Random Access

The celebration of Oscar Peterson's 80th birthday Aug. 15 was a
pleasure to behold.

Not only is he a national cultural treasure but the resident of Mississauga for the last 23 years is one of the few remaining touchstones to the golden age of jazz.

Diana Krall was so visibly shaken at being in the presence of her hero that she "forgot how to play the piano" and appeared tongue-tied when she talked to reporters afterward.

But one major quibble with the event, which was centered around a new postage stamp issued featuring Peterson's likeness: why the horrible venue?

Sure HMV was one of the sponsors (along with Universal Music and Canada Post), but could there have been a worse location than the second floor of the downtown HMV?

Peterson had to get out of his wheelchair, ride the escalator up to the second floor, get back in his chair, and squeeze through a phalanx of gawkers (OK, media) just to get to the platform. No one had apparently thought that a ramp might be a good idea for the stage. So, once again his son had to help the jazz great out of his chair, lift it up onto the stage and then help his Dad get settled in. It was an uncomfortable moment that really wasn't necessary if someone had used some foresight.

Of course, nothing could spoil the magic once Peterson got on stage.

The lasting memory will be of the announcement that the event was over, followed by the mad jumble of activity and then the slow realization that the great man himself was determinedly making his way to the piano and would play.

It was a new piece called Elegy written for the many recently-departed jazzers. The brooding tribute wasn't the technical tour-de-force that casual fans usually associate with Peterson. It was instead, the work of the mature composer, reflecting on the rich past of the music and the losses it has suffered. As he played, one couldn't help but think, thank goodness this giant still remains among us.

A note about the blog name: One of my favourite all-time people, and one of my favourite all time people to quote, was long-time Ward 6 Councillor David Culham. A sincere man who made a telling contribution to the greening of this City, Culham nevertheless seemed to speak in tongues much of the time. Think Yogi Berra meets William F. Buckley Jr.

In any case, one of my Culham favourites was unleashed in 1988, when the councillor was explaining why he was having trouble remembering something.

"I don't have immediate access to my mental storage," he said. As I get older and my mental storage fills up, I can only say "Amen, Brother!" to that. Remember, even random access is better than none.

If they had a "guy least likely to be writing a blog" contest, I'd be a leading candidate to win.

I'd better confess right off the bat that the whole idea of a doing a blog is a bit of an anathema to me. Journalists of my generation (I'm 56) were taught to keep their personal opinions to themselves when I graduated from J-school (University of Western Ontario in 1971). The only place you expressed your own viewpoint was in columns and editorials.

Old habits die hard and the idea of doing a running commentary on the world we know as Mississauga is frankly unsettling in many ways. It always seems presumptuous to me that journalists, simply by dint of their front-row seat at the news table, think that their opinions somehow count more than those who observe from a greater distance. As a consumer of news, I find the explosion of point-of-view reporting I see everywhere on-line and in newspapers irritating at best, and insulting at worst. I often find myself wanting to yell at the television or the computer, 'Don't interpret the news for me please, just tell me the facts. I am perfectly capable of forming my own opinion.'

And yet, in the right context, I just love to hear others' takes on the world: on the new Scorcese doc on Dylan; on the latest Burgundies at Vintages (even though I can't afford them) and on how the unflappable Josh (Baby Face) Towers got to be the Jays' best pitcher (while Doc is in the infirmary).

You see, the self-indulgence starts already.

One other thing that disqualifies me from blogging: I don't do rant well. It's undoubtedly the training. All that stuff about providing the other side of the story, ensuring balance and maintaining objectivity. I'm old school and I'm not sure old school belongs on the Net. I had to be shown how to find blogs and, someday soon, I'll get around to reading some.

In the meantime - you out there staring at the screen in amazement -  would you mind running upstairs and getting your Mother and Father? Now let's see how this works.....

Thank goodness the reconstruction and reconfiguration of the entrances to the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM) are finished.

With Mississauga Rd. closed for what seems like the entire summer and ever-changing detour routes, you've taken your life in your hands to venture onto the campus.

The good news during the construction boondoggle was that you could make a left-hand turn from eastbound Collegeway onto Mississauga Rd. without taking out extra life insurance.

