Town Talk: Plenty to see on Blackcomb Way

BLACK TIE ON BLACKCOMB WAY: Some 700 culturati and corporati will join Michael and Yoshiko Audain in Whistler next weekend for the Audain Art Museum’s ribbon-cutting, dress-up dinner and private and public showings. There’ll be plenty to see: 23 Emily Carr paintings, 19 by E.J. Hughes, five Jeff Walls and many aboriginal works. As for Polygon Homes board chair Audain himself, here are snapshots from past columns: as a prison guard, probation officer, social worker and housing-policy consultant before catching the building bug in 1980. Jailed as an anti-racism Freedom Rider in 1961 Mississippi. Father James named him for jockey Michael O’Leary whose long-odds win at Goodwood earned papa a bundle. Like Mick Jagger, attended the London School of Economics. Will wear black ties only until a global nuclear-arms-ban treaty is signed. Left a Lovers Ball white-faced in mid-dessert on learning of fire ravaging an unfinished Polygon project. During a photo-op with then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was told: “Young man, take off your spectacles. They’ll reflect the flash. And if you did your eye exercises properly, you wouldn’t need them.” Heard painter Gordon Smith publicly thank him and Yoshiko “for doing more for the arts than anyone else in Canada really.” After bidding $47,000 for a Smith work, said his physician advised him to wear a blood-pressure monitor at art auctions. Of taking three large glasses of red wine before transpacific flights: “I get a better sleep in Cathay Pacific business class than I do in my bed at home.”