the first. In Alberta, lax health rules contributed to a devastating COVID-19 resurgence, with the hospitalization rate rising to 16.3 per one million people in late December, 10 times the peak of 1.6 last April, and an average daily death toll that reached 34 at the peak of the second wave in mid-January, up from two to four average daily deaths last spring. Manitoba was hit even harder. It had a peak of 40 daily new cases in the first wave, but the second wave saw 300 to 500 infections on many days in November and December, before declining to 100 to 200 cases a day in January. By Oct. 1, only 20 Manitobans had died from the virus; as of Feb. 28, that number had skyrocketed to 895. COVID-19 deaths started to decline nationwide in late January, but the number of new cases stopped falling in late February and had even bounced back up, possibly due to deadlier, more infectious variants like the one that killed more than half of the residents of a Barrie, everythingzoomer.com

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Ont., nursing home in January and February. With a slow vaccine rollout and the spectre of a dreaded third wave driven by the new virus strains, it’s a race against time. Across the country, as of early March, 14,500 residents of longterm care and other types of seniors homes had died in the pandemic. That was 66 per cent of Canada’s 22,000 total COVID-19 deaths, according to data from Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing (NIA), which tracks COVID19’s impacts on seniors. It is lower than the 80 per cent recorded between March and early May during the first wave, but Canada’s rate is still far higher than the 41 per cent average found in 22 countries in a February study by the International Long-Term Care Policy Network. The U.S. rate was 39 per cent. “We’re still one of the worst in the world,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, the NIA’s director of health policy research and one of Canada’s leading geriatricians. Sinha said many of the same problems are fuelling the devastation in the second wave as in the first. These include a patchwork of “highly variable” infection-control rules in every province and territory, chronic understaffing, and antiquated homes with “ward” rooms of up to four residents each where virus outbreaks are especially rampant. “Lo and behold, again some of the worst outbreaks are in these older homes. These are avoidable deaths.” Bill VanGorder, chief policy officer at C.A.R.P., Canada’s largest advocacy group for older Canadians and a not-for-profit affiliate of ZoomerMedia, says little has been done to improve the conditions in long-term care. “We’re getting promises for future changes, but nothing much for the immediate term.” On top of the problems Sinha listed, VanGorder said staff in the homes still lack access to adequate protective equipment, while Canadian provinces woefully underfund home-care

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AS OF EARLY MARCH,

14,500 RESIDENTS OF LONGTERM CARE AND OTHER TYPES OF SENIORS’ HOMES HAD DIED IN THE PANDEMIC. THAT WAS

66% 22,000 OF CANADA’S

TOTAL COVID-19 DEATHS Data from Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing (NIA)

services, forcing thousands of seniors into long-term care facilities where they’re more vulnerable to communicable diseases. “Canada lags behind all other OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries on home care,” VanGorder said. “We’ve got to change this warehousing of seniors in huge hospitallike facilities that are a remnant of the old poor houses. C.A.R.P. has been talking about all these problems for years, and now we’re paying the price for the fact that it was ignored.” That message has been highlighted repeatedly during hearings that started in September before Ontario’s Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission, which has shed light on the bungled and slowmoving government response in a

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province where, as of March 8, 4,293 of 7,056 COVID-19 deaths were in seniors residences. The testimony has confirmed “there were many disconnects between what the science and evidence were showing needed to be done, the overall understanding of the issues at hand and the overall actions that were taken by the government,” Sinha said. “Our results speak for themselves.” At the privately owned Sunnycrest Nursing Home in Whitby, Ont., all but one of 119 residents caught COVID-19 and 30 died in an outbreak that started in November and ended on Jan. 1. A provincial inspection found lax infection control, a lack of protective equipment and staffing below 50 per cent of normal levels, with the inspector reporting it caused “actual harm to residents.” Sunnycrest was ordered to remedy nine failings and a local hospital assumed its management for at least 90 days. In January, a highly transmissible new strain of COVID-19 entered Roberta Place Long Term Care in Barrie, Ont. All of the 127 residents were infected, and 70 died, along with an essential caregiver. A provincial inspector who visited the privately owned home during the outbreak said the company had “failed to ensure that the home was a safe and secure environment for its residents,” noting that sick residents were sharing rooms with people who hadn’t tested positive. Earlier inspection reports during the pandemic found the home wasn’t complying with infection control rules. In February, residents’ families filed a proposed $50-million classaction lawsuit against Roberta Place in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, claiming the home had been “reckless, irresponsible, and neglectful” and “failed to ensure adequate staffing levels.” Understaffing remains a significant problem across Ontario, despite efforts to hire more workers after

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the first wave, said Dr. Bob Bell, a former deputy health minister of Ontario and an orthopedic surgeon. “We have to put more money into the nursing and personal care envelope [of the provincial budget for care homes].” Hiring more staff was a key recommendation of a study Bell led, released in December, of COVID-19 lessons learned for Revera, one of Canada’s largest private long-term care home operators. That study found another failing: many provinces still don’t require regular testing for seniors home staff. This is critical because symptoms take an average of five days and as many as 14 days to appear, during which time infected people can unknowingly transmit the virus. “Adequate surveillance testing is not there in Canada. I would say it should be done as often as every shift. I’m advocating to everyone: ‘Test, test, test,’” Bell said. Testing is just one area where standards vary wildly among provinces and territories, and sometimes even between neighbouring communities. “Directives in one public health unit differ from those a kilometre away. We really need to have consistent standards across the province

