1000 Words about Music by a Man who knows Nothing

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 23, 2010.

To start, I must tell you that I know nothing about music. While my friends are each knowledgeable about their genre of choice, ranging from 80’s rock to death metal, or have musical training on the piano or guitar or harmonica, I can boast none of these things. All I know is what I like, an eclectic mixture of acoustic guitar and pop hits, and what I don’t, mainly operas. So given the opportunity to attend the Opening Gala of Music Niagara, a festival that aims to showcase impressive Canadian classical and jazz talent, I seize the chance to be exposed to historically powerful music with only slight hesitation.

Before July 17 and this incredible night of music, I had only one question. What do I wear? I finally settle on a blue dress shirt and black pants before leaving my St. Catharine’s apartment and making my way to the beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake. Driving down Byron Street, a narrow road at the edge of the town, I spot St. Mark’s Anglican Church with ease. Its grey granite-block exterior offers the illusion of a medieval castle, but the manicured lawns and neat stone pathway suggest more modern times. People are gathered in front of the church, collecting their tickets and having them ripped at the door. After collecting my ticket, I make my way through the small crowd and enter the church that dates back to the 1800s. It’s dimly lit by four chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the smell is a mixture of expensive perfumes and colognes with the polite musk of an older church. It’s a comforting smell somehow.

The wearers of said perfumes and colognes are dressed to the nines in formal wear. Men are in suits and women are in dresses or conservative blouses. Looking around the room, I regret my decision not to wear a tie. Sitting in the very back of the church, in a seat I would later find out was set aside for volunteers, I take the aesthetics of the room in. The cream colored walls are framed by brown trimming and the dark stain-glass windows prevent any light from entering. The audience, finding their seat in pews atop complimentary square cushions, is a buzz with excitement. As 7:30 approaches, a sudden quiet falls on them.

After brief speeches and the mandatory thanks from organizers and select local political figures, pianist Andre Laplante enters from the back of the church with his head held high. The small ponytail that you would expect from such a man hangs behind his head. He politely introduces himself with a slight Quebec accent, explains a minor change in the night’s program, and then sits behind his piano and begins.

The music starts slow and builds and one can find beauty in the performance. The show is nothing more or less than a man and his piano. There are no special effects, no plot or visual stimulation of any sort, but there is beauty in the simplicity. The audience remains captivated. They sit in awe as Andre taps and pounds on the keys. In a day and age when it seems nothing so simple could keep our attention for more than thirty seconds, it’s wonderful to see that the marvel of music can still hold an audience in rapture.

And for the music, which I know nothing about, I can only describe it as I experienced it. Andre’s fingers race across the keys, building in speed and intensity. The sound becomes almost palpable in the room. It fills your ears, but more. It’s filling your head and mind, filling your body, filling your soul. It can make you feel insignificant, but fills you all the same. It brings you into the music, making you a part of the growing and crashing sound, making you part of the magic.

The church is suitable for such an experience. Not only was it designed with acoustics in mind, but the religious undertones of what is being performed do not escape me. It is, after all, almost a ritual for Andre, who has played the piece hundreds of times. At the same time, the tradition and ritual of the piece does not make it any less gripping. More so, with each precise key stroke, we are still witnessing the art of creation. As many times as it’s been played before, it is still the first here and now.

Wave after wave of Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor opus 35 crashes over the audience. It is both assaulting and soothing at the same time; both joy and melancholy. At times the music startles, jumping from smooth melodies to jarred and sharp notes. Yet the audience is drawn in, longing to satisfy their urge to be a part of this creation. One man hums loudly with the music. The rest sit on seat’s edge and feel themselves being taken away.

When Andre finishes, he jumps from his seats and bows. The crowd erupts in applause, also jumping from their seats in a standing ovation. This is not an audience being polite. This is an audience being appreciative for the journey they were just taken on.

This is only intermission. The second half of the show is just as moving as the first with the addition of the Gould String Quartet. Violinists Atis Bankas, Tanya Charles, and Natasha Sharko with Luke Pomorski on cello add a new dimension to Andre’s piano. They appear almost like wooden puppets on strings dramatically bending at the elbow and bouncing in their high back seats with each powerful and graceful strum. At the end of the evening, the crowd erupts again, this time in a rush of murmurs followed immediately by applause.

Afterwards I talk about the experience with Terry Lett, one audience member and the official photographer of the festival. He proclaims his love for both the music and the quality of artists that Music Niagara brings to the region each year. If the Opening Gala is any measure I must agree. Knowing nothing about the music, it is still without doubt quality and beauty.

“The Watermelon Never Tasted So Sweet”: A Profile of Greg Willis

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 16, 2010.

