Zoomer Magazine November/December 2020

Due to the peculiarities of traditional publishing schedules, this edition of Zoomer magazine – the final one of calendar year – will arrive in your homes and on newsstands around Thanksgiving, which is not unusual. But 2020 has been an unusual year and, because of that, the timing feels auspicious. It’s been a year thus far of threats, real and existential, every day and apocalyptic. We mourn the lives lost to the pandemic, particularly those of vulnerable elders living in long-term care facilities, and empathize with those who have suffered in countless ways because of the virus. We fear the uncertainty of what future flare-ups will mean to our health and prosperity. There has been shock, but I am in awe of what we’ve been able to hold on…

ON OCT. 23, 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers announced the signing of Jackie Robinson, the first Black player to ink a Major League Baseball contract and the first step toward breaking the league’s colour barrier. Robinson reported to the Montreal Royals – the Dodgers’ farm team – and, 75 years on, as anti-racism protests endure in and out of the sports world, the anniversary strikes an even more relevant chord. Adding to its poignancy is the August death of actor Chadwick Boseman, who portrayed Robinson in the 2013 film 42 and died on MLB’s Jackie Robinson Day after a secret years-long cancer battle. The role proved Boseman’s breakout performance, leading to his portrayal of two other African-American icons – James Brown and Thurgood Marshall – and, ultimately, Black Panther. The…

It’s the next country music classic – “I Married My Son’s Wedding Officiant” Country legend Loretta Lynn, 88, made headlines after “marrying” Kid Rock, 49, in a mock wedding when the rapper arrived to officiate Lynn’s son’s real-life vow renewal. This 96-year-old Italian man who survived the Second World War and the COVID-19 pandemic has become Italy’s oldest university graduate Almost as impressive – he won his fraternity’s beer pong championship three years running. Prepare for a future where retirement homes are converted into gyms and all the residents are jacked like The Rock Scientists say a body-building supplement known as AKG extended lifespans in mice and helped keep signs of old age at bay and that plans for human trials are next. Talk about walking the walk A 99-year-old Newmarket,…

LONG BEFORE celebrities got political on social media, John Lennon used his fame to help promote social justice causes on a global scale. Take, for example, the 1969 “War Is Over!” campaign that took him and wife Yoko Ono everywhere from Amsterdam to New York. Eventually their famous Montreal Bed-In for Peace landed them at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal where they recorded “Give Peace a Chance.” Lennon’s music has served as an outlet for protest, while his signature “Imagine” remains the ultimate anthem for world peace. So to mark what would have been Lennon’s 80th birthday on Oct. 9, Ono and their son, Sean Ono Lennon, produced Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes, a collection that includes 36 of the rocker’s tunes remixed anew. MEANWHILE, the Boss…

THIS YEAR, we mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War while in the midst of another global battle – the COVID-19 pandemic. The viral outbreak is altering plans for public Remembrance Day ceremonies in November, including those of the Royal Canadian Legion, which announced that their ceremony at Ottawa’s National War Memorial (shown above) will be pared down, with only 100 people present. But in a year where technology, more than ever, reinvented how we communicate, it’s also allowing us to honour war veterans and survivors in digital form. In January, the Duchess of Cambridge photographed two Holocaust survivors with their grandchildren – images that were widely disseminated across social media — to mark the U.K.’s Holocaust Memorial Day. And in May, Queen Elizabeth…

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter (Oct. 6) > From the author of the bestselling 2012 Hollywood satire Beautiful Ruins comes this hotly anticipated novel about two adventurous orphans, Gig and Rye Dolan, who are emblematic of the class divisions roiling at the turn of the century in Walter’s hometown of Spokane, Wash. The boys are itinerant workers, but as Gig dreams of a steady job and a house, idealistic Rye gets involved in the union fight for fair wages and better working conditions. The social injustices have modern-day parallels that are glaringly apt. The Searcher by Tana French (Oct. 6) > The Dublin-based queen of the literary mystery is back with her seventh crime novel, this one about a retired Chicago cop, Cal Hooper, who buys a fixer-upper…