74 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

IN JANUARY, A HIGHLY TRANSMISSIBLE NEW STRAIN OF COVID-19 ENTERED ROBERTA PLACE LONG-TERM CARE IN BARRIE, ONT. ALL OF THE

127

RESIDENTS WERE INFECTED, AND

DIED, ALONG WITH AN ESSENTIAL CAREGIVER and nationally,” Bell said. The failings prompted a withering rebuke in late January from more than 300 Ontario doctors and advocates who signed a letter blaming the province for allowing “a grave humanitarian crisis” to unfold. “The Ontario government has taken little immediate action in implementing … expert recommendations to improve staffing levels, increase training and improve infection control

practices,” said the letter, organized by Doctors for Justice in LTC. “The government has allowed the situation in our LTC homes to become a preventable and recurring crisis during the 2nd wave.” The province’s inaction also spurred C.A.R.P. to launch a campaign calling on Ontario Premier Doug Ford to fire his long-term care minister, Merrilee Fullerton. More than 7,200 people had signed the group’s online petition as of March 1. The same issues are present from coast to coast in the second wave. In Winnipeg, almost 80 per cent of the Park Manor Care Home’s 82 residents were infected starting in early November, killing 13. Nearly 30 workers were also off sick, leaving the non-profit home so understaffed that CEO Abednigo Mandalupa had to come in on the weekend to do laundry. Mandalupa told CBC News the virus spread so widely because most residents live two or four to a room. What’s worse, staff didn’t get N-95 masks from the Winnipeg Health Authority until 20 days later because priority was given to more serious outbreaks, according to the CBC story. The facility was one of 48

PHOTOGRAPHY, THE CANADIAN PRESS/NATHAN DENETTE

Nov. 19, 2020, crosses are displayed in memory of those who died from COVID-19 at the Camilla Care Community facility during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mississauga, Ont.

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Winnipeg long-term care and other seniors homes with outbreaks in early December. Opposition NDP Leader Wab Kinew slammed the Manitoba government for “the terrible toll that lack of preparation exacted on our seniors,” the Winnipeg Free Press reported. Sinha agreed that little was done in Manitoba to get ready for the second wave. “It’s been sad to see that we had a summer of opportunity to get the homes well prepared, but sadly a lot of provinces closed their eyes and hoped for the best.” At the federal level, the Trudeau government has sidestepped calls for a public inquiry. Nearly a year after the health crisis started, Ottawa has yet to regularly publish detailed basic nationwide data on COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths in seniors homes. A federal fiscal update in November pledged national standards to “address critical gaps in long-term care facilities, including raising the working conditions of lower-wage essential workers,” and $1 billion for long-term care, contingent on collaboration with provinces and territories. But the initiative got a sceptical reception from provinces such as Ontario and Quebec that are wary of federal encroachment on their health turf. The Trudeau government has also stalled on responding to long-standing provincial demands, rejuvenated by COVID-19, for more federal transfer money for health care. Ottawa used to pay 50 per cent of costs, but now covers just $42 billion of the $188 billion total, or 22 per cent. The premiers want $28 billion in extra federal funds to bring Ottawa’s portion to 35 per cent of next year’s forecast total of $199 billion in health-care spending. As in the first wave, the worst death toll is in Quebec, where there have been 10,300 COVID-19 fatalities, or nearly half of the 22,000 lives lost across Canada as of early March. Quebec public health institute

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data shows that more than 8,300 of Quebec’s deaths, or 81 per cent, have been in seniors homes, significantly higher than the Canada-wide average of 66 per cent. “Clearly we still have problems,” said Dr. Quoc Dinh Nguyen, a geriatrician at the University of Montreal Hospital Centre who led a Quebec government panel that studied the lessons of the first wave of COVID-19. “It’s better than in the first wave, but we still lack person-

76 – APRIL/MAY 2021 everythingzoomer.com

nel and testing.” In some homes, he said as few as 30 per cent of staff follow voluntary provincial guidelines calling for regular COVID-19 tests every week, two weeks or month, depending on the region’s COVID-19 alert level. Pierre Lynch, president of AQDR, a 25,000-member seniors rights association in Quebec, estimates only about 70 per cent of all staff who work in seniors homes are getting tested regularly. “It’s important to test (all) the staff. They’re the ones going out of the building.” What’s more, Nguyen said some health-care facilities and personnel are flouting a provincial order that bans staff from working in more than one care facility, a leading cause of outbreaks in the first wave. “There are directives, but the challenge is to implement them,” he said. “The science is clear. We just have to do it.” In yet another unaddressed failing, Lynch said many of the province’s 400 long-term care homes are older facilities with shared bedrooms and bathrooms, a problem that contributed to some of the worst virus outbreaks in Quebec, Ontario and other provinces. With renovations to reduce shared spaces moving at a glacial pace, a quicker, cheaper step would be to provide more home and community care, which would reduce infections and provide an alternative to institutional living. “It’s now oriented to hospitalization,” Lynch said. “We need to redefine health care and elder care.” Nguyen agreed. “My No. 1 recommendation is that seniors are considered the present and future of the health system. After COVID-19, there will be a different health issue. As long as we don’t recognize that reality, we will always be behind.” See the author’s review of two new books on the future of long-term care at everythingzoomer.com/LTCbooks.

