Profiles | Ottawa Magazine

FROM THE PRINT EDITION: “My Look” with Caroline Castrucci

This interview with Caroline Castrucci, designer with Laurysen Kitchens, was featured in the February 2012 Interiors edition.

Interview by Erica Wark

Caroline Castrucci in her kitchen. Photography by Rémi Thériault.

What are your favourite shops?
I have a top three list — Holt Renfrew, Femme de Carrière, and Outskirts. I love European designers — the quality of the fabrics, the basting stitches on seams. Everything is just so well made. I’m a true believer that clothing should feel as good as it looks.

How would you describe your style?
Eclectic. I love to mix unexpected things together — putting on a conservative Theory suit with a great pair of funky BCBG Max Azria stilettos or yellow Gap cords with a cognac leather jacket and red Oscar de la Renta four-inch platforms.

I hear you wear four-inch heels everywhere.
I’ve been wearing heels since the ninth grade. The odd time I’ve walked in flats, it felt as if I was going to fall backwards!

How does your personal style affect your approach to kitchen design?
Just like with my clothes, I’m not afraid to play with colour or try something new in a kitchen design. Kitchens need to be multi-purpose while still being stylish and practical. I have that same mentality when it comes to my wardrobe.

What’s the most meaningful piece in your closet?
My 10th-anniversary ring. Why? Because it’s a nice big one!

Laurysen Kitchens designer Caroline Castrucci is wearing an i.D.O La Vie sweater and tunic combo, L’eggs leggings, Milagros ankle boots, Shepherd’s earrings, a Gucci watch, and Pandora bracelets.

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MEET THE PRESS: Robyn Bresnahan takes over as host of Ottawa Morning on Dec. 5

Robyn Bresnahan's first day as host of CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning is Dec. 5

When Kathleen Petty left her position in August as host of Ottawa Morning, the city’s top-rated morning radio show, listeners flooded the airwaves with their best wishes and lamented the departure of the tough interviewer with a soft spot for dogs. (In an exit interview with Judy Trinh in Ottawa Magazine, Petty talked fondly of her five years in the capital, but noted that it had taken some time to win over the local crowd.) And then the buzz began. Who would replace Petty at Ottawa Morning? Would the new agenda-setter be from Ottawa or would the CBC cast a wider net? It took two months, but, in October, BBC reporter Robyn Bresnahan was announced as the new host. Bresnahan, who grew up in Calgary, studied journalism at Carleton University and worked at the CBC’s Ottawa offices in 2000-2001 before heading to London, England. Ottawa Magazine caught up with her to find out what the incoming host has planned for the capital. Bresnahan’s first day on-air is Monday, Dec. 5.

Q: How did you hear that the job was up for grabs?

A: I heard from my best friend Rosemary Barton [a reporter with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau]. She said “You should really apply.” She knew that my husband and I were talking about coming back to Canada at some point. Ottawa was a city we could both agree on — this is where we met! So I threw my name in the hat, never thinking it would go anywhere.

Q: And when did you hear that you had been short-listed?

A: I heard just as we were about to head out for a two-week vacation to Italy. So I’m like, “Great! Let’s do the interview when I get back.” And they were like, “No. The interview will be August 24.” I was freaking out a bit. I ended up doing my interview on the phone while in Tuscany. The interviewers couldn’t see me, but I remember thinking that that was actually kind of perfect because they would only be listening to me — they would know what I was going to sound like on the radio. I had a glass of wine just out of reach on the table for when the interview ended!

THE LIST: Magic man Eric Leclerc on the 10 things he can’t live without

It’s not a stretch to say that Eric Leclerc is obsessed with magic. A master of illusions with an infectious energy, 30-year-old Leclerc travels the world taking magic to the masses and is the only person to have won two Canadian Association of Magicians championships. From cruise ships to kids’ shows, English to French, he wows the crowds with stunts and sleights. Catch Eric and his tricks on November 26 in a matinee show at the Shenkman Arts Centre.

Here are the 10 things the magician can’t live without.

Photography by Rémi Thériault.

1. A deck of cards
I have one in every room, including the bathroom. I bought my house with a deck of cards! Card tricks take a lot of practice, and you have to work in your cards. But they’re great, because cards are easy to relate to — 54 options in this tiny little space. The possibilities are endless.

2. Subway
I’m addicted. I have a sub every day. They know me, especially since I go there after my kids’ shows when I’m still wearing the purple suit. I like cold cuts and roasted chicken. It’s fast, fresh, and filling. I don’t think I could get along with anyone who doesn’t like Subway.

