Florida food train

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VENERABLE MIDTOWN GOURMET food shop Pusateri’s might be making a move south of the border, if reports are true.

Although John Mastroianni, general manager at Pusateri’s, wouldn’t confirm a deal has been struck, he did say negotiations are underway for a potential location in Miami, Florida.

“Our type of market, our business plan is quite unique,” says Mastroianni. “We offer some things some of the stores don’t at present.”

One would think the idea would be to follow their regular customers to their winter resting place, but Mastroianni says he gets as many requests from Florida residents spending time in Toronto, who have found out about Pusateri’s.

“The demand is not just snowbirds,” says Mastroianni, who confirms that most of the Pusateri’s team heads south during the winter, including shareholder Frank Luchetta and, of course, Ida Pusateri, herself.

“It would be a great addition to the area and could result in future growth in the U.S.,” he explains.

According to Mastroianni, if all goes well, an announcement could be made within the next two months.

Berman for Senator

Bob Berman, previously the chef and co-owner of popular bistro Boba, with his wife Barbara Gordon, has quietly taken over the legendary Senator, Toronto’s oldest restaurant and formerly housing a renowned jazz club on the second floor.

The Senator is quite a different game for Berman, who has moved from serving upscale and creative cuisine, to mixing up cozy diner fare for the masses.

Berman chose the Senator for sentimental reasons.

“It was the first restaurant I ever ate at when I came to Toronto,” he explains. But he also believes that it’s the kind of food and atmosphere that Toronto needs more of right now.

“The thing I like about it is that it’s authentic, really an original diner, unique to Toronto. Yonge- Dundas square has become so futuristic and modern, it is nice to have a link to the past.”

In terms of changes to the restaurant, Berman just wants to improve what the Senator has already got going.

“I want to make the Senator recognized as the best diner in the city, with good chicken pot pie or a great sandwich.”

He plans to team up with Cumbrae Butchers to create a special Senator burger blend, which he hopes to get ranked as one of the top in the city. In the end, Berman notes, its just about offering “a food experience that is similar to the actual space: unique, comfortable, elegant and unintimidating.”

The Senator is located at 249 Victoria St., 416-364-7517.

Little India meets Queen West

Restaurateur Hanif Harji finds inspiration in the most unlikely places around the world for his globally inspired hot spots, including Queen West’s Nyood and Kultura on King Street East, but he didn’t have to look further than his grandma’s kitchen for his latest operation, Madras Pantry.

Trendy Queen Westers now have somewhere else to drop by for their on-the-go munchies and eclectic grocery needs.

Harji and partner Ryan Fisher are the brains behind Madras Pantry, a combination restaurant and grocery that specializes in dosas, Indian crepes made from rice flour and lentils, usually filled with potatoes or vegetables.

But Madras has their own take on the dosa. “We’ve North Americanized it by doing it in a wrap form,” says Fisher. “This way people can easily walk out with it in their hand.”

In addition to dosas, Madras Pantry serves up lassis (yogourt- based smoothies) and kulfi (cubed indian ice cream made from condensed milk) and boasts a retail section stocked with Indian foods usually found only on Gerrard: spices, chutneys, pickled foods, mixes and Indian sodas.

The shop also features an exciting Indian circus theme, conceived and executed by Commute Homes (who also designed Nyood and Kultura among others) complete with massive posters and even a mini Ferris wheel.

Madras Pantry is located at 877 Queen St. W., 416-777-0026.

La-la-la-la Lola

Named after a great aunt that really knew how to throw a dinner party, Lola’s Commissary has opened on Church Street, just south of Bloor.

“The restaurant has been a true labour of love,” says Therese De Grace, who owns the restaurant with partner Karen Balcom — former owner of iconic bar Pope Joan.

Lola’s will feature whimsical food options such as blueberry cheesecake stuffed French toast for brunch and homespun fettuccine with hemp pesto for dinner.

Lola’s Commissary is located at 634 Church St., 416-966-3991.

The Abbot turns Monk

The neighbourhood favourite Abbot on the Hill, located on Yonge south of St Clair, has changed their name to the Monk’s Table.