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Canadians value medicines and vaccines more than ever but worry that Ottawa’s red tape is blocking access

OVID-19 challenges have shown us that we should be clearing the way for new health innovations to come to Canada. Recent federal regulations are doing the exact opposite. In an effort to reduce drug spending, the Government of Canada has adopted new regulations that will not only drive down drug prices to unsustainable levels but also create more red tape for companies that want to bring their treatments and vaccines to Canadians. As a result C.A.R.P. did a survey on the issue of innovation vs regulation. For many older Canadians with cancer, diabetes, and other serious diseases who need access to the newest treatments now, not two years from now, it means lots of waiting and anxiety. It means thousands of unnecessary and avoidable deaths. It means looking at other countries at the front of the line for medicine and vaccine access and wondering where we went wrong. Thanks to COVID-19, everyone now understands this struggle. In the recent national survey conducted by C.A.R.P., respondents were clear that they don’t want to give up access to the newest medicines and vaccines for lower drug prices. They also believe that the federal government needs to reconsider the new drug pricing rules. “Canadians can see that there are many very promising new treatments becoming available and seniors in particular want to make sure they are available here,” said Bill VanGorder, Chief Policy Officer for C.A.R.P. “The delays in getting COVID-19 vaccines into Canada earlier this year are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the serious issues that regulations can cause in delaying access to new medicines in this country.” “We know that the new pricing regulations have delayed or canceled new medicines in Canada. Those delays can be as long as 3 years.” said Dr. Jason Field, President and CEO of Life Sciences Ontario. The new pricing regulations must enable innovation and research that allows Canadians aaccess to the new life-saving treatments for cancer and many other serious conditions in a timely fashion vs other countries.”

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Someone who has seen ﬁrst-hand the impact new treatments can have on improving the health and quality of life of patients is Gail Attara, President and CEO of the Gastrointestinal Society (www.badgut.org). “This is a very exciting time for the development of new treatments for many serious health conditions. These treatments can really help patients, but only if they have access to them. We can, and must, do a better job of getting these new medicines to patients more quickly.” In fact almost all Canadian health charities (i.e. Diabetes Canada, Canadian Lung Association etc.) are worried about the impact these regulations will have on access to new medicines and research in Canada. (The Health Charities Coalition of Canada's input on the issue can be found here: http://bit.ly/ HCCCRxPricing) To learn more about the federal drug price regulations, C.A.R.P. hosted a webinar recently and the recording can be accessed here: carp.ca/accesstomeds. You can also visit Life Sciences Ontario’s advocacy page on the issue: https://bit.ly/ LSOadvocacy.

C.A.R.P. NATIONAL SURVEY

Results of 3,642 older Canadians on access to medicines: • 43% of the respondents believed that drugs represented 50% or more of the Canadian health care budget. Canadian public sector spending on drugs is actually 7.9%. (source: Cdn Institute of Health Information) • 81% believe ensuring rapid access to medicines and vaccines is more important than lowering their costs • 87% want the federal government to ensure that new medicines come to Canada at the same time or faster than other major developed countries • 81% believe the federal government should reconsider the new drug pricing regulations to ensure they do not block or delay access to new medicines or vaccines

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GENERATIONS

tough love As parents, unconditional care for our children comes with the territory. Yet, as Gabrielle Bauer discovered, sometimes the kindest thing to do for a relationship with an adult child is to give it a break

“

I did my best.”

“Those are just words. You could have done better.” “I can’t turn back the clock. What can I do right now?” “Nothing. Maybe there’s nothing you can do.” On and on we go, unable to get off this black merry-go-round. My daughter is 24 years old, and she hates me. She also loves me, fiercely. She loves me but she won’t – or can’t – forgive me for dumping my anxieties on her when she was growing up. Like that day at her elementary school, when I burst into tears in front of the mean girls who were snubbing her. Or the time I freaked out when her civics grade dropped from 90 to 72 within a week. Stuff like that. When I hang up the phone this time, I tell my husband I can’t keep doing this. Tara is my firstborn child, and I love her stupidly but I need a break. The next day Tara texts me to suggest we stop talking for a while. We’re on the same page, then. We decide on a month of no contact – no visits, phone calls, video chats, emails or texts – to start with. She’ll miss Thanksgiving and her brother’s birthday, but we agree it’s for the best. Life is supposed to get easier when your children become adults. You can do grown-up things with them, like talking politics over cocktails or getting side-by-side spa treatments. You can take holidays together and actually enjoy them. Gone are the muttered monosyllables, the slammed doors, the rolled eyes.

