The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 17

LOWER MAINLAND B.C. mikS.AY B3 Singing Alongi cooking again JEAN CHRETIEN and Philip Owen had barely got home from dotting the lions' eyes to open Chinatown's Millennium Gate recently when hooligans moved in. According to event factotum Kelly Ip, thieves pried out the granite II Duce's goose cooked but his duckling lives on Malcolm Parry fc 11 (' tmuemtlmmm-Jt n'i mini. --if- I htd www.meetonline.ca Web site didn't meet its projections for introducing those seeking "long-term relationships, sex, fetish or whatever." Contractor Mansour Amini cemented his relationship with now-wife Pamela Beeyeng more conventionally in 1991, when Alongi serenaded them with arias and love songs at II Giardino. Wrapping up his 54th restaurant job this week, Amini smiled: "I'm not dying from hunger in this business, I'll tell you that" No one knows how many licit and other romances Alongi's singing has helped along.

But the most important for him at least must be his own. That would be with Geraldine Salmon, who was opera-student Alongi's piano-accompanist in Britain in 1960. But with marriage impossible, they parted, married others, raised families, survived near-fatal ailments and became free again. Amazingly, a letter she addressed to his four-decades-past Sicilian home reached him -two years after she wrote it and days after he made his deal with Bertolussi. They were re-united, he proposed and she accepted.

Which is why, when Don Francesco has its grand opening in a month or so, you may hear the padrone sing Sole Mio with wife-to-be Geraldine back on the keyboard. RED ROBINSON, the city showbiz veteran, is spending the MALCOLM PARRYVANCOUVER SUN Hostess Mina Shojania vamps beside a Tony Bruno pastoral painting at Don Francesco. I 0 hX- pearls in the sculpted lion's mouths, smashed one and made off with the other. Tradition calls for such ceremonial lions have something in their mouths so they won't bite humans an eventuality Ip and others might condone in this mindless case. ROSS TAGGART, Mike Rud and Rick Kilburn played some very tasty jazz on tenor sax, guitar and bass when MCL Motor Cars introduced a $99,095 Range Rover model at the University of B.C.'s Cecil Green Alumni Centre Tuesday.

Naturally amplified by the tree-shaded mansion's acoustics, Taggart reprised such classics as Lullaby Of The Leaves and dug into his Cellar Live album Thankfully for a pair of tunes that complemented the event his own Match the Hatch and Rud's Laurier Luxury Walk. Complemented it better, that is, than the late Lance Harrison did at a General Motors promotional wingding, where his Dixieland band blithely blared out Tin Roof Blues. The sound of music no doubt would delight former Vancouver Symphony Orchestra violinist Cecil Green, the star UBC engineering student who later co-founded the Texas Instruments technology firm and gave much of his subsequent fortune to various universities. UBC got Cecil Green College and the alumni center. The philanthropist celebrated ') f-i -j 1 f.

week in Mem FRANCESCO ALONGI, the longtime restaurateur, major domo and operatic tenor, will welcome guests to his own place again Friday, when his Don Francesco will open softly in the former Uforia's Burrard-off-Rob-son locale. The financier is concrete-construction mogul Ezio Bertolus-si, an international soccer and auto-racing devotee who was a regular at Uforia and at Alongi's 15-year eatery on Richards Street (now Lucy Mae Brown), where folk literally crossed oceans and continents to dine on Alongi's Anitra Vignerola. Chef Tom Trail, who ended a 15-year stint at Umberto Menghi's II Giardino to run Don Francesco's small kitchen, is rehearsing that dish, in which young duck are stuffed with fruit and herbs, roasted over very low heat for 12 hours and finished with a grape reduction. Alongi says he got the recipe from late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's personal chef, Sr. Scarbina -just don't ask for Vive II Duckling or expect any Baby Duck in the racks, where Alongi and Berto-lussi say they'll maintain predecessor Fereydoun Manavi's only-the-best policy.

Diners will be greeted by entertainment and travel scribe-entrepreneur Mina Shojania, whose double-entendre avaMata) MALUOLM PAH KY VANCOUVER SUN Saxist Ross Taggart enjoys the high-horsepower backing of guitarist Mike Rud, bassist Rick Kilburn and a fleet of $99,095 Range Rovers, introduced at UBC's Cecil Green Alumni Centre. phis, where he emceed the Elvis Presley Week's Legends of Rock'n'Roll concert Tuesday and will do Robinson the same at the Farewell Tribute Concert Saturday. MALCOLM PARRYVANCOUVER SUN Francesco Alongi has a new restaurant opening Friday and a new marriage soon after. news boss, had his 1989 Thun-derbird stolen and joyridden recently. Thieves made off with a black briefcase containing his business diary and 600-phone-number electronic daytimer.

