Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i Zoomer Magazine

YES, the Bryan Adams anthem is a surefire party starter and favourite hot-weather jam, but the song’s sunny nostalgia-tinged exuberance resonates on a deeper level, and it’s little wonder. Five decades on, the events of 1969 are still reverberating, their collective aftershock an inflection point in our culture that still influences how we see and define ourselves today. In “It Was 50 Years Ago Today” (page 44), we delve into three of the most seismic happenings of that year – the moon landing, the Stonewall riots and that little festival called Woodstock – a triumvirate that neatly sums up our yearning for the exploration of the unknown, self-determination and freedom. It’s the human need to be a part of something greater than ourselves. Profound synergies abound, and these are…

Thanks to Hollywood, a woman in a bathing suit became an iconic pop-culture image. You might be hard pressed to remember some plot points of the ’90s hit television series Baywatch, but Pamela Anderson in the red one-piece swimsuit left an indelible mark on your mind. And who can forget that 1970s poster of Farrah Fawcett posing in a red bathing suit, all blond bouncy curls and mega-watt smile? Even the esteemed Smithsonian declared it the best-selling poster of all time. Going further back to the 1950s, photos of Brigitte Bardot in a bikini on the French Riviera helped popularize the daring two-piece. Of course, what all these bathing-suit beauties had in common was youth. The image of an older woman in a swimsuit was one that never saw…

WITH A federal election looming this fall, the major parties are tuning up their platforms, honing their messages and hitting the road in order to get their message out in front of the voters. All parties are strategizing on how to win the major constituencies, realizing that capturing a massive bloc of voters is the surest path to victory. And with one of these largest demos being older Canadians, it’s a valuable prize, well worth fighting for. That’s because “older Canadians like to make their voices heard,” says Laura Tamblyn Watts, Chief Public Policy Officer at CARP, a group that lobbies on behalf of older Canadians, promoting a new vision for aging. Watts was referring to a CARP poll that 98 per cent of respondents said they voted in the…

FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, a bottle was thrown, a cop was punched and a movement was born. Police raided New York’s Stonewall Inn, as they had before, to break up same-sex couples dancing, which was illegal, and to check that everyone was wearing at least three pieces of gender-appropriate clothing, in accordance with another statute at the time. And for some reason – maybe it was because the spirit of the ’60s had finally made it to this darkened mob-run tavern or maybe because icon Judy Garland had just recently been buried – this time, they said no. “They” were specifically Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Stormé DeLarverie. Depending on whose story you listen to, one of them – possibly all of them – threw the bottle,…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, ON THE island of Kadavu in Fiji, I followed 15 entrepreneurs from Canada, the U.S. and Costa Rica who had paid as much as US$7,500 (plus airfare) to spend a week kayaking, surfing, diving and playing games with each other. And though it was meant to be fun, they weren’t on vacation. They travelled halfway around the world because Mike Brcic, the Toronto founder of Mastermind Adventures, figures this sort of thing makes people better people and, as a result, better at business. “I’ve been in the adventure travel business for 22 years,” Brcic told me as we sat on a wooden stoop overlooking an ocean whose colours make the Caribbean seem like a rough draft. “What I observed was that when you put people outdoors…

HONOUR THY PARENTS I was amazed that Jay Teitel’s article “What Do We Owe Our Parents” [June] failed to mention section 32 of the Ontario Family Law Act that imposes on every adult child a legal obligation to support, in accordance with need, a parent who has supported that child, to the extent the child is capable of so doing. This is a long-standing legal obligation that should be brought to the attention of all our adult children! I’m just saying. —R. Keith Simpson, BA, JD, via email INSPIRING TREND You can’t imagine my surprise and pleasure to find a same-sex couple featured in “Flight Plan” [June], along with a very sexy photo of them! I commend you on this representation of diversity, a notable first for Zoomer magazine,…

We often pine for the “good ol’ days” without considering how good they actually were. Take Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which director Quentin Tarantino channels a Tinseltown in transition from Hollywood’s golden age to the innovation of the auteur-driven New Hollywood. The shift is bad news for a fading TV Western star (Leonardo DiCaprio), who attempts a jump to the big screen with his stuntman (Brad Pitt). He also moves next door to actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) – wife of rising New Hollywood director Roman Polanski – and finds himself entangled in a murderous Manson Family plot. Then there’s singer-songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), who languishes in musical mediocrity until he’s hit by a bus and wakes up to a world in which the Beatles…