PHOTOGRAPHY, MATTIA/STOCKSY

Except when they aren’t. Relationships with our adult children can be close and rewarding but also tense and frustrating – or toxic to the point of no return. While not the norm, deep freezes between parents and grown children are by no means rare: in a 2015 multi-centre U.S. survey called Estrangement Between Mothers and Adult Children pub-

lished in the Journal of Marriage and Family involving more than 2,000 mother-adult child relationships within 560 families, about 12 per cent reported estrangement from one or more of their children. Could it happen to me? Tara herself has admitted that social media offers a lot of encouragement to sever family ties. “Every time you mention a problem with a parent, someone pops into the discussion and suggests you go no-contact,” she told me once. “There’s a lot of permission for this sort of thing.” By taking a deliberate step back from her, I hope to course correct our relationship before it reaches that point. This “planned pause” strategy gets the thumbs up from Dianne Gilmour, a Vancouver-based counsellor who specializes in relationships, as long as both partes spell out details such as the length of the pause and the reasons behind it. “It really helps when they’re are mutually understood and agreed-upon boundaries,” she says. “That way, neither party is sitting back and wondering when communication is going to pick up again.” More often than not, however, the push for a break comes from one side, forcing the other party to flex to an unwanted agenda. Lila*, 59, was running errands in her car when she got a call from her 33-year-old son, the father of a toddler approaching her second birthday. “He said that my grandmothering was intrusive, and he needed some time off from me,” says Lila, a medical writer living in rural Ontario. “I said, ‘Sure, let’s take a break and revisit this in the future’ and then pulled off the road so I could calm down and stop crying.” As distraught as she was, Lila knew she could get through it, because she had done it before. Thirteen years earlier, her son had moved to Asia and cut off all contact with her, ignoring her emails and phone messages. After three long months, she got a four-page email from him, detail* Name has been changed

ing all the pain she had caused him. You would have done the same thing if you had my childhood, she typed back immediately – and then deleted the sentence. Instead, she wrote: You’re absolutely right. This is your truth, and I’m sorry for what I did. Looking back, Lila sees that moment as “a fork in the road. I finally gave him what he needed, which was to be heard. I got my son back after that.” This time around, Lila knew just what to do. “I had to let go of the postcard I had created in my mind, the smiling grandma watching over a cosy multigenerational family,” she says. “I needed to step back and let my son come to me.” Six weeks later he began sending her texts. Next, he asked her advice on his daughter’s bout of impetigo. “I’m learning that I have to wait until he reaches out,” she says. “Now my son, daughter-in-law and I accept our roles in this new dynamic, and it’s working really well.” As a writer, I reflexively turn to the written word to help me deal with life, and October 2020 – the month Tara and I stopped communicating – was no exception. As the days grew shorter and the leaves fell off the trees, the books piled up on my night table. I got a glimpse into Tara’s perspective when I read what Joshua Coleman, author of When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along, had to say about young adult children: “It was their childhood, not yours; their experience, not yours; and now, in case it wasn’t perfectly clear, their adulthood.” I resolved to “keep your mouth shut and your door open,” as Jane Isay counsels in her book Walking on Eggshells. Her advice about giving advice had me wincing in self-recognition: “Don’t give it. They don’t like it. They don’t want it. They resent it.” I agreed with Allison Bottke, author of Setting Boundaries With Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and everythingzoomer.com

APRIL/MAY 2021

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Healing for Struggling Parents, who urged parents like me to“recognize the parts we play in the drama.” What was my part? What Lila had told me about her son – he needed to be heard – was exactly what Tara had been telling me for, oh, 15 years or so. Whenever she risked sharing a problem with me, I jumped into fix mode. Did you try this? Did you try that? Anything I can do? What she desperately needed and had never gotten from me was a mother who could sit with her pain. Who could hear her words, rather than deflect them. Gilmour has made mutual hearing a cornerstone of her practice. A healthy relationship requires that “each side feels heard, even if the other party doesn’t agree with what’s being said,” she explains. But how do you get there? “You break it down into workable pieces so it’s not a huge emotional blob. Situation by situation, memory by memory. Take 30 to 60 seconds to give your side. The other person doesn’t get to challenge what you said. She just listens – and then it’s her turn to talk.” Of course, the “hearing cure” only works if both parties agree to the deal. Elizabeth Oakley, 54, tried hard to make it happen. After decades of clamouring for her 88-yearold mother’s attention, Oakley, who lives in Barrie, Ont., “wrote her a letter explaining why I felt so hurt, like her lack of emotional support when I got divorced and when I lost my job during the pandemic.” When the letter went unanswered, Oakley reached for the phone. “I spent a week calling her every day, trying to inspire a real conversation. In return I got criticism about my personal choices, parenting and even my housekeeping.” That’s when Oakley decided she was playing a game of solitaire – and chose to fold. “I didn’t make any formal announcement, just stopped contact,” says Oakley, who regards the