Earlier this year a new set of traffic signals went in at Broad Hollow Gate to the west, which has relatively little traffic, but it was still a trial most of the time to turn left in morning or afternoon rush-hour onto Mississauga Rd.

Now finally, the lights are operable where they were really needed. The Collegeway, which is obviously intended to become the main UTM entrance, now runs directly into the campus, sweeps right and then sweeps left again up the hill to the campus ring road.Where Collegeway now runs previously stood a huge concrete sign, surrounded by a charming garden, that read University of Toronto, Erindale College. Of course, it's been out of date since former UTM President Bob McNutt had the name changed several years ago. The sign is now in storage for heaven-knows-what potential future purpose. The bad news, of course, is that a large number of magnificent, mature trees were slaughtered to make way for the road. The City's forestry inspector for the job told me a couple of weeks ago, with noticeable chagrin, that nothing could be done because the Collegeway entrance plan has been in the campus' master plan for many years. The motto devised and plugged by former UTM CAO Paul Donoghue for the radical expansion of buildings and sharp increase in enrolment was "Grow Smart Grow Green."

It's a terrific goal and, to its credit, the university has bitten the bullet and paid a premium to construct parking garages for many of its new buildings to save the forest that is, indisputably, the main charm of the place.

But, it's pretty hard for Grow Smart Grow Green not to have a deep, hollow ring for a while when you've just paved the way to your new front door by flattening scores of stately maples and elms to get there.

By the way, is it still The Collegeway if it leads to UTM instead of Erindale College?

The Continental Divide that runs down the middle of the council chambers at the Mississauga Civic Centre is finally going to be fixed... just 18 years after the building was opened.

Anyone who's ever tried to meet someone at the chambers in City Hall knows about the Divide: the solid wood wall that runs along both sides of the well where the escalator is positioned in the middle of the room.

It effectively cuts off communication from one side of the chamber to the other. You can't even see if anybody's on the other side without walking up or down the stairs and taking a look.

More than one cynic has suggested it was part of a divide-and-conquer mentality that prevails among Hazel's coterie.

I remember architect Edward Jones explaining when the building opened that the escalator would bring the citizens of Mississauga from the main floor into the midst of the grand chamber on the second floor with its spectacular ceiling reflecting the stars in the spring Mississauga sky.

The podium where citizens addressed council from the middle of the chamber was to symbolize the fact that it is the ordinary citizen who is ultimately the centre of the political universe.Several hundred deputants who've addressed council over the years might have a different perspective, of course.

It was apparent from virtually the first day the chambers opened that the Great Wall was a problem. It has been in unnumerable capital budgets as a to-do project. Now it seems it is finally going to be fixed.

With the addition of two new wards and two new councillors for the November 2006 election, renovations are required. Two new offices must be added to the third-floor councillors' woe...er row...that connects directly to the chambers. Council meetings will likely be moved temporarily to the new provincial courthouse that the City is opening today at 950 Burnhamthorpe Rd. W. (the former Consumers' Gas building).

To accommodate the two new politicians around the council horseshoe, the City just has to add two more chairs.While the third floor renovation takes place, however, other changes will happen.

Those include making the council dais accessible for the first time by adding a ramp, improving the spotty sound system, and likely installing a new glass partition, or other see-through material, along the wall.

Good timing. Now all the potential candidates who be coming out of the woodwork to line up for the new ward 10 and ward 11 seats in the next few months can get a great view of each other's study habits.

* * *

Healey's got that thing called zing

You know you're hearing a fascinating radio program when you pull into your driveway and turn your keys to Acc. and just keep listening. You hear one tune, and then you have to listen to just one more. Ten minutes later, the juice is still thawing in the grocery bags in your trunk.

Then when you finally do go inside the house, you have to fetch the portable radio and listen to the rest of the show while you work in the kitchen.

That happened to me Sunday morning as I listened to Jeff Healey's My Kinda Jazz on Jazz FM 91. As he is wont to do, Healey was pontificating on a subject close to his heart: why a lot of great Duke Ellington instrumentals were unnecessarily transformed into songs with lyrics.

