The Ottawa Sun, Canada
August 10, 2005 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
POLICE SAW NO SIGN OF ASSAULT, COURT TOLD;
WOMAN, EX-BEAU DROVE TO COP SHOP
BY DEREK PUDDICOMBE, OTTAWA SUN
A 39-YEAR-OLD Ottawa woman who said she feared for her life after
ending a relationship with her lover told court yesterday the man
had tried to pursue a romantic relationship 23 years earlier when
she was a teenager growing up in Armenia.
During her second day of testimony, Lillian Arakelyan, 39, said she
was 16 when Gagik Artsrunyan stalked and harassed her and made his
romantic intentions known but she rejected his advances.
Artsrunyan, who lives in Portland, Ore., is charged with assault,
two counts of criminal harassment, three counts of uttering threats
and forcible confinement.
Arakelyan disputed any suggestion by defence lawyer Rosalind Conway
she was the one who initiated any romantic involvement then or later.
“He was obsessed with me and harassed me,” she said, of their
relationship in Armenia. “He would wait outside of home and work and
wait for me.”
MET FOR COFFEE
Arakelyan, who arrived in Canada in 1998 to study at the University
of Ottawa, admitted to Conway that during those younger years she
met with Artsrunyan for coffee at least once.
During her two days of testimony, Arakelyan repeatedly told the court
she was beaten by the accused in her building’s underground parking
lot after being dragged from her car and thrown in the back seat of
Artsrunyan’s vehicle.
She said the assault came three months after she ended the
relationship.
During her cross-examination, Conway asked three officers who responded
to two separate incidents involving the former lovers if they had
noticed any bruising or evidence of assault.
“If that was the case, there would have been a different outcome,”
said Const. Chris O’Grady, denying he saw any visible marks the day
of the alleged assault.
On Monday, Arakelyan described that her former boyfriend arrived at
her Ottawa apartment from the U.S. and, after punching, kicking and
choking her, jumped into the back seat of her vehicle as she drove
to the Elgin St. police station.
Const. Trevor Archibald was at the police station the morning of Aug.
3, 2004 when the pair arrived.
Archibald told Conway during cross-examination he noticed Arakelyan
was “distraught” and obviously concerned Artsrunyan was in the city,
but didn’t notice any visible signs of a brutal struggle.
None of the officers questioned testified to having documented any
sign of a physical assault on Arakelyan.
After retrieving some belongings from Arakelyan’s residence,
officers told Artsrunyan not to have any further contact with his
former girlfriend.
The following day, Arakelyan called police again complaining Artsrunyan
had attempted on several occasions to contact her since being told
not to.
Police again retrieved some items Artsrunyan claimed Arakelyan had
and told him if he returned he would be arrested.
The trial continues in November.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

>>From rags to riches to ruined reputation
by: James Bone in New York and Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia
The Times (London)
August 9, 2005, Tuesday
Benon Sevan, a United Nations official who served in Afghanistan and
Iraq, allegedly took kickbacks after losing money in a stock fraud.
The investigation of the Oil-for-Food scandal, chaired by Paul Volcker,
blamed Mr Sevan’s “precarious personal financial condition” yesterday
for his decision to accept almost $ 150,000 (£84,000) in 1998 and 2002.
Mr Sevan earned $ 129,524 (£72,600) when he took over the Oil-For-Food
programme in 1997. His wife, Micheline, made $ 69,243 (£38,800)
as an assistant at the UN’s department of economic and social affairs.
The couple owned a house in Long Island, rented a flat in Manhattan
and had savings of less than $ 5,000 in their New York bank accounts.
But in 1996 Mr Sevan bought shares worth $ 180,000 using money from an
equity line of credit and taking a cash advance on his credit card. His
investment lost more than half of its value, partly because of a stock
fraud that led to the conviction of four brokers. From December 1996
to October 1998, Mr Sevan’s bank account was overdrawn 45 times and
his wife’s account was in the red 153 times.
A Cypriot-Armenian, Mr Sevan is in Cyprus, which does not extradite
its citizens.
Mr Sevan’s mother, Verginia, was a teenager when she gave birth out
of wedlock.
She was cast out by her family and his father is understood to have
refused to recognise him.Mr Sevan was supported by his mother’s
three sisters as he studied at the prestigious Melkonian Educational
Institute in Nicosia.
He went on to win a scholarship to Columbia University in New York
before joining the UN.
Mr Sevan maintains his innocence and claims to have received $ 160,000
in cash gifts from an aunt, Berdjouhi Zeitountsian, a retired civil
servant. She died last year aged 84 after falling down a lift shaft.