rupture as “an indefinite break. If right now and, well, with Christmas it helps us get back on track, great, around the corner …” but I’m not counting on it. It’s selfYou what? preservation at this point.” Unlike Oakley, I knew exact- I came this close to saying it. This ly when Tara and I would connect was my fork in the road, my chance again: Nov. 1. The second COVID-19 to do better. “What a bummer,” I lockdown hadn’t kicked in yet, so told her. “No problem with the earwe arranged to meet at an outdoor ly Christmas present.” We both patio. Bloody Caesar in hand, Tara laughed – and just like that, our twoshared her big news: she and two month experiment was over. So what happens next? What friends had moved into a three-bedroom flat in Toronto’s Little Italy will stop the black merry-go-round district – that morning. After vow- from pulling us into its orbit again? ing for three years to get out of her According to Halifax therapist cramped studio apartment, she had Timothy Walker, a lot will depend finally done it. That she made her on me. “You have to let go of the idea move during our month apart could that you can plan your child’s journey for her and, innot, it seemed to me, stead, honour the be a coincidence. journey she’s on,” Tara suggested exsays Walker. With tending our hiatus an adult son who through November. lived in a van for “I’m always aware “You have to three years, Walker of what you might let go of the speaks from experithink of my choices,” ence. “Any time she confided. “It’s idea that you I tried to tell him like you’re sitting can plan your what to do, he shut on my shoulder all child’s journey down,” he says. So the time, and it feels can I never, ever ofhealthy to have a for her and, fer advice to Tara break from that.” instead, again? “Only if she Agreeing to her rehonour the asks for it,” Walker quest came easily: journey says right away. truth be told, the “But your main month off had taken she’s on” task is to let go of a load off my shoulexpectations and ders as well. The reaccept what’s in prieve from our front of you.” blame-and-defend How very Zen: dance, from the clench in my gut in anticipation of the only way for Tara and I to come our phone calls, had felt like a holi- together is for me to let go. It’s why day and made it clear how unhealthy Tara has fought me so hard all this time, and I can’t blame her. It’s the our relationship had become. On the last day of November, I got a fundamental task of parenthood breathless call from Tara. “I’m going and, for some of us, the most diffito Costa Rica for a couple of weeks, cult thing in the world. But hey, I’ve itinerary all planned out, Airbnbs all got time. And if Tara and I lose our way booked and – I know this is incredibly stupid – but I somehow man- again, we now have a tool we can aged to book a flight to the wrong reach for. Retreat, reset, restart – San José, the one in California. I repeat as often as needed. Works can’t afford the difference in airfare for me.

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SCIENCE

GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT

PHOTOGRAPHY, STEVE STOCK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (MINI OREOS); MICHAEL NEELON/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (POPCORN); BETTY LARUE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (BERTOLLI); MICHAEL NEELON/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (BANQUET); JH PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (MARS); STANLEY MARQUARDT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (LAYS); CUM OKOLO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (STARBUCKS); HELEN SESSIONS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (EXTRACT); MICHAEL NEELON(MISC)/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (POP TART)

ichael Moss looks at rows of brightly packaged cookies, jars of spaghetti sauce and microwaveable meals on the shelves of his local grocery store in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has a good chuckle. While most of us are ignorant of the machinations that compel us to buy food, the investigative journalist knows the thought that goes into the wrapping and irresistible contents. “I look at all the tricks that they use to get us to put that package in the shopping cart and laugh,” Moss, 65, says in an interview from his home. “It’s so diabolical, it’s funny.” He also knows what is happening when, with dismay, guilt or regret, we realize we’ve inhaled one of those stand-up bags of mini-Oreos we can eat with one hand. It’s all orchestrated by our brains, with an assist from fat cells, stomach, nose and tongue. After reading Moss’s new book, Hooked: Food, Free Will and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, you may feel defeated because he shows how our brains conspire to ensure we consume calories we don’t need when we’re not even hungry. Add to that the food industry’s deepening grasp of neuroscience and the conundrum is summed up by one of Moss’s interviewees, neuroscientist Dana Small, who started out at Montreal’s McGill University in the early 2000s using positron emission tomography (PET) scans to map brains on chocolate. “It’s not so much that food is addictive but rather that we by nature are drawn to eating, and the companies changed the food,” the director of Yale University’s Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center tells Moss. In 2010, Moss won a Pulitzer Prize for a New York Times story about contaminated meat and food-safety regulations. Then he embarked on research for his 2013 book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants

Hooked Us, which, he writes in the prologue to Hooked, “argued that grocery manufacturers were competing with fast-food chains in a race to the bottom that rewarded profits over health.” But when he was doing interviews, time and again he was asked if he thought food was addictive and he didn’t have the answer. People were becoming more conscious of what they ate, and the food companies had responded by reducing salt, sugar and fat in their products. Yet he had a lingering feeling we were not in control of our appetites, and we had lost something in the transition from traditional, home-cooked meals to convenience food.

FOOD ADDICTS The goal of Hooked was to “sort out and size up the true peril in food,” he writes, and the first half of the book focuses on how much our penchant for overeating is baked into our biology, while the second half is devoted to how the processed food industry exploits it. Moss now believes our obsession with food can be classified as an addiction, and it is more problematic than a tobacco or drug habit. “You can’t just go cold turkey,” he notes. Indeed, Moss uses the definition of addiction given by Philip Morris CEO Michael Szymanczyk in a 2000 class-action lawsuit launched by smokers: “A repetitive behaviour that some people find difficult to quit.” The brain is still a vast mystery, but as scientists probed deeper into the recesses of our minds, they discovered the hypothalamus, an almondsized structure in the mid-brain, is responsible for moderating the four Fs essential to survival: fight, flight, fornication and food. It does this by generating dopamine, a chemical that drives our desire to eat. In evolutionary terms,