While the loss of a partner is partially behind the change, the major reason is confusion with another Abbot on the Hill, separately owned and located at Yonge and Lawrence.

“We let our patrons choose our new name, asking that it be ecclesiastical (because of our selection of monastic ales) and have something to do with our fare,” says current owner Adam Grant. Along with their new name, the Monk’s Table is now going under the title of “gourmand house” rather than “gastropub,” as it was previously known.

The Monk’s Table is located at 1276 Yonge St., 416-920-7037.

Scuttlebutt

Excitement is building for the third annual Picnic at the Brick Works event slated for early next month, Oct. 4. For this year’s event, each food station will combine a chef with a global food background, a chef specializing in local food traditions and a local farmer. Tickets are $110 per person. Go to www.evergreen.ca for further information.

Chef Christopher Palik, of North York’s popular Italian destination Paese (3829 Bathurst St., 416-631-6585) will soon be harvesting his quarter-acre test farm that will provide local produce for a new harvest menu upcoming at the restaurant.

Stay tuned.

Replacing a legend

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THE SIZABLE SHOES left by the closing of long-time dining mecca Boba are tough to fill. Wisely, Zin makes no effort to reproduce the modern continental cuisine of its predecessor.

Instead, the newcomer offers a sophisticated Chinese menu. And although the food is a hit, the service has kinks aplenty.

We opt for the famous patio facing Avenue Road, as we are not about to miss one of the rare lovely evenings in this pitiful summer, but the dining room shows little change from its previous incarnation.

The list of starters is a grab bag: eight of the most familiar dim sum dishes begin the carte, each priced at $4, but we haven’t acquired the habit of eating har gow post sunset. Soups, again, touch the well-worn bases. Hot and sour soup is served with shrimp toast, which we devour as the soup has not arrived and our appetites are primed. However, not only has the soup not appeared, one of our entrees arrives without ceremony or explanation. It is soon removed.

The soup ($7) is excellent and genuinely spicy with only a modicum of cornstarch. Had it not arrived tepid the first time, the joy would have been complete.

One of the many servers to appear tableside recommends the stuffed baked avocado. It is a common luncheon dish, and I am curious as to how the application of heat will affect it. It has been stuffed with a mound of shrimp and crab and gratinéd. Pretty and tasty. I am about to give royal assent to this dish but am distracted by a nagging sweetness. This is not the sugar from a ripe mango but a taste that is artificial. The waiter seeks guidance in locating the offending element and finally informs us that it is the mayonnaise that has bound the fish.

One of the major joys of this evening is the fact that Peking duck is listed as a standard item on the menu. As a rule, it is a dish that must be ordered 24 hours in advance, and, let’s face it, who is that organized? At Zin, it is a two- course production rather than the usual three and is available as a half duck ($28) or whole ($48), allowing even greater flexibility.

“CHEQUE PLEASE”

ZIN
90 Avenue Rd.
416-923-1515
Dinner for two excluding tax, tip and alcohol:
$75

The third time it arrives (there had been two unscheduled deliveries), we are ready. The mahogany half duck sits pristinely on a platter, soon to be accompanied by a steamer basket of delicate rice pancakes. Two side dishes appear — one with batons of cantaloupe and honeydew and the other with shards of green onions and slender carrot sticks. And, of course, hoisin sauce.

The bird is delicately carved, and the server assembles a stuffed pancake for each of us and I swoon. The skin of the bird is so crispy and the roasting is so superb that there is zero fat attached to the crackling.

For the second course, I am obliged to choose to have the remaining duck meat served with fried rice or in noodle soup and I opt for the former. This proves to be a wonderful side dish.

Shrimps in Thai red curry sauce ($22) works well after the duck. Six giant shrimp are swimming in a succulent ocher pool glistening with rivulets of chili oil. Perfect.

Ah, the service. Aside from dishes arriving at the wrong time and temperature, these guys need to relax. When I decide I want another stuffed pancake, the waiter leaps to my side and takes the fork from my hand. Just try to grab another scoop of rice without attracting attention. We have been trained in the free-for- all atmosphere of Chinatown and this formality is cumbersome.