–Boundary_(ID_0eiqOVTyz6iFXdU63qrkVg)–

The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)
August 13, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition
They hit the ground running: Destination marathoning is a great way
to see the world while staying in shape
Dianne Rinehart, Special to the Sun
On June 18, Jean Marmoreo and her husband Bob Ramsay found themselves
running in a marathon, one of many half-marathons and marathons they
jump at the chance to do each year.
But this one — held under the midnight sun on the summer solstice
in Tromso, Norway, at latitude 70, 100 kilometres north of the Arctic
Circle — was dramatically different from the rest.
“That was definitely the most exotic one I’ve done,” says Marmoreo,
a 62-year-old physician and veteran of 12 marathons and seven
half-marathons in destinations including New York City, Washington,
D.C., Santa Monica, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Chicago.
“The only place I haven’t run a marathon is in Toronto,” Marmoreo
laughs of her home (though she has run half-marathons here).
For Marmoreo and Ramsay, and hundreds of thousands of others around
the world, the ballooning-in-popularity sport of marathoning is
definitely about the destination.
Marmoreo and Ramsay first started running marathons annually in New
York City in 1994, running three consecutively.
“There was such a social experience there, we thought nowhere else
on earth could be like this,” she says.
But when Marmoreo didn’t make the lottery in the fourth year (the
marathon is so over-subscribed, organizers have to limit entries),
they decided to run in Santa Monica. That’s when they got the “new”
destination bug.
They followed that up with San Antonio. Then in 2001, they ended up
doing their first Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., at the
end of October, only about six weeks after 9-11. Running with marines
past the rubble of the Pentagon was such a moving experience that
they invited a few of their friends to train with them that winter and
join them the following fall. Eighty-five did, and Jean’s Marines was,
well, up and running!
And they haven’t stopped.
What has grown from a group of friends getting together to train
with Marmoreo and Ramsay in 2002, has now become a pack of more than
500 women training each year under the Jean’s Marines banner, with
alumnae starting up their own mini-pack destination marathon runs,
that have included Venice, Medoc, France, Ottawa, Niagara Falls,
Ont., and the uphill giant of them all, Jungfrau, Switzerland, run
by Jean’s Marine alumnus Arax Acemyan.
Before the 2002 Marine Corps marathon, Acemyan was a 50-plus, cigarette
smoking, self-described couch potato. But when she decided to train
for the Marine Corps marathon, she tossed the cigarettes — for good.
Then after finding out her ex-husband, whom she hadn’t seen in 10
years, was also training in Europe for a marathon in Jungfrau in
September, she decided to squeeze that one in before her Washington
training goal. The running course is gruelling. Bad enough a marathon
is 42 K, but this course additionally climbs a 2,000 metre-finish
line over the route. Despite the fact it took her almost seven hours
to complete — “but I got my medal” — and might have caused lesser
women to give up on the sport, Acemyan followed it up four weeks
later with the Marine Corps in Washington in just over five hours,
and hasn’t looked back.
In 2003 Acemyan, a 55-year-old fashion designer (her label is Arax)
and founder of Tailored Image, a company that teaches disabled people
how to groom themselves, ran the Venice marathon. Last year she ran
Medoc and this year she will do Chicago.
“I love to travel,” says Acemyan, who is of Armenian descent, and
originally from Istanbul. “And [marathons] are a goal for me to keep
in shape. If I didn’t have a goal I wouldn’t train.”
But the vacations aren’t solely about running. Marmoreo and Ramsay,
and two other Jean’s Marines-in-training, combined the Tromso run with
a spectacular vacation of sea kayaking, hiking, and ocean cruising.
And when Acemyan went to Venice, she and four other girlfriend running
mates stayed in the romantic city for nine days in an old palace
that had been converted to a bed and breakfast. “We did five trips,
ran the marathon, and ate and drank,” Acemyan remembers fondly.
When she ran the Medoc Marathon, where all 6,000 entrants dress up in
costumes, then race from chateau to chateau, tasting wine, slurping
oysters, and munching on cheeses en route, she spent two weeks away,
travelling with her group of running pals for a week to St. Emillion
before the marathon, and then on her own to Nice for another five
days after it.
In addition to the marathons, Acemyan has run the More magazine half
marathons — for women over 40 — in New York City twice, combining her
fashion design work with her favourite pastimes — travel and running.
Fellow Jean’s Marine alumnus Darlene Roth, 50, a nurse who has also run
the More half-marathon, says for her the marathon and the running are
the “icing on the cake.” The real goal is the destination travelling
with her girlfriends. She and her fellow travelling companions turned
the More half into a shopping and spa trip. “We’re a bunch of wild
women,” she says of the bonding that takes place during training
for each trip. “We just have a lot of fun.” Even training runs turn
into a bit of travel adventure, she says, with teammates picking a
“really nice restaurant” each week to run to. “Any pound you lose
[training] you gain back!”
