Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2022 i Zoomer Magazine

QUITE SIMPLY, THE QUEEN WAS OUR MUSE. When we launched Zoomer magazine in 2008, Elizabeth II was 82, well into what many would consider old age. But there she was, year after year, hiking her estates, driving her Land Rovers, riding her horses and assiduously tending to her red boxes and other affairs of state and Commonwealth. She was the embodiment of the Zoomer philosophy. To me, her family life was defined in terms of succession and she will forever embody duty – the actual work of majesty. It’s telling that she signed off her Platinum Jubilee statement as “Your Servant, Elizabeth,” and worked up until two days before she died, meeting with her 15th Prime Minister, Liz Truss, to invite her to form a government. That the Queen died…

SASKATOON IS GOING to be lit. Literally. That’s because, on Nov. 5 – the day he turns 63 – Bryan Adams touches down for a stop on his So Happy It Hurts North American tour. “I think everyone forgot that it was my birthday,” the legendary Canadian rocker says of performing that day during a recent Zoom interview. “We’ll have a party. I like to have a bonfire on my birthday,” he says of the date that also happens to be Guy Fawkes Day. Could his middle name Guy possibly be a coincidence. “Hopefully I’ll find someone somewhere that’ll be able to light a fire for me.” Despite the passage of time, this year “could be my most productive time ever,” Adams admits because, in 2022 alone, he’s released four…

› NAVIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE by Ann Douglas • Popular Canadian parenting author Ann Douglas, best known for her 2015 autobiographical book, Parenting Through the Storm – a guide for parents of children with mental health, neurodevelopmental or behavioural challenges – takes on the myth of the mid-life woman. Through personal stories drawn from interviews with dozens of diverse women, she breaks down stereotypes and examines the economic, political and social power of mid-life women, with strategies to thrive. › THE POWER OF STORY by Harold R. Johnson • When the late Harold R. Johnson was asked by a multi-denominational ecumenical society to host a talk about the power of storytelling, this book resulted from the gathering at his home community, the Montreal Lake Cree Nation in northern Saskatchewan. Part…

I HAD NO IDEA ARLENE STACEY, my long-time editor at Zoomer magazine, was sick. So it was a big shock when I finally saw her death notice, two months after the fact. Our relationship was strictly work-related and sporadic – we only connected after I filed my columns. I had a few conversations with her at company events, but that was it. So it was another surprise that the relationship was more important than I realized. I lost another former colleague around the same time. Marcus Eliason was a very important mentor, friend and leader when I had my first full-time reporting job at The Associated Press in Tel Aviv. We reconnected – when he was posted in New York – on an afternoon so vivid in my memory that…

After a long, languid summer, it’s time to settle into a comfy chair, put on your reading glasses and immerse yourself in all the books Zed, The Zoomer Book Club, has hand-picked for you. We’ve got a Q&A with Ann-Marie MacDonald about her epic new novel, Fayne; a look at the story behind A Ballet of Lepers, Leonard Cohen’s first novel; a Second World War history by Ted Barris called Battle of the Atlantic; as well as lists of the hottest celebrity memoirs and latest fiction titles. I spent a glorious afternoon with celebrated author John Irving at his cottage on Georgian Bay, Ont., where we talked for hours about his 15th novel, The Last Chairlift, and you don’t want to miss the video from our conversation and a longer…

WITH FAYNE, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s first novel in eight years, the bestselling Canadian author creates another spellbinding tale with a powerful story arc and more layers than Victorian undergarments. Due to her “condition,” the precocious Honourable Charlotte Bell of the DC (disputed county) de Fayne, 11, is being raised in seclusion at the family’s expansive estate on the contested border between Scotland and England in the late 19th century. She is being educated by her eccentric father, Lord Henry Bell, the 17th Baron of the DC de Fayne, a bird nerd who encourages her to read through his library, from A to Z. The plot twists and turns on the fact that female heirs cannot inherit titles or property in England, so Fayne’s fate rests on the shoulders of the ineffectual…