There'll be no questions asked of folk calling 604-739-4185 to help him retrieve his otherwise worthless property, Clapp says. RICH COLEMAN, the B.C. solicitor general, is being toasted for simplifying our archaic Film Institute poll as the best movie ever made. An award for best comeback in trying circumstances would likely go to the picture's bibulous writer, Herman J. Mankiewicz, who, after being violently sick during a private Hollywood dinner, faced his hostess and suavely said: "I trust you noticed, madam, that the white wine did come up with the fish." malcolmparryshaw.ca 604-929-8456 liquor regulations.

But what's this about restaurants resealing bottles of wine for patrons to take home? Surely, no diners even the handful who own corkscrews are going to leave a comfortable chair in a pleasant place just to guzzle the remainder of their Pouilly Fuisse off the neck while driving home. ORSON WELLES' 1941 Citizen Kane recently won a British his 102nd birthday last week at the Cecil Green Hospital in San Diego, California, a state that almost finished him off early. That was in the morning of April 18, 1906, when he woke to find the San Francisco earthquake destroying his home. ALAN CLAPP, the documentary moviemaker and former TV TRACEY WOOD, the city lawyer, makes and markets a line of semi-precious-stone necklaces and pendants under the name Juicy Jewels. She should open an exercise centre, too, and call the joint enterprise Juicy Jewels and Gym New civic party aims for political middle ground Vancouver Civic Action lacks candidate for mayor, but is still looking 3 7 A b'- Pill said he would work for "serious changes" in the downtown eastside, for more community involvement in civic government and "to lead in the door-opening for aboriginal people in Vancouver." Herbert said he supports liquor law reforms announced by the provincial government, but wants local neighbourhoods to have a say in whether their pubs are allowed to stay open until 4 a.m.

Land use planner Jon Ellis said a vcaTEAM council would consult with the people of Vancouver to find out what kind of downtown they want before fully endorsing the current NPA council's new Downtown Transportation Plan. The party's possible council candidates include Brent Bazinet, a business i' i ft-? 1 A. i II I fill i 1 left-wing party." The new party is borrowing part of the name of The Electors' Action Committee (TEAM), which dominated Vancouver civic politics during the 1970s. It was co-founded by Cowie, who served on one of the 1970s TEAM councils, and by former NPA councillors Nancy Chiavario and Alan Herbert, who were shuffled off the NPA's slate in 1999. Its policy platform calls for Vancouver to to reclaim its "economic birthright" of trans-shipping goods, using ports, rail lines, air freight and telecommunications.

A vcaTEAM council would develop an integrated plan for the city and "remove roadblocks and red tape at all three levels of government to facilitate business and build jobs," the platform says. In communications, vcaTEAM says it would encourage development of a Canadian international broadcaster like CNN, BBC World or Deutsche Welle, to be based in Vancouver. VcaTEAM says it would boost the city's hospitality industry and try to coordinate its activities to make Vancouver a "fun city" again, with more activities including a civic New Year's Eve celebration. VcaTEAM council candidate Lou Demerais, who is executive director of the Vancouver Native Health Society, IAN SMITHVANCOUVER SUN Some of the new vcaTEAM candidates hoping to form city council are (from left) Constantine Bonnis, Jon Ellis, Lou Demerais, Alan Herbert, Art Cowie, Brent Bazinet, Nancy Chiavario and Barney Hickey. By WILLIAM BOEI Vancouver's newest civic party, Vancouver Civic Action or vcaTEAM, unveiled a middle-of-the-road platform Wednesday and declared itself the centrist alternative to the right-wing Nonpartisan Association and the left-wing Coalition of Progressive Electors.

VcaTeam plans to run candidates for city council, park board and school board positions, but hasn't fielded a mayoral hopeful yet. President John Gaspardy said the new party, which was rebuffed by retiring NPA Mayor Philip Owen, is now talking to several other potential candidates, including airline pilot and former Social Credit cabinet minister Stephen Rogers and another he would not name. Community planner and consultant Art Cowie said vcaTEAM is "very much bunched around the centre, and a fairly broad centre." "That's the way we see the city, that's the way we see the voters," Cowie told a news conference. "We think the NPA has drifted off to the right and we also think that the city's not ready for a banker and director of the Gay and Lesbian Business Association of Greater Vancouver; small business operator Constantine Bonnis; longtime park commission and city councillor Chiavario; Cowie; Ellis; investor and past councillor Herbert; and registered nurse Barney Hickey. Potential park board candidates include high-tech human resources specialist Kristina Parusel and information technology consultant Erik Whiteway.

A nomination meeting is set for Sept. 12. Provincial Park Campground and Day Use Area Management Opportunities British 8 FF COLUMBIA Request for Qualifications (RFQ) The Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection has posted a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) on BC Bid for the delivery of provincial park campground and day use area recreation services for summer 2003 and beyond. The closing date for this mandatory RFQ is 4:00 p.m., September 23, 2002. Only those respondents qualified through this RFQ will be invited to reply to a subsequent Request for Proposals, scheduled for release this fall.

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