Zin has the potential of being a top-notch restaurant. The kitchen has the skills, but the servers need to match that standard.

From the ground up

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WHAT SEEMED LIKE an unfortunate event in the life of Rema Tavares would actually be an opportunity for her to find her life’s calling.

In 2007, Tavares’s graduate program in neurolinguistics was cancelled, and she felt lost and uncertain about her future.

“The one thing I knew,” says the local resident, “was that I wanted to work in the not-for-profit sector.”

After calling her cousin Lara Tavares, who is the founder of Sky’s the Limit, she packed up and moved from a small town outside of Ottawa to Toronto. She became the project co-ordinator for the group, which raises funds to buy refurbished computers for under-resourced youth.

“There’s a term that comes around these days called ‘digital divide.’ It refers to the polarization of society into two groups: those with access to technology and those without,” says Tavares, 26.

The mission of Sky’s the Limit is to help eliminate that divide and provide young people with the computers they need.

“Most of these kids cannot even afford the Internet, let alone a computer,” Tavares says. “This is a huge challenge as most schools assume kids have computers at home and ask they do homework and research on their home computers.”

“ My favourite part is definitely seeing how excited they are when they get the computers.”

Sky’s the Limit purchases refurbished computers from IBM and distributes them through their partner organizations. While these computers are considerably more affordable, choosing refurbished computers also has positive environmental impacts: reducing the carbon footprint by avoiding the amount of fossil fuels necessary to manufacture new computers as well as diverting used computers from landfills. And while it is important to Tavares to be part of an environmentally conscious organization, it’s the impact that Sky’s the Limit has had on youth that moves her.

“My favourite part is definitely seeing how excited they are when they get the computers,” she says. “Most of them have never received an expensive and big gift before.”

Being able to take part in delivering the computers continues to be the most powerful part of Tavares’s job.

“Going into the students’ homes and seeing where they live and how they live definitely brings you down to earth,” she says. On one day, Tavares delivered computers to a home in Regent Park.

“All the power was off, and there were no emergency lights in the building,” she recalls. “It was completely dark and almost impossible to deliver the computers. All I could think about was that this is the kind of thing these kids go through on a daily basis. It’s so easy to not even think of it.”

Outside of her time with the organization, Tavares enjoys playing soccer, painting and reading in her North York home. She spends a lot of time with her family, who are all involved in Sky’s the Limit.

Tavares isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. She seems to have stumbled upon her destiny and says she sees great things for her future at Sky’s the Limit: “We have already delivered our 1,000th computer and are working toward 2,000 sometime this year,” she says.

Post City Magazines salutes Rema Tavares for diverting computers from landfill to give to local students.

Giving students that extra boost for success

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WHAT SEEMED LIKE an unfortunate event in the life of Rema Tavares would actually be an opportunity for her to find her life’s calling.

In 2007, Tavares’s graduate program in neurolinguistics was cancelled, and she felt lost and uncertain about her future.

“The one thing I knew,” she says, “was that I wanted to work in the not-for-profit sector.”

After calling her cousin Lara Tavares, who is the founder of Sky’s the Limit, she packed up her belongings and moved from a small town outside of Ottawa to Toronto. She became the project co-ordinator for the group, which raises funds to buy refurbished computers for under-resourced youth.

“There’s a term that comes around these days called ‘digital divide.’ It refers to the polarization of society into two groups: those with access to technology and those without,” says Tavares, 26. The mission of Sky’s the Limit is to help eliminate that divide and provide young people with the computers they need.

“Most of these kids cannot even afford the Internet, let alone a computer,” Tavares says. “This is a huge challenge as most schools assume kids have computers at home and ask they do homework and research on their home computers.”

“ My favourite part is definitely seeing how excited they are when they get the computers.”

Sky’s the Limit purchases refurbished computers from IBM and distributes them through their partner organizations. While these computers are considerably more affordable, choosing refurbished computers also has positive environmental impacts: reducing the carbon footprint by avoiding the amount of fossil fuels necessary to manufacture new computers as well as diverting used computers from landfills.