I arrive on Chef Greg Willis’ street just in time for our 3:00 interview, but in a sudden fit of panic realize that the house number I remember him telling me over the phone doesn’t exist. I tentatively begin to walk down the street hoping to see the man. Instead I spot a brown 1969 Mercedes Benz in front of a large white house with pink awnings. I approach the front door and knock.

Chef Willis answers in a black apron. He peers over dark square-framed glasses suspiciously, before offering his hand wet from just finishing dishes. Chef Willis later tells me that he gets great pleasure from doing his own dishes. He points me to the back of his house and I sit down at his patio table. After a moment back in his kitchen, he returns with two cokes with lime and sets one in front of me. “I only have six cokes a year,” he tells me, “but today seems like the kind of day to have one.”

This non-coke drinker is the current owner of Kitchen Made, a home-based operation that sees Chef Willis prepare two weeks worth of meals and ingredients in a customer’s own kitchen. He also teaches cooking classes through the business, is Chef-in-Residence at the Real Canadian Super Store, and helps raise his two children, Alana and Spencer.

I ask him to tell me about his own parents. He was born to Geoffrey, an Englishman, and Carol, a Thorold-local, in 1958. He describes the two as neither being “food aficionados,” but fondly remembers them regularly bringing him to fancy restaurants in Toronto and Buffalo. He credits these family trips, as well as seeing the various foods of his culturally diverse friends’ families, with first peaking his interest in the culture of food and food preparation.

He frequently refers to his food as architecture and his father, who worked his whole life as a General Motors’ bricklayer, is likely the reason. Willis even worked with his father at GM for a couple of years, before leaving the family career path. He enrolled at George Brown for two years to be a chef and then Humber College for an additional year to be a sommelier. He remembers his first great wine fondly; a Piesporter Goldtrophen Riesling Auslese 1976.

After receiving the credentials to follow his passion into a profession, he sought out experiences that would prepare him for his dream job running his own restaurant and wine bar. He worked at the Parkway, Port Mansion, and the Holiday Inn. He traveled to Toronto and Fort Erie for different jobs. He recalls working under a couple of German and Swiss chefs whom he respects to this day.

“You get on the line at six o’clock at night to start cooking when all your preps done,” he describes after I ask about his experience working at the restaurants. “All of a sudden, it’s nine o’clock… you’ve done 150 covers, you don’t know how you did it because you’re on a second level of consciousness. It’s the closest thing to a war zone imaginable. Controlled chaos. Directed stress. And a lot of people feed on that. I know I do.”

With the right education and experience in hand, Chef Willis followed his dreams and opened the Cellar Bench in May 1991. It was one of the first of its kind in St. Catharines, catering to regional and seasonal cuisine. And it was a good time to get into the business. Niagara was just taking off as a wine destination. Later, when wineries wanted to open their own restaurants, they’d come to the Cellar Bench as market research.

“I wanted to incorporate all of the five fine arts into my restaurant,” he explains to me before taking a sip from his glass. “Good service as the dance. Music in the background. Poetry on the hand-written and hand-bound menus. Architecture on the plates. Paintings on the wall that changed all of the time. I wanted to bring the world to St. Catharines. Or at least, use it as a vehicle, as a conduit, a melting pot for culture. It seemed to work for a few years.”

While it took time to master his gasless kitchen, he was eventually producing everything that the restaurant served: from the breads that started the meals to the desserts that finished them and all of the oils, condiments, and foods in between. He loved the restaurant, but it paid a toll and after his children were born he sold it and took time off to raise them. But after six years at home, he’s glad to be back.

“When I closed the restaurant in 1999, watermelon never tasted so sweet. The yoke was taken off my neck. It was freedom like I’ve never tasted before. But after six years raising the kids, getting back into the restaurants gets me all jazzed up again.”

It was with this passion and excitement that Chef Willis started Kitchen Made in 2005. He didn’t want his own bricks and mortar commercial kitchen because it would require too much work and he’d already done it; however he longed for the chef life. He now prepares weeks worth of meals in his customers’ kitchens, removing their stress and offering a variety of top-notch meal choices that fit within their budget, diet, and taste. The elderly are his most common customer and he enjoys cooking for them.

“They’re really appreciative. They’ve got the years of understanding flavors and tastes and what a good kitchen does for them.”

As I wrap up the interview, I ask him if he has any last comments. He pauses for a moment to form just the right sentiment and then tells me that anyone remotely interested in food should take the time to do some of the things he’s already done; to work in a professional kitchen for a few years, to work hours peeling and dicing carrots, all to garner a true appreciation and passion for food and all that it can offer us.

He smiles, reflecting back on his own life as a professional chef, and then adds, “The watermelons never tasted so sweet.”

