Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2023 i Zoomer Magazine

HOW OLD IS TOO OLD? We live in an era where the traditional take on age and ability – that the former automatically lays waste to the latter – no longer holds. It’s a truth this magazine was created to amplify, and we’ve gamely gone about the business of covering late-in-life bloomers, adventuring grandfluencers, mature master athletes and supercentenarians. And, of course, the health and technological advancements that have led to this flowering. The idea of radical life extension is trending – see Kendall Roy, on the TV series Succession, pitching the Living+ retirement community with “personal longevity programs” that will give you “25, 30, 50 more years,” as a way to boost Waystar Royco stock. In the real world, where Silicon Valley overlords are spending billions to “solve” aging,…

AS AN ACTOR AND SINGER, Harry Belafonte mesmerized audiences, but he found his true calling fighting for civil rights, describing himself as an “activist who’d become an artist.” Capturing the public’s attention with “Day-O,” he turned a Caribbean folk song into an international pop hit; he became the first solo artist to sell one million albums, with 1956’s Calypso. He was also the first Black man to win a Tony (1954) and the first Black producer to win an Emmy (1960). Disarmingly handsome, Belafonte rivalled Elvis Presley in virility at a time when Black male peers like Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis Jr. tempered their sexuality in order to placate segregationists. During a pivotal week in 1968, when the U.S was embroiled in protests over civil rights and the Vietnam…

It’s bright and early in New Zealand, where Italian Australian funnyman, Joe Avati, Zooms in from his hotel hallway. “My wife and son are still sleeping,” whispers the 49-year-old comic, who’s wrapping up the Kiwi portion of his When I Was Your Age world tour. He’ll bring the show to Canada, which he considers a second home, beginning June 3 in Vancouver and ending July 22 in Montreal. Dubbed the “Italian Seinfeld,” Avati gets his observational humour from intergenerational family dynamics, and he often pokes fun at his strict, Calabrian-born parents and the way they fawn over his gen-Alpha son. “I need photo ID. These are not the people who grew me up,” he deadpans in a YouTube clip from one of his live shows. “Grandparents today are the reason…

Though it doesn’t look a day over 25, the bestselling novel Hollywood Wives celebrates its 40th birthday this summer. The fabulously campy ninth book by romance queen Jackie Collins – who passed away in 2015, but is no doubt raising a champagne flute in heaven – made the up-and-coming writer into an international superstar and spawned Hollywood Husbands, Hollywood Kids and Hollywood Divorces. But Wives, which sold 15 million copies, is where the raunchy franchise all began. Among her headliners: Elaine, hitched to a has-been hunk desperate for a career revival; ambitious starlet Gina, who’ll stop at nothing for (more) fame; and powerful casting agent Sadie, who pulls all the strings that matter in Tinseltown. You might recall them as Candice Bergen, Suzanne Somers and Angie Dickinson, respectively, in the…

When Cowboy Junkies hit the road in Ontario this fall, lead singer Margo Timmins will be clad in her signature baggy dresses, tights and boots, having defied marketers who once tried to inveigle her into miniskirts and a nose job. Fronting a quartet with songwriter-guitarist and big brother Michael Timmins, younger brother Peter Timmins on drums, and Michael’s kindergarten pal Alan Anton on bass, the singer (ranked on People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list, in the ’90s) was determined to keep the focus on the band’s distinctive mélange of blues, country, folk, rock and jazz, even when showbiz dangled movie roles and hair-care commercials. “My brothers protected me, so I was very lucky,” she says, “because the industry does like to gobble up women and turn them into…

PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE IS RUMMAGING through a warehouse filled with the remnants from five seasons of the hit CBC TV show Kim’s Convenience. There are lamps, chairs, refrigerators, ping pong paddles and a magazine rack with fake issues wrapped in cellophane. Production is finally letting go of the props, after CBC revealed in March it wasn’t renewing the Kim’s spin-off series, Strays, for a third season. Their shared universe is officially coming to an end, and so has their time under the sterile light in this east-end Toronto warehouse. Lee and his wife Anna – a sign-language interpreter who manages his schedule and generally keeps his head on straight – are here with fellow Kim’s actor and CBC’s Run the Burbs creator Andrew Phung, who had been tipped off about…

“I have three lives,” Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis once purred, “public, private and secret.” The famous first lady borrowed the line from novelist Gabriel García Márquez, and those incarnations still captivate us six decades after the assassination of her husband, former president John F. Kennedy, and nearly 30 years after her death. This year, a pair of biographies will be added atop an already steep pile of books, films and TV series: American historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony’s Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy (May 2) and Kennedy expert J. Randy Taraborrelli’s Jackie: Public, Private, Secret (July 18), whose subtitle is now self-explanatory. (You’re welcome.) Anthony – a former George magazine editor who worked for its founder, Jackie’s son John F. Kennedy, Jr. – focuses on the…