While it’s important to Tavares to be a “green” organization, it’s Sky’s the Limit’s impact on youth that moves her:

“My favourite part is definitely seeing how excited they are when they get the computers,” she says. “Most of them have never received an expensive and big gift before.”

Outside of her time with the organization, Tavares plays soccer, paints and reads in her York Mills home. She spends a lot oftimewithherfamily,whoareall involved in Sky’s the Limit.

Tavares is isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“We have already delivered our 1,000th computer and are working toward 2,000 sometime this year,” she says.

Post City Magazines salutes Rema Tavares and Sky’s the Limit for helping students gain access to the resources they need for success.

Make your voice heard

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THE RESOLVE OF the people of Bayview and North Toronto areas was evident during the recent strike. People demonstrated that resolve in many ways, by reducing waste, finding creative ways to store it, by finding alternative solutions to lost daycare and other programs. And in vast numbers, people expressed their opinions in many communications to elected representatives.

Almost everyone would have preferred not to have a strike, particularly in the summer. Your e-mails and calls offered many ideas to deal with the issues it raised and to settle it in a fair manner — although there remain varying views of what is fair.

Private and public sector strikes differ. If General Motors is on strike, you can still buy a Toyota. But in a public sector strike, some services simply have no alternative source, such as issuance of building permits, issuance of licences, enforcement of property standards and delivery of water.

Personnel continued some vital services, but the city shut down others completely. By agreement, some services were deemed essential, such as emergency medical services, and were continued by unionized employees. Some services have alternative sources, like garbage collection, but the city chose not to utilize them.

Another difference is in the cavalier treatment of customers. Generally, you pay whether or not you get services. For example, the city continued to collect taxes everywhere while garbage collection in our area stopped and Etobicoke’s continued. However, with the opposition of Mayor Miller, tax and garbage fee rebates are unlikely. In any event, the recent strike resulted in so many undesirable outcomes that most residents now believe we need new approaches to these matters. I welcome your input at [email protected] or 416-395-6408.

Infrastructure gets a big boost

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WITH STIMULUS FUNDS delivered, massive city building projects are getting underway with great fanfare. The Union Station overhaul finally has the go- ahead. For drivers, a new route out of downtown opens up when the extension of Simcoe Street to Lakeshore Boulevard will be unveiled. And all three orders of government will be fighting for the shovel, and the credit, when the Sheppard LRT line begins construction.

An equally big project began this past winter without much fanfare, but is just as important as any. The first of 30 projects to improve North York’s storm water management began in Don Valley East in a ravine near Sheppard Avenue East and Leslie Street. Nearing completion as the summer closes, the project replaced a washed out storm water culvert and the water infrastructure leading to the culvert. The new sewer pipes and culvert are now designed to deal with 100-year storms like the one North Yorkers experienced in 2005.

We’ve endured the inconvenience of contractors taking over our streets to flush water mains or reline our sewers. But 2009 will go down in history for the residents surrounding the culvert project at Sheppard and Leslie as ‘the summer to forget,’ due to the invasive nature of the project. A review of the project is now required.

The greatly improved culvert is now fully installed. It absorbed all of the extreme rains of Aug. 8 and 9. But the city owes it to the remaining residents waiting for basement flooding mitigation projects to conduct a thorough review of the first job done. I will be requesting this review in September. Future contracts must include more safeguards and greater sensitivity to the families and children who live alongside these projects.

Nina Dobrev

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NINA DOBREV’S FIRST words from her cellphone, which she’s using to call from Atlanta, Ga., are a clear indicator of just how quickly this young actor’s star is rising.

“I just got this car, and I’m really excited about it,” she says, as she drives the new Audi to work. “It’s my first car,” she says with pride. “I’ve never had a car before. I’ve always driven my mom’s Toyota Corolla.”

But for Nina Dobrev, there’s a lot more than a new car to be excited about.

The 20-year-old brunette is driving her pride and joy (“It’s triple black — black in every way except there’s a silver trim”) to the set of The Vampire Diaries, a teen TV drama set to premiere this fall. On top of that, September will mark the world premiere of her latest film, Chloe, at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film, directed by Atom Egoyan, stars veteran actors Liam Neeson, and Julianne Moore as well as up- and-comer Amanda Seyfried.