the ultimate payout is simply staying alive. Salt, sugar and fat are all we need to stimulate dopamine production, which in turn prompts the brain to make natural opioid-like chemicals like endorphins that flood the nervous system and can reduce pain and anxiety, not to mention alter our mood. And the faster food gets to our brain, the greater our response: Moss reports that cigarette smoke takes about 10 seconds to rouse the brain via the bloodstream, while sugar on the tongue gets there in half a second, with salt and fat not far behind. While the brain is alerted by signals from 10,000 taste buds on the tongue, we also have 10 million smell receptors in our nasal cavity, not to mention a trigeminal nerve in the roof of our mouth that recognizes fat and a stomach that also senses sugar. Moss borrows a simplistic analogy from addiction specialists to describe what he calls the “go brain” (which drives our desire for things we want and like) and the “stop brain” (which examines our decisions and weighs the benefits and risks) – although these functions cannot be attributed to any precise region because our brains are like the conductor of an orchestra, working in concert with many players. Problem is that the “stop brain” is overridden by triggers all too prevalent in the modern world such as stress and distraction. Hunger, of course, interrupts that sober second thought, as do some of the key attributes of processed food that manufacturers are only too happy to deliver: flavour, cost, availability, variety and speed of acquisition.

POP-TART MEMORIES “Our overarching goal has been getting more fuel for the least amount of work,” Moss writes. “If our energy output is viewed as the cost of obtaining

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60 kinds of sugar to everything from ketchup to yogurt, “creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying,” Moss writes. When we got wise to how much we were consuming in forms like high-fructose corn syrup, they gave us artificial sweeteners like sucralose, which some studies suggest “might not help us lose weight at all, or might even cause us to gain weight,” he says in the book. While our biology partly explains why obesity has exploded in the past 40 years to the point where an estimated 650 million people – about seven per cent of the world’s population – are more than 35 pounds heavier than average, while another 1.2 billion – or 15 per cent – are overweight, Moss says the other half of the equation is the proliferation of cheap, calorie-dense, convenient food available 24-7 in endless iterations. Grocery stores went from stocking an average of 6,000 products in 1980 to about 33,000 today. Snacking is now a fourth meal, with 580 calories a day coming from what we eat in between breakfast, lunch and dinner. “For the most part, the $1.5 trillion processed food industry rose to power through its relentless pursuit and manipulation of our instinctual desires,” he writes.

OVERRIDING DESIRE The good news is we are smart and “We can scheme, too,” Moss writes. We can make our own spaghetti sauce in as little as 10 minutes from canned tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and dried or fresh basil. When we get bored with our repertoire, we can add sardines and Aleppo pepper to avocado toast. When we get home from the grocery store, we can put cookies in a jar where they will lose some of their attraction. And Hooked sets out lots of reasons why

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diets don’t work, so Moss says to remember that exercise is good, too; it releases endorphins in your brain that can give you a high not unlike a sugar rush. Oregon Research Institute psychologist Eric Stice talked to Moss about “changing what we value in food,” by stopping in front of the Starbucks bakery display and, rather than agonizing over whether to get the blueberry or the petite vanilla scone, visualizing that treat clogging our arteries or ruining our bikini bods, which “turns down the reward circuitry [in our brains] and turns up the brake.” In the meantime, watch out for figs. According to Hooked, they’re poised to become the food industry’s next big flavour booster and, at 75 calories per fruit, they have a hit of sugar that will have your brain begging for more. As one of the first agricultural crops dating back to 9400 BC in the Jordan Valley, it will evoke memories of the Middle East for some. For me, all it took was a package of Fig Newtons. When I chanced upon them in a grocery store recently, they transported me to the 1970s and our home at 784 Manchester Rd. in London, Ont., where my mom – who wasn’t big on baking – would buy them for a treat, and no one was happier to see them than my father. My parents died more than 20 years ago, but those cookies conjured them up out of thin air. When I snapped out of my reverie, I put them in my cart and headed to the checkout.

PHOTOGRAPHY, DANIEL SHEEHAN (MOSS); KEITH HOMAN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (FIG NEWTONS); JAMIE CHUNG/TRUNK ARCHIVE (POP TART)

food, then we learned to love the cheap and easy.” One of the most fascinating chapters in the book is about memory and how it plays into the allure of food, starting with childhood associations. Moss got a taste of that when he visited a Kellogg’s plant in Michigan and walked by a vat of failed Pop-Tarts. “The aroma that came across the factory floor hit me and took me back to that very last Pop-Tart I had as a latchkey kid.” In neurological terms, those PopTarts were a cue, and even a whiff of cinnamon or a McDonald’s billboard can trigger a response in someone who associates them with pleasure. “As much as we are what we eat,” Moss writes, “we are what we remember.” Childhood memories, particularly those formed in adolescence, stick around longer, as do those associated with “family and friends and good times,” Moss writes. Our food preferences don’t even matter that much. As Purdue University researcher Richard Mattes told Moss, “The fact is we like what we eat more than we eat what we like.” Moss illustrates again and again how the food industry has played a cat-and-mouse game with our bodies and brains. The chemists in labs called flavour houses can imitate everything from the char on a burger to pumpkin spice, which was added to the Starbucks latte lineup in 2003. It has as many as 80 chemical elements, like cyclotenes, which impart “a toasted, maple-like smell” and, “the most seductive of these,” fake vanilla, which is now added to more than 18,000 products. These additives are called “artificial and natural flavours” in the ingredients list. “We can’t know what chemicals are being used in the food we eat,” Moss writes, “though the brain sure does.” When the processed food industry figured out we were predisposed to sweet food, they added more than