Mila Luka, 38, a product manager with Bank of Montreal and mother of
two youngsters, was one of Acemyan’s four running mates along for the
Venice marathon. She found the marathon itself — especially because
she had flight problems getting there — not exactly “ideal.”
“But oh, but the food and the drinking!” she remembers of the group’s
routine to meet each night in a little bar for cocktails. “It was a
fabulous trip, fabulous food, fabulous wine and fabulous company.”
Luka combined the beauty of her trip to Venice with a trip to Trieste
to visit an aunt, who then accompanied her and her husband Chris to
Rijeka, Croatia, formerly Fiume, Italy, where her mother grew up.
It was her first trip to Italy.
Running in other countries “is a fabulous way to see a destination,”
she says. The Marine Corps Marathon’s Washington route — which she
ran twice — “was phenomenal. Anything you ever wanted to see in
Washington was on that route.”
And Luka has already set her sites on another destination marathon: Big
Sur in California, known for it’s tough up-and-downhill course along
the cliff-strewn, majestic Pacific coast. That in fact, is where one
of her fellow Jean’s Marines alumnae, Kaz Flinn, 43, vice-president of
government affairs and social responsibility at Scotiabank, completed
in April with fellow Jean’s Marines alumnus, Dr. Nandini Sathi.
“It’s one of the hardest in the world. It’s all hills. It’s very
challenging, but it’s amazing.”
Flinn turned the destination marathon into a chance to have
a California “girlfriends” outing with Sathi, who has run seven
marathons to Flinn’s three (Flinn’s two young children slow down the
pace of marathon commitments slightly!). “We spent two days in San
Francisco after the race. We had such a nice time together. It’s nice
to be away with a friend.”
And when the friends you’re travelling with are the friends
you’re training with, the ties that bind are strong. “It’s a girls’
connection. Think of the topics you cover and the depth of friendship
you build over six months of training together,” she says of the
weekly training runs that, closing in on the marathon date, last five
and more hours at a stretch.
“I will keep doing this,” says Flinn of destination marathoning. “I
absolutely love it. In fact I feel lost because I haven’t figured out
my next [destination] goal,” she says. Among those she is considering:
a marathon in Nova Scotia. “That’s where I’m from.”
To fill in the time between destination marathons, Flinn, like many
of her fellow Jean’s Marines, turns to halves to keep her in shape,
running them in Toronto, and nearby Mississauga, with plans to do
one in Ontario’s Prince Edward County this year.
Jane Somerville, 56, who ran the Marine Corps in 2002, has kept in
shape with half-marathons since, including at the Ottawa marathon on
the last weekend in May, twice. “It’s the capital of Canada and it’s
a perfect time to see the sights,” she says.
“The fact that when you’re running when you’re on a holiday,
compensates for all the wonderful food and drink you may have.”
In fact, even when she’s not planning a destination half-marathon,
Somerville, a book publisher and consultant, builds runs into her
travel plans. When she’s at her weekend country home north of Toronto,
she runs into town. And she has already arranged with tour organizers
for a trip she and her husband are taking from Split to Dubrovnic,
Croatia, this summer to be dropped off at one end of an island en
route, and picked up at the other end after she has run across it.
So adept at fitting runs into their travels are the Jean’s Marines
alumnae, that when Kerry Peacock, 45, a senior vice-president,
Corporate and Public Affairs, with TD Bank Financial Group, landed
in Chicago last year on a supposedly pure-pleasure trip and found out
a marathon was taking place the next day, she registered for the half.
Marmoreo, who was travelling with Peacock, remembers her and Ramsay’s
surprise: “We were just going out for our morning run at 8:30,”
says when we saw Kerry returning from competing the half!”
Peacock, a veteran of five marathons, says: “Destinations are the
only way to go!.”
As for Marmoreo, who will be running both the Chicago and Marine
Corps marathons this year, she says she plans to continue destination
marathoning for “as long as everything continues to let me.”
What’s next?
“Well we’re going to Australia and New Zealand in January and February,
and I’ll see what’s there.”
Dianne Rinehart, a Toronto-based freelance writer and former Vancouver
Sun reporter, ran the first “Jean’s Marine” Marine Corps Marathon in
Washington, D.C., in 2002 and has run three Vancouver Sun 10K runs
and several Toronto 10Ks.
WHERE TO GO:
There are hundreds of destination marathons around the world from
Brisbane to Madrid to Kigali to St. Petersburg.