Chloe, a remake of a French film called Nathalie, is about a successful doctor (Moore) who suspects her husband (Neeson) is cheating on her. She hires an escort (Seyfried) in an effort to procure information about her husband. Nobrev plays Anna, the girlfriend of Moore’s character’s friend, Michael. The actress said she couldn’t help being a little star- struck working with such heavy weights as Neeson.

“C’mon,” she says, “Schindler’s List? Unbelievable. I never thought I would work with him.” Neeson’s name made headlines during filming when his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, died in hospital after sustaining a head injury while taking a ski lesson in Quebec this past March.

“Unfortunately, because of the tragedy that happened with his wife, while we were shooting, all the scenes were cut out that we were supposed to do,” Dobrev says. “But I got to meet him, and it was a huge pleasure and he was so sweet and so wonderful to be around, and Julianne Moore was just the same.”

Nobrev only has kind words for the star of the film, Amanda Seyfried. “Amanda and I are friends now, but she’s such an incredible actress, and she’s someone I was star-struck about, too,” she says. “I mean, c’mon, Mean Girls? Mamma Mia!? She was unreal.”

Though Dobrev is in awe of her colleagues’ accomplishments and talent, this young starlet isn’t far from joining their ranks.

Just three years ago, Dobrev was both a high school student and an athlete, competing heavily in rhythmic and aesthetic gymnastics (“It’s like synchronized swimming, only with gymnastics”) with the Canadian Aesthetic Gymnastics team at a Bayview club near Leslie Street and York Mills Road.

“I loved the competitive aspects, and I loved the physical and social aspects of it,” Dobrev says. “A lot of my friends were doing it, and it was fun, it was dancing, it was performing, but it was still a challenge. The training was really intense — anywhere from three to four hours, six days a week.”

Combined with being a theatre student at Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts, performing in front of audiences was a regular part of life for the high school student. When acting coach Dean Armstrong of Toronto’s Armstrong Acting Studio, came to her school to teach a workshop on on-camera studies, she was hooked. Dobrev signed up for private lessons with the acting coach. Soon after, she was ready to embark on her career, with agents and several auditions lined up.

“I auditioned for three things within a week and ended up getting all three things,” Dobrev says.

The jobs were nothing to scoff at: a role as Mia Jones in the Canadian television series Degrassi: The Next Generation and two smaller parts. The first, in Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces, based on the Anne Michaels’ novel, and another part in Sarah Polley’s award-winning directorial debut, Away from Her, alongside Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie.

“I shot them in February, March and April of that same year,” Dobrev recalls. “I was still in high school. It was kind of crazy, the first year while I was doing it. Degrassi started airing and stuff, and things got kind of different — I was on TV and my friends would poke fun at me about it.”

Dobrev had to hire a tutor so that she’d be able to graduate with a high school diploma.

“I basically went back just for prom at the end of the year,” Dobrev remembers. “And it was really fun, but at the same time it felt kind of weird because I felt like I’d missed out on a lot of inside jokes. It was a little odd but I gained a lot of experience that I otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Dobrev has appeared in several other television projects since then, including Eleventh Hour and The Border. Then, this past January, she gave up her Toronto apartment to make the big move to Los Angeles, just in time for pilot season in TV land, where she landed a job almost immediately as the lead in The Vampire Diaries.

If the enormous success of films such as Twilight and the HBO series True Blood is any indication, the newest in vampire entertainment should also be a success. Dobrev plays Elena, who, after being involved in a car accident that kills both of her parents, loses interest in the popular crowd of which she was once queen. Soon, she meets the dark and brooding Stefan, who, of course, turns out to be a vampire. When his jealous brother gets thrown into the mix, things get really complicated.

“It’s a really fun show and has a lot of different aspects,” Dobrev says. “It’s sexy, it’s exciting, there’s a lot of action, there’s a lot of blood, there’re funny parts, there are light moments and dark moments.”

