Zoomer Magazine December 2021/January 2022

AS I WALKED towards Gomo George’s 1996 painting, “Women’s Carnival Group,” at the Art Gallery of Ontario this fall, I felt a visceral shock of recognition. I had not seen my late grandmother’s house on Lower King George V Street in Roseau, Dominica, for years, and suddenly I was back there. The artist had faithfully rendered her block and its elegant balconies, one of which I stood on as a little girl, looking down on the very scene he had painted: women “playing mas,” resplendent in their Wob Dwiyéts, the island’s national dress. In my 20s, I had commissioned my own Wob Dwiyét, and as I stood there, I remembered that I had never worn it. I thought of my aunts, who often wore theirs. I felt a longing for…

HOW FANTASTICALLY SASSY of Her Majesty to send the Oldie of the Year award committee packing. With warmest best wishes, the 95-year-old monarch turned down The Oldie magazine honour through her private secretary: “Her Majesty believes you are as old as you feel, as such the Queen does not believe she meets the relevant criteria to be able to accept, and hopes you will find a more worthy recipient.” Launched 29 years ago, The Oldie was described by founding editor Richard Ingrams as a “free-thinking, funny magazine, a light-hearted alternative to a press obsessed with youth and celebrity.” It has attracted some laudable names in literature, such as Auberon Waugh, Germaine Greer and Canada’s own Mordecai Richler. “You can’t simply be described as an elderly achiever: You need also to…

(AND DOWN) Still Golden Hollywood star Betty White, who attributes her longevity to a sense of humour and a positive attitude, will celebrate her 100th birthday on Jan. 17. A gut feeling about longevity A new Japanese study suggests centenarians have specific gut microbes that help stave off age-related ailments. Heroic genes DNA analysis confirms Ernie Lapointe, 73, of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is the great-grandson of legendary Chief Sitting Bull, who defeated General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. While shopping for his own birthday decorations, a 62-year-old Maryland man bought a winning US$50,000 lottery ticket And just like that, the “Gone fishin” hat his kids went in on as a gift seemed prescient. If you ever doubted life is a marathon, not a sprint An Ontario man,…

ONE HUNDRED years ago on Dec. 6, Agnes Macphail made history as the first female elected to the House of Commons, and served 19 years as an MP. After that, the former teacher was one of the first two women elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1943, and won a second term as an MPP in 1948. A founding member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the NDP), she fought tirelessly for prison reform, founded the Elizabeth Fry Society and championed equal pay for equal work. In 2017, on Canada’s 150th anniversary, Macphail was the first woman to be featured on a commemorative $10 bill. But, for a moment this fall, the trail she blazed toward gender parity in Parliament was looking like it hit a roadblock. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,…

In the late 1960s, when newspapers were flourishing and no editorial page was complete without a political cartoon, a young Terry Mosher began sharpening his pencil and honing his wit to lampoon the political mores of the day. Almost 60 years and 14,000 cartoons later, the artist known as Aislin (a rendering of Mosher’s eldest daughter’s name) has satirized every Canadian prime minister from Lester B. Pearson to Justin Trudeau, published or contributed to more than 50 books, was named an Officer of the Order of Canada and, in October, was honoured with his own postage stamp. But just because Mosher is a national institution doesn’t mean he’s lost his edge. At 79, he’s still having fun ridiculing the political establishment. When Canada Post approached him this year to be part…

LONG BEFORE Sonny and Cher, there was Lucy and Ricky. Television’s original power couple – Lucille Ball and her Cuban-born husband, Desi Arnaz – burst onto TV screens 70 years ago as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on the sitcom I Love Lucy and, over the course of six ground-breaking seasons, delivered some of the most iconic and memorable moments in television history. (Vitameatavegamin anyone?) Meanwhile, Ball and Arnaz, television’s first interethnic couple, proved just as powerful off screen, with Ball, as head of the pair’s Desilu Studios, shattering Tinseltown glass ceilings by becoming Hollywood’s first female studio boss. And it’s the drama of that push and pull – the sitcom success, the behind-the-scenes power plays, the tumultuous marriage, all set against the sepia-tinted backdrop of the Golden Age of Television – that…