The Intrepid Tales of a Blond China Doll: The finale in a two part profile of Hannelore Headley

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 2, 2010.

During last week’s interview with 74-year-old bookseller Hannelore Headley, I asked her if she could narrow down her love of books to a favourite novel or author. It took her a moment to mentally go through decades of reading before she finally concluded, “I enjoy reading the stories of intrepid women whose sense of curiosity and adventure drove them to want to travel to places that were not open to women.” This week I have returned to Hannah’s bookshop on Queen St. to discuss with her how she ended up in St. Catharines. Living as a refugee in Shanghai, travelling to Canada, and living across the country makes Hannah one of the women she so enjoys reading about, at least in my books.

Hannah begins her story with a date; her birthday. She was born a leap-year baby on February 29, 1936 to Heinz Egon and Paula Kato in Berlin, Germany. It was a tumultuous time for this Jewish family at the brink of World War II. At the age of three, Hannah became a refugee as she and her family fled the country to Shanghai, China.

Always a book seller, her father opened a bookstore in Shanghai during the war. While Hannah doesn’t remember this store, after the war he opened a second on the bottom floor of their two-story home. Hannah spent hours in this store reading everything she could get her hands on, including a book that her father considered unsuitable. She laughs as she tells me that when she was 13, “I picked up a book called Forever Amber, which was a really steamy, steamy book back then. My father took the book out of my hands very gently and said, ‘My darling, this isn’t the book for you.’”

When the communists took over China, her father once again had to close his store and the family realized that they could economically no longer stay in the country. They applied for an exit visa to Canada, where Paula had relatives, and after two years their papers came through; however the problems in Hannah’s story never have simple resolutions.

Two days before leaving, their exit visa was revoked and two days later her father was arrested as a suspected German spy. Her father remained in police custody for fourteen months. The Chinese police eventually realized that he couldn’t be a spy, but punished him with deportation, which worked for the family. They boarded a boat in Shangai heading to Hong Kong. When they hit international waters, the captain entered the cabin where her father was still being detained. Hannah tears up even today as she speaks the captain’s words, “Mr. Heinemann, you’re now a free man.”

The journey to their final destination was long, but filled with exhilarating moments. She recalls her father being reunited with his Aryan step-mother who was his only living relative remaining in Germany. She excitedly describes to me how she saw Pope Pius XII in Vatican City on a cloudy Easter morning and how when he blessed the crowd, the sun shown down for a brief and miraculous moment. She fondly remembers her father searching through a book store behind the Spanish Steps in Rome and finding a first edition of Jacques Cartier’s Voyages in Canada, which they later sold and the family lived off the profits for three months.

Hannah arrived in Canada on June 2, 1953 after travelling by boat for six days across the Atlantic. Her mind is sharp and she explains that it was 1:30 in the afternoon when the ship’s passengers were let out at Pier 21 in Halifax and immediately herded into cages in a concrete shed. The family was processed after ten hours and boarded a sealed train heading west. For three days they travelled, being offered a few sandwiches a day. Her brother, Stephen Heinemann, then six, was the only one who could get comfortable. When the train stopped, Hannah’s mother told them they were getting off. She didn’t know where they were, but after three days without sleep and seeing nothing but Canadian bush passing by her window, Paula had enough.

The family found a small apartment and Heinz managed to talk a local bookstore owner, Mr. Lovely, into letting him run Mansfield Book Mart after only a month of working in the small basement shop that Hannah describes as being as “large as my front room.” It was at this store that Hannah got her first real taste of selling books. “My father didn’t volunteer much information,” she recalls, “but if you were curious and you asked him, he would very carefully and patiently instruct you and answer your inquiries. So I learned a lot. I picked up a good deal of knowledge there.”

Montreal was a literary and cultural centre at the time and Hannah met poets and authors including Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Alfred Purdy. It was Mr. Purdy’s roommate Douglas Kaye that Hannah met and married. The two moved to Vancouver in September 1957 and she immediately started looking for an adequate location to open her own bookstore. She found a narrow, but long, shop and Douglas built a wall dividing the space into a store and primitive home where they lived a “bohemian” lifestyle without a kitchen for two years. Running H. Kaye’s Books made Hannah the youngest independent bookseller in the country at the time.

It was in Vancouver that Hannah had her two children; Paula, named after her mother, and Michael. She and Douglas divorced in 1963. She then met Velmer Headley who was studying at the University of British Columbia, while she worked in the library. The two soon wed and, as destiny would have it, moved to St. Catharine’s, Ontario. Their story in this city is where my first interview with Hannah began.

