Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2021 i Zoomer Magazine

I first saw my favourite photograph of Diana, Princess of Wales, on one of the countless Instagram accounts dedicated to her life and style. It is of unknown provenance and copyright so I am unable to include it in this special issue to mark her legacy, on what would have been her 60th birthday. The image is of a teenaged Lady Di, dressed up in a strapless evening gown, sitting on a couch alone in a majestic, gilded living room. Her head, with its familiar feathered haircut, is bowed over a magazine that she is intently reading, with a newspaper folded neatly on the floor beside her. The image has an effect on me: I assume it is at Althorp, the Spencer family seat, and fantasize that the sound…

The all-clear for games night and cocktail parties may be pending, but the soundtrack is ready to go. k.d. lang’s forthcoming album makeover, a collection of dance remixes of her best-loved tunes, is a seductive, nostalgic vibe that demands communal enjoyment. Released in celebration of Pride Month, the compilation of ’90s jams – which features a 1995 David LaChapelle cover photo of the dolled-up ingenue – underscores the role dance music and dance clubs played in the coalescing gay community, before “the internet, mobile devices and dating apps,” lang says. lang, who turns 60 this year, spent the early pandemic like the rest of us: walking, rediscovering music, making peace with feeling unmotivated, and fretting over elderly relatives. Her 98-year-old mom Audrey resides three hours away from the youngest of…

THE RECENT spike in real estate prices may be delivering another crushing blow to millennial home-buying aspirations, but it’s creating an enviable equity boon for 7.9 million Canadians over the age of 55 who own homes. Fuelled by low interest rates, short supply and pent-up demand prompted by the pandemic, a buying frenzy has seen house values explode across the country, with the Canadian Real Estate Association reporting that in March, the national average home price was $716,828, up 31.6 per cent from the same month last year. Some experts worry the frothy real estate market is out of control, including Toronto-based economist David Rosenberg, who suggests we “might be in one of the biggest bubbles of all time.” A recent listing for a stand-alone garage in Toronto (with no…

“He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know,” said Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Prince Philip to mark their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1997. The royal couple was photographed by Bryan Adams at Buckingham Palace in October 2001 on the occasion of Her Majesty’s 2002 Golden Jubilee. One of Adams’ portraits of the Queen was chosen for a 2003 Canadian stamp series and also appeared on Zoomer’s April 2009 cover. In another Adams’ portrait, the Queen, this time with her beloved consort, also graced the cover of Zoomer’s September 2017 issue to mark their 70th wedding anniversary as…

I REMEMBER THE FIRST time someone made fun of me for the way I looked. I was seven or eight, and my class was in the school library hanging up our drawings. A girl came up to me and started saying, in a singsong voice, a racist rhyme that I had never heard before and didn’t understand. I remember smiling at her, happy that an older girl would play with me. She ended by pulling her eyes back into slits, a gesture I didn’t understand either, and then she laughed. At first, I laughed with her, but I recall vividly the realization that I was the joke. I remember the heat on my face, how I was embarrassed and didn’t know why. She laughed and shouted more things I…

AH, SUMMERTIME. Barbecues, campfires, dining al fresco and drinks on the dock. But after all we’ve been through this year, why not take it up a notch? Spark up the grill, but move over burgers, marshmallows and s’mores (well, not completely, we still like our old faithfuls), as we’re looking for fresh local bounty to feed us, too. And although the pandemic has been tough going for the hospitality industry, some of the best chefs from across our country’s culinary landscape are happy to share their tips. Even if, this summer, it’s a table for one by a breezy window, a table for two on a tiny balcony or your household is celebrating a milestone on the front porch, these ideas will get you cooking. “A tip for all seasons,…

The King of Pop versus His Royal Badness is still good fodder for music supremacy repartee, but while Michael Jackson’s posthumous offerings have stalled, the Purple One’s diehard fans stay winning. Since his death five years ago from an accidental overdose of painkillers, Prince’s estate has put out a memoir, several catalogue compilations and reissues, and turned his Minneapolis area compound into a museum. This summer brings Welcome 2 America, a previously unreleased album of a dozen songs recorded in 2010, unearthed from the prolific creative’s infamous vault. The funky title track features shimmering percussion, lush female harmonies and blistering lyrics delivered spoken-word style by Prince, who recorded songs that explore capitalism, mass surveillance, celebrityculture and disinformation as the world was emerging from the devastating 2007 to 2009 recession.…

RETELLING FAMILIAR children’s stories from the perspective of their resident baddies has proven to be box-office gold, with the stage musical Wicked (soon to be a movie) raking in more than $1.2 billion on Broadway and the 2014 film Maleficent and its 2019 sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, also earning more than $1.2 billion. Now, Disney is making a prequel about Cruella de Vil – the cigarette-smoking, fur-loving villainess from One Hundred and One Dalmatians – set in 1970s London. Cruella stars Oscar-winner Emma Stone as de Vil, a young, aspiring, haute couture designer who embraces the dark side after working under fashion legend Baroness von Hellman, played by fellow Oscar-winner Emma Thompson, 62. Speaking of baddies, Helen Mirren, 75, told Zoomer in 2019 she hoped for her own car-chase scene in a future Fast & Furious film, and she got her wish…