Despite being too busy to visit home quite yet, Dobrev has big plans to make the rounds to her favourite places in Toronto this month when she’ll hopefully have time to come to the film festival.

“Oh my God!I have so many favourite things to do,” she says. “There’s one place right around the corner from my old house, called Johnny’s Hamburger. It’s a hole in the wall; they haven’t renovated since probably the ’40s; and the burgers are massively huge and really cheap and really yummy.”

Dobrev says she also can’t come to Toronto without visiting the Drake Hotel and Café Crepe.

“I have a massive sweet tooth for a banana, Nutella, coconut crepe,” she says.

It’s OK, though, because with her brand new car, the family and friends will come to her.

“My parents are so excited,” she says. “And my brother was, like, ‘Whoa! I wanna come visit and drive your car,’ so he’s going to come, and he’s going to check it out.”

Project showcases young artists

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A RUNNING DEER, a chickadee peacefully sitting, a frog playing while a caterpillar quietly creeps, these are the subjects of three wonderful paintings created by young Torontonians, winners and contestants of Robert Bateman’s annual Get to Know Art contest, now featured in Duplex Parkette.

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to come and see this wall of art recently, I encourage you to do so. The newest mural, painted by six-year-old Truman Wood Lockyer and eight-year-old Philip Nicoletti, is a delightful addition to the work that has been on display since last summer.

This unique feature of Duplex Parkette began through a partnership with Robert Bateman and the City of Toronto’s Clean and Beautiful program. For almost 10 years, Bateman has undertaken a variety of initiatives to encourage young Canadians to get to know nature, including an art contest.

In addition to having winning work featured in a calendar, some of the Toronto-based entries will also have their work displayed in our park.

The project is a fantastic way to showcase the talent and imagination of young people as well as making our public spaces even more beautiful. The intention is to add a new mural each year.

Regrettably, the retaining wall upon which the murals are hung has been a magnet for graffiti and vandalism. On several occasions, our office has teamed up with police from 53 Division and students from Glenview Senior Public School to repaint the wall. Efforts were even made to plant vines on the wall to deter future vandalism, but with little success.

To protect this lovely feature of Duplex Parkette, I ask you to report any graffiti to my office, and we will ensure that it gets cleaned up. But most importantly, take a walk in Duplex Parkette and enjoy the creative landscape.

Creativity blooms in Ward 21

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AS SUMMER DRAWS to a close and children return to school, there are a couple of things I am glad to be putting behind us. Both the civic strike and various infrastructure projects contributed to summer difficulties. Thankfully they happened over the holiday period, and many found ways around the disruptions with good grace.

Moving into the fall, I am looking forward to several exciting events and initiatives that will be coming to Ward 21. On Labour Day weekend, there will be two free outdoor Movie Nights in the Park. On Sept. 4, at 8 p.m., I will be screening a film in Laughlin Park. On Sept. 5, I will be showing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in Cedarvale Ravine. Bring your lawn chairs and blankets!

The fall will be an exciting time for the arts. The St. Clair Artwalk will be expanding to include more open studios and an art sale along St. Clair in the Hillcrest and Wychwood Heights BIAs. In its sixth year, Artwalk showcases the great talents of local artists in our neighbourhood. This year’s festival runs on Sept. 26 and 27 and will include live music and readings.

The next weekend, on Oct. 3 and continuing until the following dawn, will be the Nuit Blanche contemporary arts festival. Nuit Blanche is one of Toronto’s premier cultural events, and this year it will be coming to Ward 21 for the first time. The Artscape Wychwood Barns will host a cluster of exhibits and performances, and St. Clair will be abuzz.

Whether it’s the weekly WychCraft market at St. Michael’s and all Angels Church, the galleries of Eglinton Avenue and Spadina Road, the studios of the Wychwood Barns or one of our annual festivals, the creativity and artistic expression of local residents is one of the many reasons that I am so proud to represent Ward 21.

Neighbourhood crime concerns

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ALL OF US inthe Leaside, Bennington and Thorncliffe areas have been shocked at recent reports of street robberies in our community — at times and in places that we always thought safe. Some episodes have involved weapons.

