Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Zoomer Magazine

IN A QUAINT philosophical musing one might classify as distinctly “Pooh-ian,” A.A. Milne’s beloved Winnie the Pooh once declared that, “I am not lost, for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.” It’s precisely the sort of predicament in which Pooh’s beloved human friend finds himself in the new film that bares his name – Christopher Robin. The movie depicts Christopher, played by Ewan McGregor, 47, entrenched firmly in middle age, having traded the carefree Hundred Acre Wood for a demanding desk job that saps him of any remaining sense of imagination (not to mention time with his wife and young daughter). Cue Pooh – who, along with Tigger, is played by their long-time Disney cartoon voice actor Jim Cummings, 65 – and…

SHE’S TRAINING FOR an Ironman. He plays hockey three nights a week and 100 or so rounds of golf a year. Thirty years after starting BodyBreak, fitness duo (and yes, they’re married) Hal Johnson, 62, and Joanne McLeod, 60, seem just as fit – and appear to be having just as much fun. “I look at life and think, ‘What am I going to play?’ I’m just going to play stuff,” Johnson says. As for McLeod, her motivation is a little more pragmatic. “My biggest fear is not being able to do things. I don’t want anything to do with a hospital or people taking care of me … that fire keeps me going!” We caught up with the pair at the Toronto Central YMCA where they presented their…

THERE IS A PICTURE, taken at the height of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, in which I want to live. In it, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Kristen Scott Thomas and Nicole Kidman beam at the camera, arms around each other. It’s clear that Thompson is the instigator – her nature is mischievous brilliance – and it’s also clear that there could be no better conversation happening in Canada or maybe the world at that moment. Of course, any conversation with Thompson, 59, is the best conversation you will ever have. I first met her in 1990, when she and Kenneth Branagh, her then-husband, were living in a Hollywood Hills aerie, working on their film Dead Again. She was doing three things at once: taking off her makeup from…

I CONFESS, I sometimes wear dead people’s clothes. You got a problem with that? On an otherwise aimless Saturday afternoon, my friend Ingrid – who happens to live in a condo in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, Toronto’s Forest Hill – phoned to let me know there was a basement sale at an Anglican church near her. Don’t know how I’d missed it, but getting there late meant experiencing one of the great traditions of rummage sales: the fill-up-a-garbage-bag-for-$10 final half-hour. As expected, even the remnants of the castoffs of the one per cent were a cut above. I snagged practically new gloves, a Nike athletic shell, a Hockey Canada windbreaker, a cashmere scarf and then … It was the Holt Renfrew label that caught my eye. A rust-coloured…

Contrary to popular musical sentiment, they paved paradise and put up a promenade Saskatoon pays tribute to homegrown star Joni Mitchell, 74, by naming a waterfront promenade after her. Well, this explains why all the seniors curve into a downward dog position when they bend over to feed the animals The 52-year-old leader of a Chinese farming village with an average age of 65 keeps residents healthy by teaching them yoga. Paul McCartney, 76, joined a local wedding band in performing the Beatles tune “I Saw Her Standing There” at his nephew’s nuptials Unfortunately, creative differences compelled Paul to announce he was leaving the band and starting a new group with musicians playing a birthday party across the hall. Literally a “Hail Mary” approach to greater longevity A recent…

Scoring an interview with God is about the biggest coup a journalist could hope for. French journalist Dominique Wolton landed the next best thing – 12 interviews with Pope Francis – gleaning a papal perspective on our modern world in A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society. Meanwhile, the prayers of CanLit lovers are answered with releases from a quintet of celebrated Canuck scribes. The award-winning, Manitoba-born Miriam Toews unveils her latest novel, Women Talking, which explores the secret interactions of a community of Mennonite women following a devastating and brutal attack. Edmonton’s Emma Hooper writes of a family that’s tearing at the seams while struggling to live in an abandoned fishing village in Our Homesick Songs. Toronto’s Craig Davidson follows his Giller-shortlisted Cataract…

If Elvis Presley sings about dancing in the whole cellblock, and no one is around to hear it, does that jailhouse still rock? It’s the sort of question Priscilla Presley ponders – albeit not in those words – as she has explained to me when our paths have crossed. Once, in New York, she noted that she and her team work to keep Elvis relevant and ensure he isn’t forgotten. The notion surprised me. Won’t future generations recognize the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the same way we recognize Shakespeare or the Mona Lisa today? “There’s not loyalty with artists today like it was back in the day,” Priscilla told me. “So that’s another thing … how are we going to keep him current?” To that end, there’s…

After getting a degree in exercise science from UBC, Sara Hodson worked with cardiac rehab patients for 11 years. “I would constantly hear something like, ‘Can my partner come who just found out he has diabetes?’ And I always had to say that unless they had a heart attack or a major heart intervention, they don’t qualify.” So, she developed Live Well Exercise Clinic, a fitness club with an exercise-as-medicine model for any health condition or concern. Staff, all of whom are university certified clinical exercise physiologists, monitor vitals such as heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar, and take into account health conditions when developing a member’s routine. That might include the latest exercise guidelines for lower back pain or nutrition tips for Type 2 diabetes. “Most certifications…

THE TARIFF WARS HAVE BEGUN. Effective July 1, Canada imposed hundreds of duties on American products as retaliation for American tariffs on aluminum and steel from Canada. The concept is to hit U.S. exporters sending goods to Canada with costs that match the hit Canadian exporters are taking when they send products to the U.S. For consumers in Canada, the new tariffs are a maze of trivial charges on such things as licorice, candy and toffee, non-frozen orange juice, mayonnaise, salad dressing, soups and broths, ketchup, shaving cream, bobbins and spools, thin sheets of plywood and automatic dishwasher detergent. Canada is hitting back with tariffs on 229 goods. Many tariffs are focused on goods from states that voted for President Trump in 2016, e.g., bourbon from Kentucky, which is…