He explained that a solo the superb alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges did on Duke's I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart inspired Duke to write Never No Lament, a wonderful vehicle for Hodge's moaning, sensual tone that somehow bypasses your brain and proceeds directly to your solar plexus.

Then lyrics were added and the number became Don't Get Around Much Anymore. I don't agree with Healey on this one. Seems to me we got three great songs out of this experience instead of one.

But that's not the point. The point is that Healey, a former Mississaugan who had to have the floors of his house specially reinforced to take the weight of all his albums, brings unbridled passion and a certain volatile edge to his program all the time. He not only plays records from his personal collection that you can't hear anywhere else but he is a kind of social historian, relating the styles of emerging music to the events and living conditions of the time that shaped the men who made the music. It's a great listen and a great education.

The show's on Monday at 9 p.m. and is repeated Sundays at 7 a.m. By the way, Healey's friend and band-mate Colin Bray also has a wonderful show called Sugarfoot Stomp on '20s-'40s jazz (which Healey originally hosted.) It runs on CIUT-FM 89.5 Thursdays at 5 p.m.

Guess who's speaking in this excerpt from comments made at the announcement of the approval of the new West Wing project at Trillium Health Centre Sept. 1:

"How many of us here today, as a patient or a family member, have experienced our health system in the past five years? I, for one, have had those experiences personally or through family members and we all know we have a lot of work to do. Our system is plagued by access issues, poor information, cramped environments, concerns about safety. We know that the status quo is unacceptable. We all feel it. We all know it."

You might expect those words coming from an Ontario Cabinet Minister or one of our local MPPs or even from a patient or a Trillium board member.

They sound kind of jarring coming from the mouth of Ken White, Trillium's President and CEO. It wasn't so long ago that the health care sector and hospitals in particular were the champions of circling the wagons and pretending there was no one out there whooping and hollering for their scalps.

White, the perennial leader in the annual salary disclosure sweepstakes for Peel, has emerged as the poster boy for the movement that says you can give the patient a better experience and still save loads of money by doing things right and doing things smart.A leader who isn't afraid to empower those below him, White has encouraged his administrators and doctors to take the bit in their teeth, and they've run with it. Trillium is now considered a "benchmark" (I loathe that term) hospital in delivery of many services.

The staff seem to like the place and its retention rate is phenomenal. If this all sounds too good to you to be true, join the crowd. It sounded like bumph to George Ploder too, a hard-nosed Mississauga businessman who was recruited to help the hospital raise money. When he performed his own due diligence, however, Ploder was knocked out by the clinical rankings of the hospital and its lower-than-average costs for many procedures. Ploder ended up giving the hospital a million bucks of his own. Now, that's being convinced. How long can Trillium hang onto White? Not long judging by the comments that were openly being made about his many suitors at the announcement.

Don't be surprised if he ends up implementing the same health reform agenda very soon at a lot higher level.

It's easy to see why Lucy's Seafood Kitchen is named the most popular restaurant year after year in The News' readership awards. Janice and I go out for a restaurant supper about once every two years. I'll take the blame for that as I'm a homebody of the first order.

When you are having your biennial restaurant outing, you certainly don't want to waste the event.

We went to the Lucy's in Erin Mills to celebrate our 24th anniversary and got just what we expected: good food, good service and a good price. Two seafood dishes, a glass of Chardonnay for her, a glass of Merlot with my Jambalaya, and a bill of $45.

My only reservation is the noise level, which was way too loud. The place was packed on Monday night but it still shouldn't sound like a bowling alley. At least they didn't crank up the music to drown out the babble.

All in all, a very nice night out. Maybe we could go increase our pace to one night out a year.

I even got Janice home in time to enjoy the Monday Night Football pre-game fisticuffs.

Jocelyn Lovell is a very direct man. When he was one of the world's best cyclists for a long period of time in the 1970s, he was known for his competitiveness and for sparring verbally with opponents. The storied career that took him to three medals at the 1970 Commonwealth Games, three Olympic Games and saw him sweep nearly every event, from the sprints to the 102-mile road race, at the 1974 Canadian cycling championships all ended suddenly in 1983 when he was hit by a truck while riding at Britannia and Trafalgar Rds.