I held a community safety meeting in June. stressed the importance of reporting every suspicious incident. Nothing will be more effective in getting increased police protection in our area.

The police can’t be everywhere at all times. Further, during the times of day when dangers are likely to be at their highest in our community, they are high in other places also. There is inevitably an element of strategic thinking that underlies the deployment of police resources throughout the district at each time of day.

One way that residents can help the police protect us is to provide information. If the police know where the problems are and who is causing trouble, they can develop strategies to allocate personnel.

Our residents have done a good job reporting crime. I have made the police aware of each such report. I have asked them to increase their patrols in our area and am confident that they have begun to respond to the problem.

Some parents tell me that youths are reluctant to talk about incidents of which they are aware, including ones in which they have been victimized. Their children need to be encouraged to overcome this. Even activities that are not criminal, but which give rise to reasonable suspicion, should be reported. It all helps build a record that helps solve past crimes and plan steps to prevent future ones.

In our part of Ward 26 our local police department is 53 Division. Make sure they know about anything that happens in our area that they need to know about.

Sheila McCarthy

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SHEILA MCCARTHY KNEW she wanted to be an actor by age 10. “I played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. And I killed. I knocked it right out of the park,” she says laughing, on the phone.

The winner of two Gemini Awards, two Genie Awards and two Dora Awards, is in Indian Head, Sask., filming exterior shots for her role in the CBC comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie. “We’ve taken over the town,” she says, describing how a mosque’s facade was built for the show. (Interiors are shot in a Toronto studio.)

This month, when TIFF takes over this town, McCarthy will be at the centre of it. Year of the Carnivore, a film written and directed by another CBC notable, Sook-Yin Lee, premieres as part of the Canada First! program.

McCarthy has had an on-off relationship with Toronto over the years. In 2000, she moved here with her husband, well-known classical Shakespearean actor Peter Donaldson, and their two daughters. McCarthy was starring in Ross Petty’s Peter Pan, and the family bought a house in Moore Park.

“I loved walking through Mount Pleasant Cemetery and the ravines,” McCarthy says.

The family often snacked at Duff ’s Famous Wings on Bayview. “All the shops on Bayview and Mount Pleasant are to die for.”

But the family missed Stratford, and “Pete was getting a lot of work at the festival,” so off they went to Stratford six months later. These days, McCarthy splits her time between the couple’s house in Stratford and their place in Toronto.

With their older daughter now away at university and the youngest about to finish high school, the couple is once again considering settling full-time in Toronto. “I have refallen in love with the city,” McCarthy says.

While McCarthy’s affection for Toronto may ebb and flow, her passion for acting is a constant. McCarthy’s prevalence in film, TV and theatre means, even if you don’t watch Mosque, her face — with those big blue eyes — is instantly familiar.

For McCarthy, who has acted in major Hollywood films, including Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, the decision to appear in a small, independent film like Year of the Carnivore is an interesting one.

McCarthy joined the project because she wanted to work with Lee. When the two met on Lee’s CBC radio show, “We really gelled,” McCarthy says. Plus, after three seasons of Mosque, “it was refreshing and wonderful to be able to jump into another project.”

Like some of Lee’s other cinematic forays, Year of the Carnivore is both racy and moving. The film, which has been described as “a bittersweet comedy,” follows Sammy Smalls, a 21-year-old who works as a store detective catching shoplifters, who her boss then beats up. Sammy feels guilty about her role in the mess but needs the money and doesn’t want to move home to her neurotic parents.

In the meantime, she falls for a musician, but when the two become more than friends, the experience is less than ecstatic. The musician suggests they date others to gain more sexual experience. In response, Sammy engages the shoplifters to teach her everything they know about sex. Edgy? Absolutely. How this experience changes her, and whether she and the musician find their way back to each other — that’s up to theatre- goers to discern.

McCarthy hasn’t seen the film yet, but she found the script sexy and daring. “Not my part,” she clarifies, “but what our daughter goes through is a real coming-of-age tale in that sort of Juno-esque kind of way. Sook-Yin Lee likes to push the envelope.”