WANT TO LEVEL UP YOUR GRILL GAME and make barbecuing foolproof at the same time? We spoke to some of the country’s top barbecuers and got their tricks, tips and techniques to take you from backyard flipper to bona fide grill master 1 SISTERS OF THE GRILL MADDIE AND KIKI LONGO Canadian sisters Maddie and Kiki Longo have built an empire around their passion for grilling, complete with merchandise and their own house blend rub (naturally). Considered to be in the top 10 barbecue experts in North America, their YouTube videos cover every technical detail you could dream of, on every type of barbecue. When not uploading videos to YouTube, the perky pair can frequently be seen on TV telling folks how to get the best out of their grills…

HALF THE FUN OF Where We Ate comes from the table of contents, an appetizer that only heightens anticipation for food writer Gabby Peyton’s “field guide” to Canadian restaurants. As your eye travels down the list of eateries – organized by decade, beginning with pre-Confederation and ending in the 2010s – be prepared for a stab of recognition, followed by a tsunami of nostalgia, as you travel back in time to relive your first blintz or plate of chicken balls smothered in red sauce. “There’s been so much talk about Canadian cuisine … but I wanted to give a face to all the people who invented poutine and invented donairs; all those mom-and-pops across Canada,” the St. John’s-based restaurant critic and food blogger says in a phone interview. “I wanted to…

1938 – 2023 We thought we’d lost Gordon Lightfoot before. There was the ruptured aortic artery in September 2002, and a surreal hoax in 2010, when news of his death spread on social media, prompting the singer-songwriter to reassure us he was still alive and kicking. It is almost impossible to consider Canada without him, but, sadly, Gordon Lightfoot, 84, has died, of natural causes. No hoax this time. No hope for recovery. Lightfoot’s greatness is a given, but what made him so great? We could talk about the caramel baritone. We could talk about the force and grace of his guitar playing. It all comes back, though, to the hundreds of songs penned by the troubadour. Play them now and play them loud. —Robert Wiersema…

Whether you call them sustainable, responsible or ESG, investments that cater to people’s values, ethics and social conscience have gained traction in recent years. Sustainable investing, which aims to make a financial return while weighing an investment’s environmental and social impact or benefits, could mean buying stocks in companies specializing in renewable energy, eco-friendly fashion or plant-based foods. The strategy also favours businesses in any industry that operate responsibly, along with projects that tackle challenges such as poverty and climate change. Although this approach isn’t new, growing public concern about environmental and social issues is helping drive its uptake. Worldwide, sustainable assets under management in five major markets, including Canada, hit US$35.3 trillion as of early 2020, the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance reports. While assets rose 15 per cent over…

THE BEACH AT SUMMERLY by Beatriz Williams The American author of Our Woman in Moscow is back with more Cold War intrigue, featuring an innocent heroine drawn into a web of spies on a small island off the Connecticut coast. Emilia, the sheltered caretaker’s daughter at Summerly, the estate of the wealthy Peabody family, is enlisted by an FBI agent in 1946 to ensnare a traitor sending information about the American atomic program to the Soviets. Williams’ gift for writing taut historical fiction with a side of romance and mystery is on display as, eight years later, Emilia is summoned by the CIA to face the fallout from that summer, which could ruin the Peabodys. HAPPY PLACE by Emily Henry The flamingo-pink cover, with people wearing sunnies and frolicking in…

KEN JENNINGS, the Jeopardy! GOAT turned co-host, isn’t afraid of death. In fact, he’s written 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife, which is equal parts encyclopedia and travelogue. Jennings looks at where and how humans envision themselves after they die, from ancient Mesopotamia to Dante’s Inferno to The Simpsons. Here are a few of Jennings’ Final Jeopardy!-worthy factoids about final destinations. › DUAT, ANCIENT EGYPT: Arguably, nobody took the afterlife more seriously than the Egyptians and centuries later their famous mummies are star museum attractions. But where did their souls go? To Duat, the obstacle-filled underworld, complete with “fire, crocodiles, bugs, decay, torture chambers and booby traps.” Survive this “full Indiana Jones temple of doom” via 189 spells – hopefully memorized in the…

Halle Berry posted a photo of herself on Instagram drinking wine, in the buff, on a beautiful wrought-iron balcony in early April. Everything that can’t be shown on Instagram was covered up strategically by her arm or the ironwork. The caption read: “I do what I wanna do.” So far, so empowering, right? About half the internet thought not, and the controversy swirled for weeks. Her crime? Being naked at 56. Why is posing, or even speaking, in any kind of sexual manner something reserved for a narrow sliver of a woman’s life, the time society has deemed appropriate for her to be a sexual being? Say, 18 to about 40, max, the classic “fertile zone.” When are we going to take the reproductive cycle out of the equation? The…

UP It’s never too late for a fairy-tale ending After some tricky detours, Camilla, at 75, is officially crowned Her Majesty The Queen. Grey hair? Fabulous. Wrinkles? Dignified. Forgetting why I walked into this room? Not at all infuriating A Yale study suggests that holding positive attitudes about aging could help seniors recover from mild cognitive impairment. Or, perhaps try a little dance A 100-year-old woman, known as “The Dancing Nana” on Instagram, says her longevity secrets include a love of chocolate and, of course, cutting a rug. Scientists find that cold can stave off elements of biological aging and increase longevity in animals, holding promise for humans So pack your bags for the newest retirement hot spot — beautiful Antarctica. We’ll have to start calling him Steamy Robinson Smokey…