Neil Lovell stands in the kitchen of her new energy effcient home beside a poster of one of her favourit e authors, Rachel Carson.
Staff photo by Fred Loek

The bios of him you'll find on-line, like this one from CBC, usually start something like, "As cantankerous as he was talented, the cycling legend's chances of Olympic glory ended in a wheelchair." So it was with a touch of trepidation that I rang the doorbell of the magnificent new home yesterday that Jocelyn and Neil, his wife of five years, have just moved into on the lakefront in Port Credit. Meeting someone in a wheelchair is awkward for most of us. Do you offer your hand? What if the person can't physically shake your hand, or it would be painful for them?

I didn't have long to think about that.

"Shake my hand," said the long-time Mississauga resident, who then proceeded to issue instructions. "You put your thumb underneath mine and then you wrap it around and squeeze hard," he said. Instant connection and instant statement: "I may be disabled but I'm a person who should be treated like any other. I will show you respect. I expect the same."

Now that's an icebreaker.

The only flash of the famous temper I saw was a mock answer to my question of how old he was: "55...goddam it."

It was Neil's idea to turn the couple's new home into a showcase for energy conservation. She's no armchair environmentalist.

In the last five years at their former home, which was just around the corner, she used her clothes dryer a total of two times. Neil will be putting up a clothesline at the new place. "I really like the experience of going outside to hang up the laundry when it's freezing cold," said the B.C. native. "My mother used to do that."

And I love the idea of a brand-spanking new place popping up on the exclusive enclave along the lake distinguished from its neighbours by the new-fangled technology of a solar-panelled roof and the old-fangled technology of the laundry flapping freely in the breeze.

Hockey season hasn't even started yet and I'm sick of it already. Today's sports section of The Toronto Star has wall-to-wall hockey stories on the first three pages and they don't even start playing exhibition - yes, exhibition - games until the weekend!

I was a fan for years when I was young and there were six real teams. Blue Jackets were something Leaf fans wore. A Mighty Duck was what you took when you were playing the Bruins and Leo Boivin had you lined up.

Hey sports editors: there are lots of other sports out there that deserve some ink, too.

They even play some amateur sports in this country, too.

The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) may have set the record for quickest dismissal of a case Wednesday, when it threw Stephen Wahl's objections to the new City ward boundaries out the window about 45 seconds after the hearing ended.

"I got slaughtered, humiliated and insulted,"

the city centre resident said yesterday, after taking some time to lick the wounds to his psyche he suffered following the curt dismissal of his case.

Wahl, a self-appointed City Hall watchdog, may have made a strategic error (Duh!) in accusing the City of gerrymandering in his opening remarks. In his closing arguments, Wahl who also made the mistake of representing himself, tried to withdraw the gerrymandering accusation, having seen the withering reaction it received from OMB Vice-Chair Susan Campbell. But she wouldn't allow it.It's rare indeed for the OMB to issue a verbal decision at the end of a one-day hearing and it's even rarer when the member is so pointed in her dismissal.

Campbell said the allegations of gerrymandering gave the appearance that the appeal was frivolous and vexatious. Ouch!Though bloodied, Wahl is unbowed. His argument was always basic arithmetic. He wonders why the smaller, older wards are being kept intact, despite their smaller populations, and the hugely overpopulated wards 6 and 9 - small cities of 100,000 which should have been addressed years ago as the OMB said in a previous decision - are essentially being divided in two to create wards 10 and 11. It's an argument you can make but you have to have more than polemics to support it.

City lawyer Michal Minkowski said four witnesses, including Brad Butt who chaired a citizen task force on representation, "made it clear to the Board that this was an objective exercise." The instant dismissal  "speaks volumes about the City's case."

Wahl believes he's learned the valuable lesson that, "truth does not matter, just proof."

City councillors will be pained to hear Wahl say that in the same circumstances, he'd do   the same thing again.

"I learned something and I'll be better prepared next time. But I'm not going to stop doing stuff for the City," said Wahl who has a ton of certificates recognizing his past volunteer efforts.

You've got to admire his guts, if not his acumen.

"I'll keep going because basically I'm a stubborn little prick," Wahl said proudly.