3. Red Bull
We go on tour a lot, my sound tech and I, and Red Bull keeps us going. It also helps with performances. I know it’s not good for you, and I’m pretty hyper as is — but I’m a big fan.

4. My GPS
I would be lost without it — literally. I’m totally addicted. We call her Jen. She has screwed us a couple times on tour, but she has saved us many times. How else would we get from Hearst to Thunder Bay?

5. My ex-girlfriend
I miss you so much!! XO

6. Fabricland
As a magician, I make my own props, costumes, and stage decor. (I have a sewing room in my house — my dad was totally disappointed when I asked for a sewing machine for my 27th birthday.) So I am always shopping for fabric with the little old ladies. For about $20, you get an annual membership that gets you up to 50 percent off everything from dye to thread for tricks.

7. My Panasonic camcorder
This camcorder has been instrumental in my most ambitious project to date: the 365 Project. On January 1, I started posting a trick on YouTube every day. I’ve done a trick while skydiving. I had a Playboy Bunny come to my house to help with one. I’ve done one while under water and another while getting my chest waxed. I have nearly 7,000 followers. It’s gotten me some great gigs, but I’ll be glad when it’s over, since I spend four to five hours a day on each trick.

8. My car

I wasn’t a car guy until I bought my 2010 Camaro. Honestly, I was going in to buy a Cobalt. But the insurance is actually less, because it’s for someone who is more well off. The licence plate is MAGICSTK, so I get a lot of looks. Older men stop me and ask me what’s under the hood — then I look like a total idiot.

9. My GoodLife membership
Even though I rarely go, it’s nice to know that I could.

10. Michael Bolton
My best friend is in a cover band, and every time I go see them, I yell, “Play some Michael Bolton!” It became a running joke. Now whenever I’m at a concert and there’s a quiet moment, I scream, “Play some Michael Bolton!” It’s become
a huge part of my life.

ON THE RECORD: On a lunch break with Question Period’s Kevin Newman

Sharing a laugh — and a bit of philosophy — with Kevin Newman. A Torontonian who loves Ottawa, Newman began his fourth tour in the capital in August as co-host of CTV’s Question Period By Justin Kingsley

Kevin Newman. Photography by Brigitte Bouvier.

THE FIRST ONE that emerged from his mouth was a surprise, with nothing superficial about it. A sudden release from the top of his chest, one exhale followed by another — like an engine turning, unsure it will catch. It was real. Two puffs pushed out, one guffaw, and an ascending trio of ha has. We’ve been there not five minutes, and Kevin Newman has unknowingly answered the only question that secretly matters to me: what’s it like when you laugh?

Because anchormen don’t laugh. They don’t deal in happy. We’ve seen the glimmering teeth and heard the sugar-coated mirth of Peter’s and Lloyd’s, but where does it come from and how much is legit? In over three decades on television, Newman has succumbed to on-air laughter exactly once, doomed by Robin Williams. In mere moments, “I was incapable of speaking,” Newman tells me over pasta at Fresco’s, his favoured Elgin Street joint.

The truth is that Newman’s ha has travel through a room like Armstrongs from a trumpet. He says people often tell him that they’re most surprised to discover how much he smiles. Which may explain why, from the moment we sit down, a continuous string of fans — the restaurant owner, an Afghan vet Newman once did a story on, and eventually most of the staff — stops by just to say hi, to pat him on the shoulder, to tease or joke with him, or to deliver a single shot of Jack Daniels and Tabasco (which he drank — once we went off the record).

After the first burst of laughter, the only mystery left is this one: how does the television Newman connect with the smiling one?

Newman, the new co-anchor of CTV’s Question Period, is a Torontonian who loves Ottawa; it’s his fourth tour in the capital. “I’ve always had more friends here,” he says. “I don’t know why.” At high school in Mississauga, he was the student council type, for whom “foreign culture was going to Kitchener.” The one teenage carry-over in his life is an addiction to news — thanks to Peter Trueman, a media legend made on Global in the ’70s. But Newman’s eyes didn’t really open until university, where he met a group of lifelong adventure buddies (about whom he avoids all kinds of questions, staring into the personal space of hazy recollection).

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An Unorthodox Message: Up close and political with Imam Zijad Delic

By Lisa Gregoire

Imam Zijad Delic, who serves the South Nepean Muslim Community, has served a number of Muslim organizations here and in Vancouver, but Ottawans likely know best him as the guy who got snubbed by Defence Minister Peter MacKay. Photography by Dwayne Brown, www.dwaynebrown.com.