McCarthy plays Sammy’s mother, and Kids in the Hall veteran Kevin McDonald plays her husband. “We’re Sammy’s rather straitlaced but eccentric parents who I think parenting rarely occurs to,” McCarthy says.

Shot in Vancouver last November and December, McCarthy says working on the film “was a short little experience but was really fun.” She loved acting alongside McDonald. “It was a marriage made in heaven,” she says. As a director, Lee was “very thorough, very intuitive and strong.”

The admiration goes both ways. Lee has been a McCarthy fan since watching the classic Canadian film I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, which stars McCarthy.

In that film, “she’s very funny but also … sweet. She’s just got this beautiful energy to her,” says Lee. While Mrs. Smalls is a very different character from McCarthy’s in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Lee could tell McCarthy was suited for the role. She wanted an actor “who could bring humanity to this completely flawed character and make me love them — and that’s what Sheila can bring…. She’s able to make me feel something in my heart, with humour and authenticity.”

Those same qualities characterize McCarthy’s role on Little Mosque. It’s one of the first sitcoms to focus on Muslim families. McCarthy’s character Sarah is a convert to Islam. At first, “Sarah was sort of a straight man in the show and kind of the window of the non-Muslim world into the Muslim world. Over the years, she’s grown and gotten warmer and funnier,” McCarthy says.

People of all ages and ethnicities chat with McCarthy about the show, which airs in 60 countries. “When I talk to my mother’s friends in the bridge club, they no longer talk about it in terms of Muslim and Anglican. They just talk about, ‘Oh, that husband of yours.’”

North Toronto’s Debra McGrath, who plays Sarah’s boss Mayor Popowicz, says McCarthy “has a spirit and an energy unlike anybody else.” In scenes together, “We really feed off each other.”

McCarthy says her close friendship with McGrath is one of the great benefits of Mosque — along with security as an actor. “I’m the luckiest person in the world to be doing this show,” the 53-year-old says.

With some plays, “you do show after show for months and months. With films, you are there for a week and then you’re gone.” With TV, you do something new every day but with the same family. “That is a wonderful combination.”

To find out what’s next for McCarthy, tune into Little Mosque. Four seasons in and the show has “really come of age,” she says. With her penchant for quirky film roles, look for her on the big screen, too. She’s also just co-written a screenplay, St. Lucy’s War.

As for returning to theatre, McCarthy says the prospect is somewhat terrifying. “When I sit in the theatre now, I go, ‘Good Lord, how did I ever do it?’”

But don’t be surprised if the multi-talented actor turns up on stage. There are playwrights she’s itching to work with. “But I must do it soon or I never will. I’m in a cocoon on the TV set, and it’s very safe.”

A Victory for Centre for the Arts

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ON AUG. 20, Jersey Boys marked its first anniversary at North York’s Toronto Centre for the Arts. The show, which tells the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, is the first production there since Showboat to go past a year, putting the theatre back on the map and establishing Aubrey Dan and Dancap Productions as a legitimate rival to David Mirvish.

I have seen Jersey Boys three times and plan to see it again, despite not being an original fan of the Four Seasons. In an era dominated by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Motown, the band was no longer cool by 1964. But the songs from the early ’60s, as well as the later solo performances by Frankie Valli, still have an infectious appeal, and the Canadian cast performs them with the same skill as the mostly imported cast that opened the show last summer.

Audiences routinely give the performers a hearty standing ovation, and critics have been equally enthusiastic.

Local restaurants are getting pre-show business, and the centre itself has been rejuvenated by the show’s success, some of which is being parlayed into attracting new shows and audiences to the Studio Theatre and George Weston Recital Hall. It’s a very welcome change from the dark days following the Livent collapse when my main job, as chair of the centre’s board, was to fend off calls by the city’s budget committee members who wanted to close the place down.

If you haven’t seen Jersey Boys yet, it will be running for at least a few more months. To appreciate the production, it helps to be old enough to remember the Ed Sullivan Show. But mostly, you just need to be able to appreciate a well-told story accompanied by catchy phrases sung in four-part harmony.