IT’S A RARE CELEBRITY interviewee who rolls up on his bike, waving at you. At a café patio near his home in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood, a smiling Jim Cuddy smoothly hops off, locks his wheels and saunters over to talk, tall, lanky, friendly, with a few lonesome lines as the only facial evidence of his 63 years. He is unmistakably the guy who co-leads one of Canada’s most beloved bands, Blue Rodeo (with lifelong friend Greg Keelor). As we talk, patrons exchange familiar glances and nods. At one point, a local sportswriter and ex-colleague of mine passes by with his family and says hello to “Jim and Jim.” “He’s a great guy,” Cuddy says of his journalist neighbour. “I played in a ball hockey league with him.” We’re here…

THE FLIMSY RED PLASTIC poncho does little to protect us from the thundering spray of the Horseshoe Falls. I feel like Jean Peter’s Polly at the end of Niagara, trapped in a launch with kidnapper George (Joseph Cotten) and being tossed about like a cork in the river above the falls. Only we’re at the base of the falls on the Maid of the Mist tour – and the boat is not the Maid of the Mist of my childhood but the Hornblower, a name that doesn’t have the same romance as that of the original. In 2012, after a 166-year relationship, Maid of the Mist was dumped by the Niagara Parks Commission: the Canadian side of the falls is now serviced by the same American company that operates…

… to paraphrase the Beatles, who played their final set together on Jan. 30, 1969, atop the Apple Corps building in London, surprising Savile Row strollers with a pop-up moment of music history. The band performed five songs before police pulled the plug with an abruptness signalling the seismic social and cultural shifts the year would bring. John Lennon led the charge, penning “Give Peace a Chance” during his Montreal bed-in — the second of two bed-ins alongside his new bride, Yoko Ono. Meanwhile, The Who channelled eastern spirituality into their rock opera Tommy and television shows like Sesame Street, The Brady Bunch and Monty Python’s Flying Circus ushered in a new era of entertainment, offering respite from the horror of the Manson murders. And while America remained pinned under…

ZED THE ZOOMER BOOK CLUB The pen is mightier than the sword. And as Canadians, it’s also part of our DNA. From Atwood to Ondaatje to Munro, we love to write and we really love to read. We devour pages and the characters, landscapes and heartbreaks within, we fall for books that get us talking and we can’t resist the simple yet incomparable joy of curling up with a great story, whether on page or on screen. Which is why we recommend you join Zed: The Zoomer Book Club – as in everything books from A to Z. For A-list reads and interviews from the most noteworthy authors, book news you can use, curated booklists for your special interests and all around insider access, join our community of book…

IT WOULD NOT BE HYPERBOLE to say that the first two times I visited Tofino, a hamlet on the western edge of Vancouver Island, I thought I was going to die. The first visit I came by car, driving myself along the two-lane Pacific Rim highway, all hairpin turns and breathtaking drops to the sea, shoulders so skinny they could maybe hold a bra strap. It was fine heading into town; leaving, I white-knuckled those mountain roads though a blizzard of wet, heavy snow. My second trip, I flew out in a prop plane from Vancouver – after the pilot tried and failed (and tried and failed, and tried and failed again) to land in a fog so low it clung to the branches of the fir trees, we…

IF YOU HAPPEN UPON A BUNCH of women waving pool noodles around the interior routes and portages of Algonquin Park this summer, it is likely a rare sighting of the Canoodlers, the all-female canoe-tripping club. The group’s members – a core of eight gals with a rotating cast of up to 12 – are aged between 51 and 64. Twenty-odd summers ago, in Pickering, Ont., a bunch of moms met each other when their kids were in the same Girl Guides troop. Some of the moms signed up for the Guides’ wilderness training courses, and they duly set off with their daughters and some paddles. By the next summer, the younger generation had moved on to other recreational pursuits. But the moms stuck together, and their epic canoe trips became…