It’s 8 o’clock on a sweltering Saturday night in July and 90 minutes into a Voices of Muslim Youth town hall meeting at Ben Franklin Place in Nepean when Imam Zijad Delic arrives in a charcoal grey shirt and slacks, speaking notes in hand. This is his third and final obligation for the day — the first was to buy a kitten for his daughter’s birthday; the second, a two-hour lecture at the University of Ottawa about honouring Ramadan in contemporary life. Weary and slightly rumpled, he sits among the 80 or so Muslims gathered to discuss social problems emerging within Ottawa’s burgeoning Muslim community — family violence, youth crime, poverty, cultural isolation. The audience is mostly African-Canadian and two-thirds are women.

In a few moments, Delic will join retired refugee judge, former newspaperman, and Order of Canada recipient Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan onstage for a panel discussion about Canadian citizenship, but he can’t wait. He commandeers an audience microphone to weigh in on the topic of heedless leaders and unresponsive mosques. “Muslims have to take responsibility. We can’t blame anyone else if we fail,” he says, shifting markedly from the moral indignation of previous speakers. Though Muslims constitute nearly 10 percent of Ottawa’s population — an estimated 80,000 — too few volunteer to improve the conditions of their vulnerable brethren, he says. “Pointing fingers at others and not doing your job is not fair. We need social workers, foster parents, and imams able to juggle the past and present.” Applause is immediate and sustained.

This is classic Delic: earnest and frequently contentious. Delic is the former executive director of Ottawa’s downtown Islamic Care Centre (ICC) and recently appointed imam of the South Nepean Muslim Community, home to about 8,000 Muslims. With a bachelor’s degree in Islamic and Arabic studies from the International Islamic University of Islamabad, Pakistan, a master’s degree in education from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Delic, 46, has served a number of Muslim organizations here and in Vancouver, but Ottawans likely know best him as the guy who got snubbed by Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

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PROFILE: Talking plans with Canadian Museum of Civilization CEO Mark O’Neill

Mark O’Neill steps out from the shadow of Victor Rabinovitch, taking over from his more theatrical predecessor as CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation
by Paul Gessell

Photography by Luther Caverly

Mark O’Neill sounds like the kind of man every father wishes his daughter would marry. He is a hard-working, family-oriented, church-going Kiwanis Club member who, when asked to name his local heroes, cites broadcaster Max Keeping, businessman Dave Smith, and his father, William O’Neill — men about town who have managed to combine successful careers with high-profile philanthropy. For O’Neill, wild and crazy means a well-timed joke, a slight spikiness to the hair, dancing up a storm at office parties, and spending evenings at home glued to television’s Turner Classic Movies, hoping an Alfred Hitchcock thriller will appear.

This past summer Stephen Harper’s cabinet appointed O’Neill president and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, the Crown agency that runs the Museum of Civilization and its affiliate, the Canadian War Museum. And though his Irish-Catholic family-values background likely appealed to the current cabinet, O’Neill boasts many other attributes that made him a front-runner when former CEO Victor Rabinovitch announced his retirement.

Indeed, the father of two teenagers has spent his entire working life in Ottawa, in the federal public service, since studying political science at Carleton University. For most of his career, he toiled in such programs as multiculturalism, book publishing, and the protection of cultural property. In hindsight, one could say O’Neill was being groomed for his current job, one of the country’s top cultural posts.

It was in 1996 that O’Neill’s career took a sudden turn. That year he became executive assistant to Victor Rabinovitch, then an assistant deputy minister at Heritage. The low-key, nose-to-the-grindstone O’Neill has been living in the shadow of the far more garrulous and theatrical Rabinovitch off and on since. Rabinovitch became CEO of Civilization Corp. in 2000. A year later he hired his former executive assistant to be Civilization’s corporate secretary. From there, O’Neill steadily worked his way up the executive ladder, becoming director of the War Museum and then succeeding the retiring Rabinovitch as corporate CEO. At 48, O’Neill becomes the chief guardian of such national treasures as Rocket Richard’s No. 9 Canadiens hockey sweater and an impressive collection of Victoria Crosses. He also stickhandles a $70-million budget for the two museums and their 350 full-time employees. Attendance last year was 1.2 million at Civilization and 470,000 at the War Museum.