THE FACT IS WE LIKE WHAT WE EAT MORE THAN WE EAT WHAT WE LIKE”

from

JOURNEY

Saskatchewan

FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS, people have been walking the Camino de Santiago (the Way of Saint James) trail across northern Spain,” Lyndon Penner writes in the introduction to his new book The Way of the Gardener: Lost in the Weeds Along the Camino de Santiago. “Aside from the journeys taken by the faithful to Jerusalem and Rome, it is the most popular Christian pilgrimage in the world.” It wasn’t a hike or a religious experience that motivated the Saskatchewan-raised author, gardening expert, radio host and environmentalist to take on part of the 800-kilometre journey. “It started with a beautiful piece of music,” the 40-year-old writes. His good friend Carol, in her 60s, had travelled the route years before and introduced him to the composer Oliver Schroer’s Camino album. When Carol invited him to join her for another Camino walk in the autumn of 2017, Penner accepted without a thought. She reminded him that over the six weeks it would take, there would be days they’d walk as many as 30 kilometres. The 780-kilometre route they chose,

SPAIN

known as the French Way, took them from the edge of France over the Pyrenees mountains and across northern Spain to the town of Santiago de Compostela, said to be the final resting place of the country’s patron, Saint James. From the outset, as Penner writes in The Way of the Gardener, he was in wonder. “I stepped out into the fresh air and moist darkness of a high mountain night and was engulfed

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in the most brilliantly shimmering blanket of stars that I had ever seen,” he notes at the end of Day 1. “Immediately,” he adds, “the full name of the pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela – the Way of St. James in the Field of Stars – became very real for me. I stood there in the cold and darkness, marvelling at where I was.” Over the course of their journey, he writes, he and Carol walked through ancient forests of oak and chestnut “that were more beautiful than any of the cathedrals meant to house the presence of God. I felt more connected to humanity walking an old dusty trail than I have in any city I have ever been in.” Despite not being religious, Penner sensed he could pray in an olive grove – but it was his description of its natural beauty that enthralled me. “[Olive trees] have the most wonderful gnarled greyish trunks and grey-green foliage that from a distance seems to shimmer,” he

PHOTOGRAPHY, KELLY LAYCOCK (MAP); SOMKHANA CHADPAKDEE/GETTY IMAGES (OLIVE BRANCH); JUERGEN BRAND/GETTY IMAGES (OLIVE TREES); MFG_FOTOGRAFIA/GETTY IMAGES (TREE TRUNK); SERGIO FORMOSO/GETTY IMAGES (GOLDEN SHELL)

A consummate gardener takes a pilgrimage that sows the seeds of appreciation for the spiritual and the natural world. Vivian Vassos follows his path, making a few notes along the way

Companies of olive trees swayed and glittered in the sun, offering beauty and shade along the path

Marking the path. Ancient olive trees in Galicia, Spain; (inset) The scallop, a symbol of Saint James, is used as a guide at milestones along The Way. (opposite, top) A map showing the French Way, the author’s route.

cience, as well as our inner spirit, tells us that connecting with nature – and not just the Camino but our local parks, beaches or woodlands – is good for our well-being, body and soul. The meditative pleasure of forest bathing with nothing but birdsong as the soundtrack, hiking to the babbling beat of a river running beside the trail, the crunch of the earth beneath your feet or the waves’ constant caress of the shoreline that’s set on repeat like a heartbeat. The wind rustling through grassy fields and orchards, swaying and shimmering in the breeze, like Penner’s olive trees. It all just says stop and take in the moment. Take a breath. Now breathe again. And it goes deep. Studies show that the more time we spend in nature, the better, but as little as 120 minutes a week – that’s two hours – can do the trick, as was revealed in an article published by Yale University’s School of the Environment in January 2020, entitled Ecopsychology: How Immersion in Nature Benefits Your Health. It cited a 2019 study held by the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter that surveyed 20,000 people and found that those who spent a minimum of two hours a week in green spaces were substantially better off mentally and physically. Everything from reducing blood pressure, stress and anxiety levels to enhancing immune system function, self-esteem and mood, can be just some of the wellness benefits of getting outside. The journey through the nature of northern Spain gave Penner the time to garner a bit of wisdom, to

disconnect and to appreciate his surroundings. But also to question what this walk really meant. “I thought a lot about why people wanted to walk the Camino so long ago. Why did they persevere?” he muses as he and Carol make their daily trek and encounter numbers of other pilgrims on the same path. (With its roots in the 9th century, according to followthecamino.com, in 2019, almost 350,000 people made their way to The Way.) Penner’s conclusion was tied back to the human spirit, citing that he believed there was a tangible calling – then as there is now. “We need our lives to be meaningful; that part hasn’t changed. We all seem to want something more. We all want to know that our lives are significant and that we have a purpose.” As I read his words, it dawned on me that for Penner, perhaps part of his purpose was to come out of his shell. “I’ve always liked plants and animals more than I like people,” he writes. “I do have some very good friends and family whom I love deeply …” Penner makes a few mentions of his beloved nephews and how his documenting this pilgrimage would hopefully inspire them to experience new places and people one day. A legacy of sorts. Like the ages-old fig trees that lined many parts of the camino. “… there is something about standing beneath a fig tree and eating its decadent fruit that makes one feel ‘prosperous.’ Knowing your grandchildren and great-grandchildren would one day be eating from the same tree must have been a great comfort.” But the author also admits in the book that he’s one of those people who doesn’t always play well with others. Did the trip help him to transcend his introverted nature, as travel can sometimes do? “To be fair to myself, I did manage to enjoy both the wild places on the Camino and the people that I met, so per-