Which is how he ended up all by his lonesome before the OMB in the first place.

It took me a while to figure out what it was about GE Canada’s launch of its Ecomagination program yesterday at the Living Arts Centre that gave me that queasy feeling in my stomach.
After all, the program seems entirely laudable on the surface. It’s essentially an across-the-board greening of GE products.
The company that Thomas Edison founded is doubling its commitment to research and development worldwide on environmentally-friendly products. One project of 92 wind turbines in Ontario will power 25,000 average households and save 400,000 barrels of oil a day all by itself.
Everyone knows GE is into compact fluorescent bulbs big-time but I didn’t know it was the largest diversified company of its kind on the globe. It’s also in the forefront of reducing the heavy-duty pollution of aircraft engines and train locomotives, among many other things.
After we heard the sobering litany of challenges threatening our survival as a species (oil and gas run out in 40 years; the population will hit the sustainable limit of 9 billion by 2050), we heard the good news that saving the world has finally become profitable.
“Green is green,” GE International President Nani Beccalli said, meaning that green products now mean greenbacks in the pocket.
He also said that, “the most strategic imperative for our company is growth.” Since its customers will be facing stricter environmental controls as the world realizes that slowly suffocating in our own toxic stew is a really bad idea, GE’s priorities to get greener and to grow faster just happen to line up perfectly.
So, maybe things haven’t changed as much as you think in the corporate world. The motivation for this whole initiative obviously is primarily the shareholders’ interest. The positive environmental benefit is just a collateral gain.
Maybe motivation doesn’t really matter and we should just be happy that corporate giants of the size of GE have joined the green team.
It’s important to do the right thing, of course, but it’s really nice when we do it for the right reasons, too.

How many times does the Ontario government have to get kicked in the teeth by the legal system before it stops wasting our money appealing the process for hiking Hwy. 407 tolls?
You remember the deal. In the raft of rash promises Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals made to win the election in 2003 (an election they were going to win anyway) the Grits promised they’d change the process of raising tolls.
Unfortunately, as with their commitment about immediately stopping development on the Oak Ridges Moraine, they only checked the fine print later, and found they didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
But, that didn’t stop McGuinty and his Cabinet from going to court to fight a battle they couldn’t win.
They obviously wanted to pound home the message that the Harris Tories signed away the ship with their 100-year-long Hwy. 407 lease that doesn’t require Cabinet approval for toll hikes.
That message was already clear to anyone who had been paying attention.
Yes, it was a horrible deal. Of course, no private company should be able to bleed money from the public like this without any government control.
But, pouring our money down the appeal drain isn’t going to fix anything.
Our own Harinder Takhar, Transportation Minister and MPP for Mississauga Centre, is leading the charge of the not-so-bright brigade here. He’s a smart man who should know better.
Cut the losses, cut the bleeding and save the rhetoric for the next election campaign in 2007.

It sure looks like the cards are stacked against residents trying to fight any of the proposed new natural gas-fired power plants being proposed for Mississauga and the GTA.
The Ontario government’s “self-directed” environmental review process allows proponents of the plants to essentially set the parameters for those reviews. The onus is on citizens or councils to ask for special dispensation to get a “bump-up” to a more fulsome review.
Tony Jones of the coalition of ratepayers fighting the Loreland Ave. project told me Monday that, “Tt’s basically: let’s put the fox in charge of deciding who goes in and out of the hen house. I find it very strange and not at all in keeping with democratic principles,” he said.
Not original, but dead on.
Of course, the Liberals screamed blue murder when the Harris Tories watered down the environmental process in 2001.
But, now that they’re stuck with the task of finding new generation to replace the coal-fired plants that they’re thankfully taking out of service, the rules don’t look so bad after all to the Liberals.
The “third-party” selection process for the Request for Proposals for the plants leaves MPPs totally on the sidelines. They’re not supposed to get involved because they might compromise the selection process.
The result is Mississauga East MPP Peter Fonseca supposedly not knowing about the Loreland plant until it was announced.
So, the people we’ve elected to represent us don’t have a clue about a critical project in their riding until it’s announced. Then the public is protected only by the merest veneer of an environmental review screening.
How incredibly handy.