It takes a moment to absorb Hannah’s life’s narrative. I’ve asked few questions as she’s delved into her past offering anecdotes and tidbits about her fascinating life. Even after hashing out her entire story, Hannah doesn’t make the direct connection that her life parallels the stories of the heroines she enjoys reading about. But I can say without doubt, that Hannah is the most curious and intrepid adventurer that I’ve met.

The Blind Bookseller: The first in a two part profile of Hannelore Headley

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 2, 2010.

Admittedly, I feel nervous as I peer past the books on display in the window of Hannelore Headley Old & Fine Books on Queen Street. I have spent the day reading about my interviewee and was enthralled by her story. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1936, Hannah, as she prefers to be called, became a refugee at the age of 3. She and her family escaped through Italy to Shanghai, China where she lived until the age of 17. Today, however, I will be asking her about her more recent adventures and accomplishments, mainly on how she came to be the proud owner of two used book stores in St. Catharines; Hannelore's Downtown Fine Books and the store I am currently entering.

The shop is filled to bursting with 90,000 books, all neatly stacked or shelved along the walls. I spot Hannah sitting patiently behind her desk in the middle of the store where, at the age of 74, she spends much of her time. I ask her if she’ll ever retire and leave her post behind the desk and she pauses for a second as if contemplating for the first time that there was any other choice. Finally, she responds, “Well, yes,” and then laughs, before adding, “when they carry me out feet first. Any day I’m vertical I’m certainly coming here. I would miss the everyday things… you know, the people coming in and just walking up with a handful of mysteries. I’ve now been here long enough, 38 years, that people who used to come in as children are coming in with their kids.”

Hannah’s dedication to her bookstores is understandable. After all, book selling is in her blood. Her father was a life-long book dealer who owned stores in Berlin, Shanghai, and Montreal. Before him, her Great-grandfather’s brother William Heinemann was the famous founder of the Windmill Press in London. Her brother Stephen Heinemann owned a bookstore in Kingston before joining her in St. Catharines.

“I decided at a young age to carry on the family tradition of book selling,” she recalls. Indeed she did. At age 21, she was the youngest bookstore owner in Canada when she opened her first in Vancouver. She closed the Vancouver shop in 1962 to raise her two children, Paula, now 50, and Michal, 48. It was during this time that she became a professional collector of illustrated children’s books. By the time she sold it to a gentleman from New England, she had a collection of over 5,000 books. It wasn’t until moving to St. Catharines for her husband, Dr. Velmer Headley’s job as a mathematics professor at Brock University that Hannah once again became a bookseller. In a store on the corner of Duke and Wellington, the couple rented two rooms on the street level for what would be one of St. Catharines’ first used book shop.

Her first day of business was quiet, as she recalls, “I opened on September 11, 1972. It was my first day of business. And of course, obviously, I didn’t see anybody. I hadn’t advertised and there wasn’t a grand opening or anything like that. But at the end of the day, a man walked in. He was tall with white short hair trimmed in a crew cut. And my first impression was, ‘The RCMP already?’ Of course he was not. He turned out to be my first and very generous customer. He’d come every week and would leave with a handful of books.”

For stock, Hannah began collecting anywhere she could find books. She searched through yard sales, antique bookstores, and even at the Salvation Army. Before long people heard she was purchasing books and started to bring them in by the box load. As she tells me this she gestures around the room as if to suggest that finding stock has never been much of a problem. It’s for this reason that within two years, Hannah had grown out of her two room shop and the couple purchased the house on Queen St where the store remains to this day. It was only when this house was filled that they decided to open the second store on St. Paul St. in 2002.

Hannah has been reading since the age of three. However she claims she hasn’t read a book in its entirety for a very long time. The irony of Hannah’s story is that as a result of her diabetes, Hannah is losing her vision and has to read even prices with a magnifying glass. Laughing, she comments, “I think being a blind book seller is not a good combination.”

However this impairment has only left her appreciating books all the more. While people suggest that she try audio books, she rejects the idea. “The joy of reading; you hold a book in your hand and the paper… it’s a tactile thing. It’s a sensual thing. The book has a feeling to it. The smell of the paper. The fact you’re turning your own pages.” And, if there’s any consolation, she at least is surrounded by books every day, which she appreciates. She also has her daily intake of stories, no longer trapped between two covers, but now told to her by her customers. “The people who you encounter,” she tells me excitedly, when I ask her what the best part about owning her own bookstore is. “I mean, the door opens, people come in and sit in that chair and invite you into their lives. They want to share with you their experiences.”

I feel the same sentiment as I wrap up my interview with Hannah. Her willingness to share her experiences with me is the best part of my day.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Check back next week for the conclusion of our profile on Hannelore Headley where we explore how she went from a German refugee during World War II to Canada’s youngest bookseller.