“The subtle shift in weather portending the indelible sense of things changing,” says social columnist and pop culture decoder Shinan Govani. His most recent tutelage: a wine course, about which he says, “I learned how to properly swirl and sniff!” A regular contributor to Zoomer, in this issue he muses on an icon’s graceful exit for “A Wintour’s Tale” (pg. 54) and cruises ancient atolls for “Greek Isle Idyll” (pg. 76). After graduate studies “many years ago,” economist and Financial Post columnist Andrew Allentuck has gone back to school a few times, but as a lecturer – his unequivocal preference to that of scholar. His newest book, Cherished Fortune: Make Your Wealth Your Business, which he co-wrote will be published later this year. In “Trade War” (pg. 58), he examines…

WHILE MILLENNIALS find shows and podcasts on YouTube, the boomers and gen-Xers who watched TV in the ’80s and ’90s are the ones keeping it alive now. Hence, the craze for reboots and the resurrection of familiar faces and plots. This fall, there are three new reboots on the network lineup alone (the sense of déjà vu on the medium being only slightly diminished by the self-inflicted cancellation of Roseanne on ABC). And mid-season (January approximately), Canadians will be getting in on the act, when CBC relaunches Street Legal, with original star Cynthia Dale stepping in as star and executive producer. Here are 10 new fall shows with these old demographics written all over them, starting with three reboots from our past, one with its original cast. 1 MURPHY…

Fatherhood, it seems, might just be Kelsey Grammer’s forte. You wouldn’t know it from his 20-year run on Cheers and Frasier as Dr. Frasier Crane – where he played bickering partner of ex-wife Lilith and beloved brother of Niles more than father to Freddie – or his dramatic Golden Globe-winning turn as a dementia-stricken mayor with an estranged daughter on the TV series Boss. In real life, however, the 63-year-old is a parental pro, with seven children, including three under age six, whom he publicly dotes over. And now, starring opposite Kristen Bell in the Netflix original comedy Like Father, Grammer’s paternal instinct finally receives top billing. In the film, Grammer, whose white beard and hair bears a passing resemblance to Hemingway – fitting, perhaps, given he plays a…

OH BOY. Just typing that title makes me want to flee into the kitchen to eat four squares of dark chocolate. The phrase “sex after 60” sounds like either a sentence or a prescription. So let’s call it something else: How about The Shape of Desire – and How It Changes As We Age. In the meantime, I can talk about this book, A Frenchwoman’s Guide to Sex After Sixty by Marie de Hennezell and how it made me feel. I opened it with trepidation because even the slightest cultural pressure to have fabulous sex after a certain age raises my hackles. One of the payoffs of getting older, after all, is the freedom that comes with it – the freedom to stop playing roles, to stop only pleasing others…

WHAT DOES IT SAY about us as a society when a guided meditation app is ranked, according to Apple, highest in the health and wellness category? Yes, a meditation app. It’s called Calm, and it has nothing to do with counting calories, steps or pounds lost. And Headspace, its Brit predecessor, has had a reported 11M downloads since debuting in 2010. Heady stuff? Or just where our heads are at now? Mindfulness is a buzzword of the millennium but, considering being in the moment can be traced back to Hindu traditions in India circa 1500 BC, followed by Taoists and Buddhists and the meditation halls of Japan making it part of everyday life, we’ve had plenty of time to adopt the practice. And adopt we have, as boomers in…

LOWER HYDRO BILLS? In 2017, CARP launched its Heat or Eat campaign, sounding the alarm on the effect Ontario’s exorbitantly high electricity rates were having on lower and fixed-income seniors. At the time, many were struggling to pay their electrical bills, which had increased 15 per cent over the following year and had doubled over a decade, and were being cut off. CARP’s campaign called on then Premier Kathleen Wynne to immediately roll back the rates, saying, “When our seniors have to choose between food and hydro, we have a problem.” It looks like that problem is finally being addressed. One of the first moves made by new Ontario Premier Doug Ford was to fire Mayo Schmidt – the CEO of Hydro One (the province’s partially owned electrical…

Originating at Dublin City University, the network includes 28 universities – including the University of Manitoba and, more recently, McMaster in Hamilton – committed to 10 principles, including intergenerational learning. It is in its early days at McMaster, but Brenda Vrkljan, an executive member of the university’s Institute for Research on Aging and an associate professor of occupational therapy, says it’s a matter of figuring out how to tap into the wisdom and experience of the older learner and the enthusiasm and ideas of the younger students to the benefit of both. “It’s more than being a good neighbour,” says Vrkljan. “It’s also about empathy-building. It’s not about sympathy, it’s about improving understanding of one another.” A new student residence in the planning stages will have a community hub…

INDIA HICKS hasn’t a clue who Drake is when he walks into One at Toronto’s Hazelton Hotel fully decked out with entourage. The shiny patio crowd is playing it cool, like hey no big deal. In fact, it is Hicks who is being mobbed. Her fans tend to be well-heeled middle-aged women who look a bit like her, and they are falling over themselves on the sidewalk to catch a minute with the bohemian blond. “Is he a rapper?” Hicks asks, her head tilted, quizzical after she has obliged the beseechers with selfies. “Everyone in Toronto keeps bringing him up.” Hip (and hip hop) are simply not part of the India Hicks brand. Three years ago, the 50-year-old former Ralph Lauren model launched her eponymous lifestyle brand, which is a…