The most satisfying thing about gardening is finally getting something to bloom after trying and trying and trying again.
Inevitably, it seems, the failures are what stick with you. With me, anyway.
You may have the best roses in town, but you don’t see them because you’re down on your hands and knees trying to find the blankety-blank Limerock Ruby Coreopsis, for which you spent way too much money.
So, it is with great pride that I tell you how the moonflower vine I started from seed two years ago is finally blooming.
Its Latin name is lpomoea alba. It is often the centrepiece of the white night-blooming gardens that you read about in gardening magazines. Every article tells you that the intoxicating scent of the 10-20 foot vine is its best feature.
The first year I got a few seedlings going, gave a couple away to my friend Mike and promptly watched mine all croak.
Mike got his going up his old TV aerial and gave me a seedling this spring. I planted it right outside the front door, where it proceeded to devour the porch. I spent one Saturday afternoon on a ladder, trying not to destroy the hosta while I put up some netting so that the post woman would not charge the vine with assault causing bodily harm.
Finally, last week, a few weird, corkscrew buds appeared and then the chunky, very large flowers (white with a small yellow centre) followed. And the fragrance....oh my. Well worth the wait.
Only problem is that now I have to stay up past my bedtime to catch the first scent and rush out early in the morning to catch the dying one.
That elusiveness is definitely part of the attraction, though.
Who knew gardening could be such a clandestine experience?

What lessons will the world take from the disaster we have watched unfold, with such calamitous results, in New Orleans?
It makes you wonder if anyone’s paying attention when you hear American politicians proclaim proudly that they will rebuild the city in the same location.
Reconstructing a sinking city that is 80 per cent below sea level is just plain pig-headed.
When they do rebuild the city, will any care be taken to avoid repeating the mistakes that made it largely indefensible to the hurricane everyone knew would eventually blow the place down?
The pattern of development in New Orleans is a pattern that has been repeated in communities across North America, including Mississauga. Wetlands, the natural buffers that act as sponges and filters in times of flooding, have been routinely stripped for development, leaving communities much more vulnerable to natural calamities.
In New Orleans, the delta that acted as a shield for the city was disappearing at the rate of an acre every 24 minutes, according to an article in Scientific American magazine in October of 2001. That article began with the fateful words, “New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Of course, there were also lots of warnings about New Orleans from academics and scientists. Too bad they don’t contribute to political campaigns like developers do.
One of the signs of global warming is an increased number and increased intensity of extraordinary natural climactic events. While George Bush may consider global warming a conspiracy theory created just to confuse him, the reality of its effects are becoming more and more evident, starting with the melting polar ice cap. (Note to George: That’s not a new summer drink from Tim Hortons.)
Credit Valley Conservation and the Credit River Alliance have issued their own warnings about the rapid urbanization of the Credit watershed and its potential impacts on downstream flooding and, more importantly, on human health.
A report on the state of the ecosystem on CVC’s website (www.creditvalleycons.com) says water quality is already impaired in parts of the Credit. Only half of the recommended wetlands and forest cover remain in the watershed. Harmful sediment runoff continues. Groundwater is being taken without adequate regulation.
A number of plants and animals, and the key greenbelt corridors that sustain them, are threatened.
Former CVC General Manager Vicki Barron once told me that the prevailing attitude to water quality issues with both government and the public has been that, “ignorance is bliss.”
In the wake of New Orleans, we have yet another dramatic example of the connection between understanding, respecting and protecting natural systems and our own survival.
How many more object lessons do we need?
Think Hurricane Hazel. It can happen here.