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haps for a moment in time I actually did evolve.” Going forward on the Camino also meant going back, jogging Penner’s memory on many occasions when it related to the plants and trees along the way. I found one such recollection particularly poignant, when he comes across fields resplendent with flowers, including a common garden variety of the daisy family. “Zinnias are the first flower I can remember growing from seed,” he writes. “I was five and I remember my mother filling my hands with what looked like a handful of brown dust. We sprinkled that dust into the earth, and tiny green shoots began to emerge a few days later. I often credit those zinnias with helping to make sure that I grew up to be a gardener.” He now considers the flowers like old friends. And there they were, rising up to meet him. “I wondered for how many generations those zinnias had been brightening the path of travellers.” And there it was. Gaining an understanding of what’s important to us and our spirit is a wondrous byproduct of travel, as exhibited by Penner in The Way of the Gardener. “My appreciation for the beautiful life I live has increased exponentially. Plants reveal things to me about myself.” One such revelation? “I came home stronger and more self-assured than I have ever been.” Being a gardener, Penner saw his pilgrimage as very much about connecting with nature. “I happen to see the world through plants and trees and flowers,” he writes of his approach to travel. “Plants tell me about history and climate and soils and people. They speak of times long ago and provide me with clues as to where I am and what sort of things have gone on there.” For an excerpt from The Way of the Gardener, go to everythingzoomer. com/the-way-of-the-gardener.

PHOTOGRAPHY, JAVIER ZAYAS PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES (FIG LEAF); NICOOLAY/GETTY IMAGES (FIG); PHOTOGRAPHY, TKTKTK MIRIAM MORENO/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES (ZINNIA); RICARDOLR/GETTY IMAGES (CAMINO DE SANTIAGO)

writes. All across Spain, he describes, “companies of olive trees swayed and glittered in the sun, offering beauty and shade along the path.”

Walk this way. At sunset along a stretch of the Camino de Santiago, Spain.

I wondered for how many generations those zinnias had been brightening the path of travellers”

Zoom Out Brain Games 7

8 9 10

12 13 18 22 25 26 27 28 29 30 34

BRAIN GAMES #77

Reflections BY BARBARA OLSON ACROSS 1

Oscar-, Grammyand Emmy-winning superstar 5 Sir of Seville 10 Defeatist’s word 14 Helper on The Hill

SUDOKU

15 Island word said coming or going 16 “___ pronounce you ...” 17 Quaff at a king’s keg party? 19 It helps carpenters get a grip 20 No-tell motel visits 21 “Super Mario Bros.” console 23 Lost at battle, as a P.O.W. 24 Comment from Seinfeld’s neighbour? 28 Mini music albums, briefly 31 23, 24 and 25, of 26 32 Poetic ravine 33 Tiff about a military bugle tune? 37 Predetermined price 39 Batted body part 40 What some pub patrons put their drinks on 41 Wholly alone 42 Love god after a gruelling workout? 43 Map dist. above the equator

44 Margaret who spoofed Kim Jong Il 45 Tycoon’s deg., often 46 Neigh-saying naysayer? 51 East of Germany? 52 Noble title in France 53 Some flower girls 57 “Terrible” toddler stage 59 Doily maker’s bumper sticker? 62 Comme il ___ (as it should be) 63 Come-___-are (party type) 64 606, at the Roman Colosseum 65 Suffix with electro66 Partner of desist 67 Risked a road ticket, in a way

36 37 38 40 42 44 46

47 48 49 50 54

DOWN

1 2

3 4 5 6

Haul (off), as a crook Day before aujourd’hui Creatively envelope-pushing Pose anew Seven-layer-dip ingredient That lady, in Lisbon

58 60 61

Drink Captain Morgan might get into? Short story master of irony Not as well done Western ___ (high school class, for short) Orwell tale featuring Napoleon the pig “Ain’t happenin’!” Adjust a wee bit Xerox tray abbr. Very harsh “Kisses, dahling!” Bus. phone add-on Non-glossy photo finish Sunny seasons au Québec Not be a freeloader Be explicitly clear about “Wake Up” singersongwriter Sarah from Pickering, Ont. Like some crackers or nuts “Gangnam Style” rapper Med. isle near Corsica 42-Down, in Italy Much-needed blessing He Said, ___ Said (TV cooking show) Record sleeve successor Response to a hilarious text, maybe “Of the lake,” in French city names ___ time (soon enough) Post-Ramadan festival Bassoonist’s buys Russian hockey team letters, once Christmas lights site, often Came home feet first Room in an office bldg. Quick goodbye letters? Greek dawn goddess

FOR ANSWERS, TURN TO PAGE 94

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“Made you look. And yes, I’m wearing Always Discreet.”

A†

MBLE SE

CANA

Zoom Out Brain Games ANSWERS TO CROSSWORD (PG. 92)

ANSWERS TO SUDOKU (PG.92)

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