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THE LIST: Sarah Mercer hits the big time! Her portraits will be in the celebrity grab bags at this weekend’s Primetime Emmy Awards

Self portrait by Sarah Mercer

When Sarah Mercer returned from a year in Afghanistan with the Canadian Navy, she took a friend’s advice and picked up a Nikon. “I found it hard to talk about what I saw there,” Mercer recalls. “Photography was a way of expressing myself.” And express she did: her first project involved taking a self-portrait every day for a year. Armed with her camera, a Speedlight, and a remote control, Mercer posted the daily pic — sometimes dark, sometimes daring, and always poignant — on her blog, www.geekgirly.ca. Three years later, and with just one photography training course under her belt, Mercer is excitedly sending prints to Hollywood for the celebrity grab bags at the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Here are the 10 things this promising photographer can’t live without.

1. My camera I started with a Nikon D50 — my friend Connor helped me pick it out. It sat on a shelf for a few weeks, but once I started, I didn’t stop. I have since upgraded to a Nikon D80.

2. My morning coffee At Bread & Sons. I usually match it with a scone.

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PROFILE: A lunchtime chat with NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

By Justin Kingsley

Photography by Colin Rowe

It happened to be the first time in her life that she had actually been to Las Vegas. She didn’t gamble, really, other than a few coins in a slot machine. A new pair of deck shoes came home in her suitcase, but that’s because she’s a sailor, not a shopper.

She went to Vegas with a girlfriend to create distance from the ritual her life had become: taking care of Logan, her beloved son, a fifth year of living back at home with her parents and working days and nights in a bar, serving drinks. “My goal [in Las Vegas] was to shoot a gun,” she told me, “but I never got the chance.”

The truth is that there’s not much Vegas in Ruth Ellen Brosseau, but that didn’t change a thing for the public, or the media, during the last election.
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PROFILE: Patrick John Mills is an artist outside the frame

A prolific artist in his own right, Patrick John Mills brings a new edge to the local arts scene by packing his gallery with bold artwork and taking it back to the beaver pelt

By Allison Smith

Photography by Graham Law.

Tucked away on a residential street in Hintonburg, the gallery at 286 Hinchey Avenue might seem at first glance to be a simple detached home — albeit a well-landscaped one peppered with metalwork and other eclectic art. But pop into the space on a “first Thursday,” when the Patrick John Mills Gallery hosts its monthly exhibition openings, and it’s an entirely different scene. These vernissages, which regularly reach capacity, offer art lovers something a little different — not to mention a great party.

Tall and broad, Patrick John Mills is easy to pick out among the other art aficionados. His fiery red hair and wild blue eyes project an intensity that anyone who has met Mills can attest to. Often clad in paint-stained denim, Mills eats, breathes, and sleeps art. He also has strong views on the direction art (and artists) should be going. “I don’t think that in today’s society, an artist needs to go up to Algonquin Park and paint a landscape,” he says. “Life’s more complicated than that. That kind of art seems lost in our society.”
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REASON TO LOVE OTTAWA #36: Doesn’t everyone love Lowell Green?

Because we’ve had LOWELL GREEN since before Rob Ford was even born

It’s not something you would normally ask a man of almost 75, sounding, as it might, like an ageist question. But this is the seemingly rhinoceros-skinned Lowell Green, cantankerous and iconic host of the long-running CFRA radio talk show that’s named after him. So I ask, over lunch, if he thinks he’s still relevant.

A veteran of the quick response, he replies at once: “More relevant than ever. The bent of most journalists today, particularly younger journalists, is to the left wing. I’m one of the few in the mainstream media who are more conservative, questioning a lot of this stuff.”

As anyone knows who listens to Green’s show or has read his latest, hyperbolic book, Mayday! Mayday! Curb immigration. Stop multiculturalism. Or it’s the end of the Canada we know!, lefties are anathema to the man. He may be opposed to capital punishment and, in 1984, represented the Liberals in an Ottawa Centre by-election. He may even, in the late 1960s, have tried to wrest the nomination away from a sitting Liberal MP in Quebec’s Pontiac riding. But leftism, he now says, is a non-starter that just encourages bad behaviour by shifting responsibility for it from the individual to society. He combats this attitude with blunt comments that go against the grain of political correctness. “I’m sorry you had a rotten childhood. So did I. In the end, you’ve got to take responsibility and realize there are consequences.”

In fact, he did have a lousy childhood, or at least partly so, according to his memoir, The Pork Chop and Other Stories (which, according to Green’s website, was eastern Ontario’s bestselling book in 2005). Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Green wrote that he’s the son of a “manipulative, mean-spirited, rigid woman” and the child of a broken marriage.
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