Music truly is the international language and perhaps that’s why it’s so much fun talking to its practitioners.
I get to interview musicians periodically and I find they are the most tolerant of people. Many of them have truly eclectic tastes and enjoy a range of sounds that is stunning in its contrast.
After emailing Cynthia Steljes and Peter DeSotto, the Mississauga couple who founded Quartetto Gelato several years ago, I finally got to talk to them in a phone interview from Worland, Wyoming last week.
I must confess, I was totally ignorant of their work, which you could describe in its most accessible form as crossover classical. The beauty of the modern world is that you can hop onto the group’s website at www.quartetogelato.ca, hear samples of their stirring and somewhat quixotic music, read about their backgrounds and catch up on their reviews, which are uniformly excellent.
Quartetto Gelato is performing a special concert at the House that Mel Built (the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts in North York) tomorrow night.
With the preliminaries out of the way, Peter and I got down to real business: finding common ground in our record collections.
“These are our books,” said Peter, an accomplished violinist who formed Quartetto Gelato with Cynthia largely to indulge his passion for singing opera, which he does extremely well, according to the critics.
He has some 1,500 LPs he spins on an old turntable when he gets a chance. He prefers older artists and his collection includes people you would expect, such as violinists Jasha Haifetz and David Oistrakh, Stephane Grapelli and Jean-Luc Ponty.
But, he has a huge collection of Cuban music and loves the work of Carlos Gardel, who invented the tango song before dying prematurely in a plane crash in 1935.
He loves Frank, Sarah (“She could have been an opera singer”), Ella (“What rhythm and her voice is a bell”) Mel Tormé (“He tailors his vibrato in the perfect spot”) and Judy Garland and Edith Piaf, who both had, “a haunting quality that just grabs you.”
DeSotto also enjoys Hank Williams and the bluegrass group, Riders in the Sky, to round out his rougher side.
His first musical love...wait for it: Frank Zappa. Yes, that Frank Zappa, the ’60s counter-cultural long-haired freak who penned Duke of Prunes, Call Any Vegetable and the immortal Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.
“When I was just 9 or 10 I knew the lyrics to every Frank Zappa record,” said DeSotto.
I guess our parents were wrong, the Mothers’ music didn’t wreck your brain, it just opened you up to more possibilities.

You know that old bicycle that’s been sitting in the corner of the garage gathering dust for the past few months? The one you just can’t bring yourself to drag to the curb for the garbage guys because it’s still in pretty good shape and isn’t really garbage at all?
Instead of putting it out, you can “Freecycle” it.
Freecycling is a concept that’s catching on across the globe, especially with the Internet generation.
I was introduced to it by my 22-year-old “green” daughter Chelsea, who suggested its use when we were doing the periodic purge of household items that aren’t used anymore. Instead of pitching them out, why not put a notice on the Internet and see if anybody else wants them, she suggested.
First you join the local freecycle group at www.freecycle.org. There are almost 1,000 Mississauga members now.
They post directly to the freecycle site. Members can choose to check the site or receive automatic e-mails telling them what’s available.
Then they make private arrangements for exchange, which must be free.
If you need something, you can also see if other members might have what you’re looking for.
So far, Chelsea has given away a poster of the group Slipknot and a toy sewing machine that made some youngster very happy on Christmas morning. A roll-away bed that was taking up space in our basement is now used by a family who houses exchange students.
Even my wife’s unwieldy chrome shelves, a vestige of her first apartment in the 60s, found a new home.
Although it’s called Freecycling it’s actually reuse, which is even better than recycling.
Just a word of advice, guys: if you want to keep those old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues you think she doesn’t know about, don’t try to freecycle her Harlequin romances.

