ARRAND o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-04-24 published
ARRAND,
James
Brian
Peacefully at home on Tuesday, April 22, 2008. James Brian
ARRAND
of London. Beloved husband of Gloria. Dear father of Sandra
BLACHFORD
and Jamie ARRAND.
Loving
Grandfather of Krystal, Christopher
and Nicholas
BLACHFORD.
Great-grandfather of Aurora and Kiera
BLACHFORD. A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, April 26,
2008 at 2 p.m. at Moose Lodge, 38 Charterhouse Crescent, London.
Expressions of sympathy and donations (Canadian Cancer Society)
would be appreciated and may be made through London Cremation
Services (519) 672-0459 or online at www.londoncremation.com
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ARRELL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-23 published
She turned the Gardiner Museum into a glittering, priceless gem
With the help of her wealthy stockbroker husband, she transformed
a hobby into a great ceramics collection, and then built a museum
to house it all opposite Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page
S10
Museum founder and philanthropist Helen
GARDINER had three lives:
before George, during George, and after George. The George was
George Ryerson
GARDINER, a business integrator, Harvard MBA
and stockbroker who founded Gardiner Group Capital, the country's
first discount brokerage, and was president of the Toronto Stock
Exchange.
Generally considered a business genius, he was a pioneer in the
oil-and-gas business, opened the first airport hotel in Canada,
was a key player in bringing Kentucky Fried Chicken north of
the 49th parallel, established Gardiner Farms, the racing stable
and breeding farm, and was one of the original members of the
syndicate that owned Northern Dancer. "He didn't start with nothing,"
a former business associate said, "but he multiplied it many
times over."
Ms. GARDINER, by contrast, came from humble circumstances, and
was a single parent working as a secretary in Mr.
GARDINER's
brokerage firm when they met. With Mr.
GARDINER's support, she
became a mature student at York University and took the decorative
arts course at Christie's in London, England. Having acquired
professional expertise - her impeccable eye for quality was innate
- she and her husband amassed a huge and very valuable collection
of porcelain and earthenware, then built a museum to house it.
Nevertheless, he was always the public face and voice of the
Gardiner
Museum.
After Mr.
GARDINER died in December, 1997, she
emerged as a fundraiser, philanthropist and connoisseur who transformed
the Gardiner from a mausoleum for a private collection into a
dynamic, innovative and internationally prized museum. She also
developed her own interests in the National Ballet School and
other art forms such as opera, becoming so fond of Wagner's Ring
Cycle that she was known as a "Ring" addict.
"The Gardiner Museum was her No. 1 passion, but the National
Ballet School was a close second," said Margaret McCain, former
chair of the board of the National Ballet School and former lieutenant-governor
of New Brunswick.
"Helen had moral integrity and she also had a lot of fortitude,"
said Ms. McCain, describing her friend as fun with a wonderful
laugh and a complete lack of pretension. "She was grounded and
she was able to hold on to her own identity even if she was in
George's shadow for a long time. There was a strength there and
I used to say, 'You are your own person, kind and gentle, but
strong inside.' "
Tony ARRELL, a former Chief Executive Officer of Gardiner Watson
and a director of Gardiner Group Capital said: "When you have
a tree growing under a big tree, the big tree shades the little
tree, but when you take the big tree out, the little tree can
grow up - and that is what has been happening with Helen. She
has proven to be a stronger character with a greater ability
than many people thought," he said. "There has been a lot more
to Helen GARDINER in the last 10 years than we ever knew before."
Helen Elizabeth
McMINN was born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, the
year before the Second World War began. Her father Charles was
a carpenter at one of the gold mines, while her mother Helen
was a homemaker. The McMinns moved south to Toronto, where Mr.
McMINN
worked for General Electric at its Davenport Works until he retired.
Their two children, Helen and Bob, went to high school in Toronto,
and then Bob joined the military. Helen's daughter Lindy
BARROW,
who was born in 1958, lived with her grandparents until she was
10 while Ms.
McMINN, a single parent, worked at various jobs
in advertising and as a legal secretary to support her daughter
and save enough money to provide a home for them both.
In the second half of the 1960s, she met George
GARDINER when
she was hired as a secretary at Gardiner Watson, the stock brokerage
that he and a partner had founded just after the Second World
War. At the time, she was in her late 20s and Mr.
GARDINER (who
was known to enjoy, discreetly, the company of beautiful women)
was in his early 50s, married and the father of three children.
Not long before, in July, 1965, his formidable father Percy,
a financier, had died of a heart attack. This death may have
liberated Mr.
GARDINER, who had had a fractious relationship
with his father and had always felt the need to show that he
could be even more successful in business.
"He once said that Helen was the first person that he laid eyes
on as he was coming out from under this oppression that he had
been under for so many years," according to Gretchen
ROSS, a
long-time friend. Their relationship led to the breakup of Mr.
GARDINER's
marriage.
In the mid-1970s, they moved into a house on Old Forest Hill
Road in Toronto. He bought the property, razed the existing house
and built a new one with lead-lined walls - he had acute hearing
and didn't want to be disturbed by the neighbours. Mr.
