PENDER’S BIG SPENDERS: Time was when future notables vacated downtown theatres and bars to dine on neon-glittering, late-night Pender Street. That migration reversed recently when Lieutenant-Governor Janet Austin, Premier John Horgan, Mayor Kennedy Stewart and other heavies attended the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation’s third annual fundraising gala in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. No old-time chow mein, foo yung or sweet-and-sour pork was served. Neither were barbecued duck, soy chicken or curry beef brisket from foundation chair Carol Lee’s two-year-old Chinatown BBQ. Instead, gala co-chairs Sam Feldman, Darlene Poole and attendees ate ahi tuna carpaccio and mushroom-crusted beef filet while generating a reported — and remarkable — $5.5 million. That will help build the foundation’s proposed 230-home 58 West Hastings project with integrated health-care facilities. Lee’s Chinatown history includes entrepreneur-grandfather Ron Bick Lee arriving from Guangdong in 1911 and living to be 104. Accompanied by siblings and mother Lily, Lee doubtless missed 86-year-old father Robert, the Prospero International Realty founder, who is ailing. Read More
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