For many people of my generation, the musical universe began and ended with Bob Dylan.
I remember watching CBC television with my dad, who was a huge folk music fan, and seeing a scrawny waif, with a corduroy cap cocked at a weird angle, strumming a guitar that almost dwarfed him. He was wearing a weird contraption around his neck that made him appear to have been attacked by a deranged orthodontist. (It was a harmonica rack, of course.)
His appearance may have been ridiculous at first glance but when his mouth opened, the results were sublime.
Mind you, the voice took some getting used to. The songs, however, were the work of someone with a mature world vision who had something to say.
In those days, Dylan was channeling his musical hero, Woody Guthrie. He endeared himself to my father immediately with a line in Song To Woody that mentioned many of the musicians he particularly admired (“Here’s to Cisco, and Sonny and Leadbelly too”).
We bought his first album and we were hooked.
Even then, you could tell that this guy had the magic turn of phrase, (“Once loved a woman, a child I am told”) and the dead aim (Masters Of War) that would make him an icon.
His songwriting got more visionary, more symbolic and more subject to interpretation as he went along. Dylan’s classic period of the early to mid-’60s has been the focus of Martin Scorcese’s documentary, No Direction Home, that has run for the past two nights on PBS.
In fact, understanding Bob’s songs became an industry in itself and I, like many other fans, have the stacks of old magazines and books to prove it.
So, after years of avoiding the spotlight, it is fascinating to see Dylan co-operate with what appears to be almost an official video biography. Appears is the key word. As always, the mask slips only as far as Bob wants it to.
He has always been the mystery tramp who plays tricks for you, hasn’t he?
He writes incredibly evocative lyrics that are open to endless analysis and re-analysis.
One of Dylan’s best songs, Ballad Of a Thin Man, says, “something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”
Is the question addressed to the head-in-the-sand bigot who refuses to see the civil rights revolution on his doorstep, or to the parent who can’t accept his children’s different values, or to the music critics who can’t understand the clear message of lyrics that should stand for themselves?
More likely it’s addressed to the audience who want a definitive explanation of an art that can’t be defined.
Something is happening here, and, no, you aren’t supposed to know exactly what it is.
Which is probably a good thing. Now we’ll just have to dig out all those albums again and keep listening to all those brilliant, elusive songs.

What’s more of a political rarity than an outbreak of modesty from Brian Mulroney?
How about a chance to run for a seat on Mississauga council that’s not held by an incumbent?
How about a chance to run for two seats on Mississauga council that aren’t held by incumbents?
That’s what’s going to happen in a little more than 13 months when Mississaugans go to the polls to elect a council composed of a dozen members, rather than the 10 who have been in place since the City was created in 1974.
Change on City council seems to take place one seat at a time.
Essentially, the only way you can lose your seat is to be convicted of municipal corruption (Cliff Gyles) or to make an enemy of the old grey mayor who ain’t what she used to be. The latter fate befell councillors such as Larry Taylor and Ken Dear in years past.
It is only when a councillor retires that new seat generally become available, and generally one at a time. That’s how George Carlson got the Ward 6 seat in 2000, when David Culham moved on to the Ontario Municipal Board. And, it’s how Carmen Corbasson got her boss’ job in 1994, when Harold Kennedy retired.
Katie Mahoney and Pat Saito have been on council since 1992, Frank Dale and Nando Iannicca since 1988 and Pat Mullin and Maja Prentice since 1985.
“If you are serious, here is your shot,” says Iannicca, a keen observer of the inner machinations of politics at all levels.
Of course, the sitting councillors will be watching anxiously to see if any future would-be mayors put themselves forward in the open seats, which will be Ward 10 (Churchill Meadows and Lisgar, Osprey) and Ward 6 (Erindale Woodlands, Creditview and East Credit).
“I’ve made lots of new friends and I can have all the free coffee I want,” jokes Carlson, whose ward has been essentially divided in two. He’s running in the northern half. His magnanimous new friends are would-be candidates who want to pick his brains before they consider putting forward their names after Jan. 1.
If there are any big names out there who want to scare off the competition, they are likely to register quickly in the new year to try to scare off competitors.
Unfortunately, we are likely to see a repeat of the 2003 scenario where Eve Adams emerged from an unwieldy field of 21.
Many people are wondering if either Steve Mahoney or Carolyn Parrish, who have both indicated their interest in the mayoralty if and when Hazel McCallion ever steps down, will run.
Possible, but highly unlikely. Mahoney already knows the job, obviously. If he wants to serve again, he probably just rolls over one morning and asks Katie to retire. She probably tells him life’s a lot more interesting at higher levels of government and goes back to sleep.
As for Parrish, she sounded as if she truly hadn’t considered the possibility when I put it to her recently. She was probably too busy making up her mind about whether to run as an independent in the next federal election, or writing a fresh letter to the editor to The Toronto Star.
Any “name” candidate who thinks winning either of these wards will be a cakewalk should think again.
“Anyone who treats this as a quick stepping stone to the mayoralty will be judged harshly,” says Iannicca.
Even though he may have his own ulterior motives for making that statement, it’s undoubtedly the truth.
Next up: potential candidates.