GARDINER
and his first wife had bought some pre-Colombian earthenware
in South America, and he decided that he and Ms.
McMINN should
"collect something unique to make our house look lived in," she
said later. He wanted it to have "quality, individuality and
his personal stamp." Naively, as she later admitted, they hit
on ceramics.
Two years later, inflation was escalating. Mr.
GARDINER, an astute
and thrifty businessman, read an article asserting that Chinese
and European porcelain were outperforming stocks, bonds and real
estate, and he decided it was time to turn their hobby into an
investment. Helen, who had been studying as a mature student
at York University since 1974, switched tacks and went to London
in 1978 to take Christie's Fine Arts Course. A year later, she
was both an expert and a qualified dealer who could buy ceramics
at wholesale prices.
Their first mature purchase was a hand-painted, highly decorated
yellow tea-and-chocolate service made in 1740 by Meissen, the
earliest factory in Europe to produce hard-paste porcelain. On
the advice of a Sotheby's porcelain expert, Helen had gone to
see the 50-piece set, complete with its original leather travelling
case, at Winifred Williams Antiques on Bury Street in London.
She persuaded Mr.
GARDINER to look at the Meissen service and
to meet dealer Robert Williams. Without telling her, he bought
the service. And so the Gardiners began their long association
with Mr. Williams and transformed themselves into serious collectors.
As she said later, "Bob taught me how to really look at things.
He was generous with his knowledge and showed me how to identify
artists and factories by the distinctive characteristics of their
work."
From Meissen, the couple began accumulating works made by Du
Paquier, the second factory in Europe to produce hard-paste porcelain
in the 18th century, and pieces called Hausmaler, a term used
to describe ceramics decorated by studio artists who painted
or redecorated porcelain produced by factories such as Meissen
or Du Paquier. As always, they kept a judicious eye on their
passions and their bottom line, collecting Du Paquier because
it was undervalued, and Hausmaler for its variety, eccentric
charm and the stories about subterfuge, espionage and larceny
swirling around the pieces - how artists "acquired" undecorated
wares from the studios that employed them and then painted them
with their own designs.
During her Christie's course in London, Helen was seduced by
the lush sensual colours and painterly decoration of Italian
Maiolica.
She took Mr.
GARDINER to see the Maiolica collection
at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington and he
too was entranced. Encouraged by a lull in the market for Maiolica,
Mr. GARDINER began buying at auction or through their retinue
of international dealers.
By the early 1980s, the Gardiners - they had married on July 11,
1981, at least a dozen years after they first met - were running
out of display and storage room in their home. With the help
of entertainment lawyer and ceramics collector Aaron
MILRAD,
the determined and persuasive Mr.
GARDINER set about acquiring
the land and the political approvals to establish his own museum.
In 1981, the Ontario government, led by premier Bill Davis, unanimously
passed Bill 183 to create The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic
Art as an independent, public institution. Doctor Murray Ross helped
the Gardiners acquire a tennis court on the east side of Queen's
Park, directly opposite the Royal Ontario Museum, from the University
of Toronto. Mr.
GARDINER paid $500,000 to lease the land for
99 years.
Three years later, architect Keith
WAGLAND and designer Robert
MEIKELJOHN's $6-million building was ready. The George R. Gardiner
Museum, showcasing some 3,000 objets valued at between $16-million
and $25-million from the Gardiners' personal collection, officially
opened on Saturday, March 3, 1984, with an additional $2.5-million
operating grant from its benefactors to celebrate the occasion.
Initially, the Gardiners were as naive about operating a museum
as they had been about ceramics. They didn't have nearly enough
staff, went through three directors in their first year and underestimated
their operating and exhibition costs. After unsuccessfully petitioning
the Liberal provincial government for more money, the museum
was advised by premier David Peterson to merge with the Royal
Ontario Museum in 1987. "I have learned it is very, very difficult
to compete with other museums," Mr.
GARDINER, a man known for
his independence, said at an emotional press conference called
to announce the merger.
"The government decided we needed the Royal Ontario Museum's
management expertise," Ms.
GARDINER told The Globe in 2006. But
it wasn't always a comfortable relationship. For an independent
museum to be put under the control of another much larger one
was akin to an adult daughter moving back into her parents' house
with her children after a messy divorce.
The Royal Ontario Museum saw the Gardiner as an adjunct, housing
yet another of its many collections, but the Gardiner longed
to flex its curatorial wings. Mr.
GARDINER, who was succeeded
as chair of the board by his wife in 1994, bought back the museum's
independence with a $15-million endowment (raising his investment
in his own museum to about $50-million). It was announced in
January, 1997, just 11 months before Mr.
GARDINER died of complications
from arthritis and heart disease.
The strain of caring for her husband in his last years when he
was ill and "difficult" and dealing with his estate after his
death made her so nervous that her throat muscles tightened up
and she had trouble speaking above a whisper, Ms. Ross said.
It was only recently that doctors found a solution - periodic
shots of Botox and a regime of throat exercises - that enabled
Ms. GARDINER to speak normally again.