I DYED MY hair just before I wrote this. Or, more specifically, I touched up the roots (L’Oréal Magic Root Rescue, shade: light brown). The dye cost $14 on sale at the drugstore. As I struggled to reach the roots at the back of my head – I live in fear of striding, skunk-like, through the streets of Toronto – I tried not to think about the thousands of dollars I’ve wasted in my lifetime dyeing my hair. Let’s put it this way: I’ve spent enough to buy a small island, where I could have wandered around unhampered, letting my jowls drop to the ground and my eyebrows meet in the middle. I started colouring my hair when I was 15. Fire engine red, at first, a punky attempt to…

IT HAD BEEN A DOZEN YEARS since I set foot on Holbox (pronounced Holbosh), a slip of an island off the Yucatán Peninsula where the Caribbean Sea flows into the Gulf of Mexico. In 2010, I’d been looking for an alternative to Tulum, the hipster hot spot two hour’s drive south of Cancun. Tipped off by a local, I’d driven the other way, two and a half hours north of Cancun, collecting my mother, whose 60th birthday it was, at the airport en route. Together, we set off for the dusty, nondescript town of Chiquilá near the border of the Yucatán and Quintana Roo, to catch a half-hour ferry to the unknown island of Holbox. Forty-one kilometres long, but only 1.6 km wide, Holbox snakes along the ocean, 12 km…

“I remain eternally grateful for, and humbled by, the loyalty and affection that you continue to give me. And when, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes King, I know you will give him and his wife Camilla the same support that you have given me.”QUEEN ELIZABETH II IN A STATEMENT MARKING THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF HER ACCESSION TO THE THRONE ON FEB. 6, 1952 QUEEN ELIZABETH II, who ruled with aplomb and grace, had a long, illustrious life, bookended by two seismic global catastrophes: the Second World War and the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement released soon after her death, King Charles III said: “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout…

WHEN GREGORY Henriquez was growing up in the ’70s in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood, he was mesmerized by a Toronto-produced Saturday morning cartoon, a space-age take on the classic English tale about an outlaw and his band of Merry Men but set in the year 3000. “It all begins with Rocket Robin Hood,” Henriquez says about his conceptual proposal called “GHETTO: Sanctuary for Sale,” an exhibition and graphic novel proposing a visionary scheme for new buildings in Venice, combining housing for refugees with time-share apartments for wealthy tourists. “The GHETTO project is exactly the same idea: a futuristic comic proposing stealing from the cosmic rich to give to the suffering galactic poor.” The son of prominent architect Richard Henriquez, and now managing principal of their firm, Henriquez Partners Architects (HPA), the…

DENNIS MARUK, who turns 67 in November, and Emilia Greco, 64, connected online and hit it off right away. After some banter, the ex-hockey player and the events co-ordinator realized they’d met before. Here, the newlyweds tell Zoomer about their whirlwind love story that was 40 years in the making. Emilia Greco: Dennis and I connected on EliteSingles. He told me he used to play hockey in London, Ont., which intrigued me because I used to go to those games when I was young. He told me his last name and that he’d played for the London Knights. That’s when I realized we’d met before. He was amazing on the ice and kind of famous. Everyone in London knew Dennis. Dennis Maruk: I had long hair and a moustache. It…

IF THIS WERE A JOHN IRVING NOVEL, I would meet a cataclysmic and undignified end before setting foot on the rocky island north of Parry Sound, Ont., where the venerated American Canadian author spends summers at the cottage with his wife, Janet Irving. In my script, the boat hits a shoal, I catapult into Georgian Bay and, before a monster muskellunge as long as I am tall mistakes my silver earrings for a lure and drags me under, I surface briefly to glimpse a man on a boat called The Octopussy shooting off flares and exposing himself. I can’t make this stuff up – muskies have been known to attack humans, and the exhibitionist on the James Bond-themed boat was arrested by police this summer about 100 kilometres away –…

UPON THE FANFARE-filled publication of The Favourite Game in 1963, Leonard Cohen unabashedly told reporters it wasn’t his first foray into fiction. “He called it ‘a third novel masquerading as a first novel’ – meaning there were predecessors,” says Michael Posner, whose third volume of a trilogy, Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: That’s How the Light Gets In, comes out Nov. 22. Six years after the famed troubador’s death, the once-rejected novel will finally be released into the world. A Ballet of Lepers is a vivid, haunting, experimental and quintessentially Cohen-esque novella, penned somewhere between 1956 and 1961, which tells the story of an unnamed mid-life bachelor who moves his violent grandfather into his Montreal boarding house. The novella is followed by 15 short stories and a radio play, all uniquely…