Lately, I often think of the Greatest Generation – our parents and grandparents – and how we compare to them in handling a crisis. They were shaped by the Great Depression and the Second World War. U.S. journalist Tom Brokaw coined the term in his bestselling 1998 book, The Greatest Generation, writing that this cohort fought the Nazis, not for glory but because it was the right thing to do. Their values were self-sacrifice, bravery and personal responsibility. Judging by our response to the pandemic, we don’t measure up. As I write this in late April, we are at the height of the pandemic’s third wave. The number of cases has been skyrocketing and the authorities are scrambling to find the right response, but not necessarily willing to pay the…

HE WAS THE DASHING, leading man in what was arguably the biggest production of 1960: his union with Princess Margaret. Watched by some 300 million people, it was the first royal wedding to be shown on television. When she took Antony Armstrong-Jones for better or for worse at Westminster Abbey, it was not only a harbinger of blockbuster nuptials to come (think Charles and Di), but also hoisted Tony and Margaret into an ozone layer of glamour, occupied in that era by Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. With his Eton-honed élan, his Byronic good looks, and his job (gasp!) as a photographer, the groom was an instant star. This was despite some sniping from the establishment about a commoner marrying into royalty (foreshadowing the wives of princes William and Harry), and…

“Oh, lots of things were different when I was a child. For one thing, it wasn’t all cats. It was dogs.” TWO MONTHS BEFORE her first birthday, my granddaughter slept over at our house for the first time. In the morning, she crawled into a corner in our upstairs hallway, stood up – and caught her face between two spindles. When she finally calmed down, my wife told her she was fine, she just got stuck for a second. “I got guck,” she said. Then she laughed. Just before her second birthday, my granddaughter was sleeping over again, and in the middle of the night we heard plaintive sounds over the baby monitor. When I went in to check on her, she was sitting up in her crib, in…

Faith in Fashion:  82-year-old La Verne Ford Wimberly of Tulsa, Okla., goes viral after posting her colour-co-ordinated Sunday best on Facebook – wearing a different outfit for virtual services every week for a year – raising spirits and the bar on church-lady “lewks.” This face book deserves a like: Actress Justine Bateman, 55, publishes Face: One Square Foot of Skin, a book of creative non-fiction that challenges negative perceptions about aging female faces. Highclere Holidays: Downton Abbey 2, the sequel to the hit 2019 film, is due out Dec. 22, so have a holly Crawley Christmas. Another reason to catch some zzz: A study shows that sleeping less than five hours a night could double the risk of dementia in older people. In Italy, a 67-year-old man earned the moniker “King…

DONNA SUMMER SANG IT, but Halston lived it. The fella who still looms as a poster man for the Studio 54 era – who, “more than any designer … reinvented himself through the nightclub,” as Stephen Gundle wrote in Glamour: A History – is getting the Netflix treatment this month, courtesy of the insatiable U.S. television producer Ryan Murphy. The rise and the fall: that is the spine of the series starring Ewan McGregor in the titular role. In the process, we get the excesses and the muddle, a snapshot of New York City in the late ’70s and early ’80s, his band of “Halstonettes” (the diverse troupe of models who personified his aesthetic), hobnobbing with one-named wonders like Liza and Bianca. Plus, we get the ascent of American…

CANADA HAS ONE OF THE WORST records in the world for protecting long-term care residents from COVID-19, and the outrageous story behind this record is laid out in jaw-dropping detail in Ontario’s Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission Final Report, released on April 30, after testimony from more than 700 witnesses. The sorry chronicle is a must-read for anyone who wants to honour the memory of 4,430 long-term care residents (more than 50 per cent of Ontario’s death toll of 8,000) who lost their lives in the pandemic. Its appalling findings – and those of Ontario’s Auditor General, which came out two days before – raise questions about why no one has been held accountable for the dereliction of duty. In the scathing 322-page report, the commission said Ontario government officials downplayed…

ON THE HEELS OF Diana’s triumphant first royal tour Down Under, the Prince and Princess of Wales arrived in Canada in June. The Australia visit, portrayed so vividly in The Crown, showed what Di-mania was like: The crowds were so adoring there, she reversed the tide of republicanism with her glamour and warmth. Canada was another victory lap for the People’s Princess, as we fell under her spell. This is the moment Diana began to find her way in both diplomatic dressing and as a fashion influencer. The young mother, separated from Prince William – who turned one on June 21 midway through the 18-day tour – was still dressing in a demure manner: Think soft yellows and blues, with a punch of red and white as an ode to the Maple Leaf…

THE GILDED IDYLL of English writer Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers will transport you to the Greek island of Hydra with immersive, sensual prose: you smell the lemon trees, taste the retsina, hear the bouzouki – and long for a refreshing afternoon swim in the Aegean. Samson’s sun-dappled historical novel chronicles the complicated entanglements in a community of ex-pat writers and painters in the golden summer of 1960. The bohemian group was led by Australian writers Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston and included Amerian journalist Gordon Merrick, New Zealand novelist Redmond Wallis, Norwegian author Axel Jensen and an unknown Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. The idea for the story took shape on her first visit to Hydra in 2014, where she was on vacation after she finished…