In the decade of her widowhood, Ms.
GARDINER threw herself into
the museum and into the National Ballet School, where she had
sat on the board since 1990. "She invested a lot more than money
- she invested herself in the life of the school and the lives
of the students," said Ms. McCain. "She took on a student and
stayed with that student and became a mentor and a guide and
a friend."
Under Ms. GARDINER's direction, the museum built up its membership
lists again and stretched beyond the personal vision of its founders.
The Gardiner began accepting other collections, such as Doctor Hans
Syz's German porcelain and Murray and Ann Bell's trove of Chinese
blue-and-white porcelain. It expanded its mandate to include
modern and contemporary pieces from collectors, such as Mr.
MILRAD,
and began organizing exhibitions of work by living artists.
Ms. GARDINER was chair until 1999 and vice-chair for the next
two years, during which time the museum received a Lieutenant-Governor's
Award for the Arts for building private sector and community
support, showing fiscal responsibility and expanding its audience
(from 20,000 to 60,000 visitors annually), using pottery classes
for children and exhibitions such as Maya Universe, Miro: Playing
with Fire and Harlequin Unmasked. In 2002, she accepted the position
of honorary chair and led the museum's fundraising and expansion
campaign to raise $12.8-million from the private sector, in addition
to $6-million in grants from the Ontario and Canadian governments.
The museum closed from 2004 to 2006 for a nearly $20-million
renovation undertaken by Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna and Blumberg
Architects. The renovation added a glass-encased third floor,
restaurant and roof terraces, increased exhibition space by 50 per
cent, added a research library and expanded the museum shop and
the basement studio to accommodate artists in residence and more
pottery classes.
"In the last 10 years, she started to develop her own interests
and her own ability to reach out for things that she would never
have looked at before. And then she got sick," said Mr.
MILRAD,
vice-chair of the board. "She had an integrity that was recognized
and it is going to be extremely difficult for us to raise the
kind of money that she was able to raise through her contacts
and her own strength of character."
Falling terminally ill was a shock to Ms.
GARDINER, who had always
planned to live well into her 90s, just as her mother has done.
In the first week of May, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
After seeking treatment at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Ms.
GARDINER
began a rigorous course of chemotherapy. But she soon decided
to suspend treatment, since it wasn't working and it was making
her feel very ill. Instead, she let "nature take its course,"
as she told her Friends and family.
Helen Elizabeth
GARDINER, C.M., was born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario,
on July 18, 1938. She died of pancreatic cancer at the family
farm in Caledon East on July 22, 2008. She was 70. Predeceased
by husband George
GARDINER, she is survived by daughter Lindy
BARROW, mother Helen
McMINN, brother Bob
McMINN and extended
family.
The funeral will take place on Monday, July 28, at 11 a.m. in
Toronto's Saint_James Cathedral.
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ARRIOLA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-01-26 published
BABE,
Lucy
Elizabeth "
Betty" (née
CHAPPLE)
Betty BABE passed away quietly at Saint_Joseph's Hospice on January 24,
2008. She is survived by her son Bill and his wife Elizabeth
of Thunder Bay, daughter Jennifer of Toronto, and granddaughter
Gillian and her husband Stephan
DUPUIS of Perth, Australia, her
caregiver Gemma
ARRIOLA, brother Frank
CHAPPLE and his wife
Irene
of Burlington, Betsy
BISHOP and her family of Burlington, and
many nieces and nephews, Spence, Chapple, Bythell and Sprague.
Great-grandmother of Annick Babe
DUPUIS.
Betty was predeceased
by her husband Murray
BABE, sister-in-law Helen Babe
BYTHELL
of Toronto, and her brothers Allen
CHAPPLE of Victoria, John
CHAPPLE of Thunder Bay and sister Jocelyn
CHAPPLE
Spence of Thunder
Bay. Betty was born in Fort William in 1910 to Clement and Annie
CHAPPLE, of Chapple's Department Stores, she lived a full life
to her 97th year. She attended the University of Toronto in the
1930's where she met Murray again. They married in 1936 and lived
variously in Fort Frances and Geraldton, until Murray enlisted
in the Lake Superior Regiment. Betty spent the war years in Fort
William and they continued to live there after the war, with
Murray practicing law with Morris, Babe, Pugsley, Black and Hatherly,
before being appointed to the family court bench. Betty participated
with Murray in the local Kiwanis Club, volunteered at McKellar
Hospital, enjoyed their family and Friends at Two Island Lake,
was a keen bowler and player of golf and bridge into her early
90's. The family expresses great thanks to Doctor
MYMKO and his
staff, and
to Gemma ARRIOLA, who collectively enabled Betty to
live at home until two weeks before her death. A funeral service
for Betty will be held on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 2: 00 p.m.
at Jenkens Funeral Home with Rev. Deborah
KRAFT officiating.
In lieu of flowers, donations to Saint_Joseph's Hospice, the George
Jeffery Children's Foundation or a charity of your choice would
be greatly appreciated. On line condolences at: www.jenkens-funeral.ca
Jenkens Funeral Home Cremation and Reception Centre
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