Mary Quant empowered women with a snip of her scissors and created mod fashion that made the ’60s swing. Quant, who died at 93, didn’t expressly invent the miniskirt, rather, she channelled the exploding postwar zeitgeist. Without her, there would have been no wild transition between the staid sweater sets of the ’50s and the hippie gear of the ’60s. The mod look was clean and fun, epitomized by Quant’s signature daisy insignia. Quant took the vibe of the emerging London counterculture and turned it into PVC raincoats and convertible go-go boots. Women who wore her clothes marked the beginning of a sea change, illustrating how fashion reflected their new aspirations. They provided a blueprint for how women could shake up the workplace: in a cacophony of colour and…

It is an arresting image — the quiet, confident beauty of 106-year-old Apo Whang-Od, radiating out of the Vogue cover. Not only is Whang-Od the last practising mambabatok, or traditional tattoo artist, of the Kalinga tribe in the Philippines, she is Vogue’s oldest “cover girl” having pipped Judi Dench who was a mere 85. Whang-Od has said she will practise her art form for “as long as my eyes can see.” The craft can only be passed on within bloodlines and Whang-Od, who never had children of her own, chose her grandniece Grace Palicas, 26, to be her apprentice. Intrepid tourists arrive at their precipitous village daily to receive hand-tapped tattoos. Now, even when the world goes blurry, Whang-Od’s culture will live on, proudly shown-off in the cafés of Brooklyn…

Hollywood likes to repeat itself – or, at the very least, keep audiences in their comfort zone – and June-July’s releases prove it. We’ve seen the characters, we know their stories and, in the case of Oppenheimer (July 21), we know the ending. The biopic from Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy) starring Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy, about how J. Robert Oppenheimer developed the nuclear bomb, delivers a morbid nostalgia not seen in movies since his own Dunkirk. Fast forward a decade and aliens are the threat in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (June 16). The quirky style of the Oscar-winning writer and director is a genre unto itself. Set in 1955 in a fictional, pastel-coloured desert town called Asteroid City, the film stars an Easter egg basketful of…

BODY REAP WHAT YOU SOW Community gardens have been an urban thing since the ’80s. You get to grow your own food (useful when produce is pricey) in an open space you otherwise might not have in a city. But a University of Colorado Boulder study shows that the community aspect can be as profoundly important as the digging and planting. Researchers recruited 291 adults who had never gardened, or hadn’t gardened in at least two years, for a controlled, randomized trial. Denver Urban Gardens provided the trial with 37 plots, a gardening course, seeds and seedlings. Participants spent about 90 minutes a week at the gardens. The study showed that the benefits go far beyond access to fresh fruit and veg. The allotments offer a “a refuge from everyday…

There is always someone worse off than you. That became painfully clear to me over the last few weeks. First, in early March, a friend’s husband had a terrible accident. Because it happened in a remote part of northern Ontario, he had to be taken by snowmobile and airlifted to hospital. We visited him in a Toronto ICU, where he was getting great care, but seeing him was shocking. My friend seems to be holding it together. I can’t imagine how. Then, on the last day of that month, our friend and neighbour Pierre Lavallée died unexpectedly. We have known each other since his wife Fern and my husband Doug took a Canadian Securities course together back in the late ’80s, when we all lived in Ottawa. Fern and I…

A MAGNIFICENT CATALPA PRESIDES over our farm. The 60-year-old tree, centred in front of the wraparound porch, is a stunner in all seasons: delicate white blossoms in late spring; lush, oversized leaves offering deep shade in the heat of summer; and a stripped-down, witchy, cantilevered sculpture in winter, with dangling seed pods miraculously intact despite the fierce winds that sweep across the rolling farmer’s field next door. This ornamental beauty looks out of place here in rural Ontario, but its roots run deep in the soil now. I often wonder how we blend in here in Huron County, a 2.5-hour drive west of our home in Toronto. I’m a writer and editor who spent decades following the fashion circus around the world; my husband is a Bay Street lawyer. We…

IF YOU’RE TIRED OF cracking open a cold one or mixing up batches of G&Ts for your guests, read on for ways to liven up your summer cocktail game. Toronto mixologist Jacob Martin talks about cocktails like an alchemist turning lead into gold. As a bartender riding the wave of a cocktail culture that utilizes scientific methods, it only makes sense that his toolbox includes gadgets like a rotary evaporator and methods like cryo infusions. But Martin is after liquid gold, and he’s struck it enough times to have been crowned Diageo’s 2023 World Class Canada Bartender of the Year. Now the 33-year-old from Toronto’s Bar Banane is preparing to represent Canada at the World Class Global competition in São Paulo, Brazil, in September. Martin’s grandmother was a bartender (who…