BONNIE STERN, who has run one of Canada’s most prestigious cooking schools for 37 years, is also known for a dozen bestselling cookbooks. Her last book, Friday Night Dinners, came out 14 years ago. She was in no rush to write a follow-up. Then the pandemic hit in 2020, and the 74-year-old began teaching cooking again, only much more informally on Instagram, where she would demonstrate the best way to cut an avocado or share a recipe for a newly concocted dish like French Toast Bites. “So many people had to cook that didn’t really want to cook, or never had to before.” She couldn’t resist. She had to help them. It was her daughter, Anna Rupert, who suggested it might be a good opportunity to write another cookbook, and…

FINE LINES AND WRINKLES, uneven skin tone, weakened muscles. Some of us know what it’s like to hit 60. The wear and tear that sends sexagenarians stampeding to yoga classes and plastic surgery clinics is inevitable, unless, of course, you are James Bond. But let’s leave aside 007’s dazzling physical attributes, like the jaw-dropping six-pack Daniel Craig brandished in the “shirtless” scenes, which have proven to be highlights of his Bond films ever since he flaunted a skimpy pair of sky-blue La Perla trunks as he emerged from the sparkling Nassau surf in his 2006 debut, Casino Royale. (And if you are anywhere near 60, or over, consult a physician before testing the “military boot camp” fitness regimen devised by British personal trainer Simon Waterson to keep Craig, and his…

SCOTT THOMPSON is having his moment. Actually, he’s having several. At 63, the comedic actor, best known for his work with the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, is poised to dominate small screens across North America now and into 2023. Beginning with two back-to-back episodes airing Nov. 15, Thompson will appear in the hotly anticipated second season of the CBC series Sort Of, carried stateside on HBO Max. The trailblazing, shot-in-Toronto show centres around a queer Pakistani Canadian millennial named Sabi (played by show co-creator Bilal Baig, who, like their character, uses gender-neutral pronouns) and the eclectic characters in their orbit. These include two children Sabi cares for as a nanny, patrons at the bar/bookstore where they also work, as well as 7ven (Amanda Cordner), their garrulous…

› NIGHTS OF PLAGUE by Orhan Pamuk • From the mind of Turkey’s most famous living novelist and Nobel Prize laureate comes this story of a plague wreaking havoc on the fictional island of Mingheria in the Ottoman Empire, where half the population is Muslim, the other half Orthodox Greek. To control the epidemic, the sultan sends his trusted medical expert to the island. But some of the residents, because of their beliefs, refuse to follow quarantine mandates. Sound familiar? Adding to the chaos is a mysterious murder. With themes certain to echo in our time, expect a sobering tour de force. › OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng • Leaving the 1990s – the setting of her mega-hit, Little Fires Everywhere (made into a well-received TV series starring Kerry…

THOSE WHO CAN’T GET ENOUGH droll and urbane quips from Charles Haden-Savage, the retired TV star played by Steve Martin on the hit series Only Murders in the Building, will love his new memoir, Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions (Nov. 15). The title refers to how actors are listed on the call sheet in order of importance, numbers that the crew use as shorthand on their walkie-talkies. It’s our hint that this is more of a riff than a straight-up memoir like Martin’s 2007 autobiography, Born Standing Up. His anecdotes and observations from a colourful career – including filming Roxanne in Nelson, B.C. – are illustrated, graphic-novel style, by cartoonist and New Yorker cover artist Harry Bliss. › The Gen-X romantic classic Truly,…

HAVING LESS-THAN-desirable medical conditions is part of the territory when it comes to aging. The good news is many embarrassing or stigmatizing health issues can be managed, whether through lifestyle changes, exercise, medication or surgical intervention. If you notice symptoms of the following conditions, get a doctor to assess the issue and offer advice. And skip the red face – medical professionals have seen it all. 1. DYSPHAGIA WHAT IT IS: Up to 35 per cent of older adults have difficulty swallowing, says Jen Raman, a speech language pathologist at Baycrest, a Toronto health sciences centre for older adults. While dysphagia is related to diseases that affect the swallowing muscles, like Parkinson’s and dementia, certain medications such as antidepressants, as well as head and neck surgeries, can cause it, too.…