For a complete inspiring list check out the International Marathons
Races Directory and Schedule at
GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Destination marathons have given life a new impetus for
former self-confessed couch potato Arax Acemyan (in black on the right)
with other runners at an event in France.;
Photo: Bob Ramsay, Special to the Vancouver Sun; After finishing the
Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromso, Norway, Jean Marmoreo and Bob Ramsay
could enjoy some sea kayaking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

National Post (Canada)
August 13, 2005 Saturday
Toronto Edition
Poverty, confusion and melancholy in 1950s Istanbul
Dan Rowe, Weekend Post
ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY
By Orhan Pamuk
Knopf
400 pp., $35.95
– – –
It’s a commonplace that a memoir by an established fiction author
will reveal a surprising or celebratory element of the writer’s past.
In the case of Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City, there
are no such revelations or celebrations about his Turkish upbringing,
but the book does serve as a reminder of Pamuk’s considerable skill
and intelligence.
Turkey’s best-known novelist, Pamuk is the author of several books,
including The White Castle, My Name is Red (which in 2003 won the
IMPAC, the world’s richest literary prize) and Snow, released in an
English translation last year to wide acclaim. This fall, at the
Frankfurt Book Fair, Pamuk will collect the German book trade’s Peace
Prize.
Pamuk is also very outspoken. In February, he told a Swiss newspaper:
“Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey.
Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for
that.” The comment earned him criminal charges in his homeland, not
to mention the scorn of Turkish officialdom.
In Istanbul, published in Turkey in 2003, Pamuk is considerably more
artful in his approach, making no direct reference to the Armenian
genocide. The book weaves the story of young Orhan — who wanted to
be a painter until his late teens — and his secular upper-class
family with evocative descriptions of the city’s dismal alleys and
vast waterways. It’s also the story of various writers and artists,
Turkish and Western, who travelled to Istanbul at the end of the
Ottoman Empire.
Pamuk is clearly a thorn in the side of the Turkish establishment.
Having lived for a time in New York City, he has many qualities that
might be described as Western, so his allegiances are not easy to pin
down. Throughout Istanbul, he longs for the city’s glory days at the
height of Ottoman rule. This yearning is especially evident in the
passages where he recalls watching as large homes burn along the
Bosphorus Strait. He also dabbles in Islam, even though his family
and their upper-class counterparts don’t approve.
Born in 1952, Pamuk lived at a time in Istanbul’s history when the
collective memory was fading and the current economic rebound, stoked
by the possibility of joining the European Union, was a long way off.
The prevailing mood in the city, he says, is one of melancholy —
huzun in Turkish — a mood that’s compounded by the architectural and
artistic glories of Istanbul.
“The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the
ruins,” Pamuk writes. “Many Western writers and travellers find this
charming … These ruins are reminders that the present city is so
poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its
former heights of wealth, power and culture. It is no more possible
to take pride in these neglected dwellings … than it is to rejoice
in the beautiful old houses that as a child I watched burn down one
by one.”
Pamuk returns to these themes throughout Istanbul and, with the help
of more than 200 well-chosen black-and-white photographs and a fine
translation by Maureen Freely, evokes this feeling with great skill.
Like Snow, this book builds slowly and steadily to an ending that is
not particularly shocking or revealing but wholly satisfying. And it
leaves you pleased that Pamuk chose writing instead of painting.
GRAPHIC: Black & White
Photo: BOOK COVER: ISTANBUL: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk;
Colour Photo: Simon Hayter, The Ottawa Citizen / “The people of
Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins,” says the
author, who longs for the city’s glory days.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Aug 15 2005
ISSUES OF INTEGRATION OF AZERBAIJAN TO EU STRUCTURES DISCUSSED
[August 15, 2005, 23:06:06]
Foreign minister of the Azerbaijan Republic Elmar Mammadyarov on 15
August met the delegation headed by the secretary of state of the
Swedish Premier office Lars Danielsson, now visiting the country.
Noting that the key goal of the visit is to have comprehensive
information on the current situation in the country, discuss
opportunities for bilateral relations between two countries, Mr. Lars
Danielsson expressed pleasure to visit Azerbaijan.
Minister Mammadyarov highlighted on the economic and socio-political
situation in the Republic, on the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh
conflict and current status of the peace negotiations to resolve the
question, on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
gas and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport large-scale energy and transport
projects, as well as on the works to integrate to the Europe and
Euro-Atlantic structures as priorities of the foreign policy of
Azerbaijan.
Minister Mammadyarov informed that Armenia has occupied 20 percent of
territory of the country, and pursued the policy of ethnic cleanse,
underlining necessity of resolution to the problem in the frame of
territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and noted that the occupation
factor is inadmissible in the XXI century, and that the problem
should find its solution in peace way and negotiations. Existent
of conflict in the region is major obstacle for integration to the
European structures, Mr. Mammadyarov emphasized.
The Minister spoke of the prospects of the cooperation of Azerbaijan
with the European structures, its steps made towards the “New
Neighboring Policy of Europe” and participation of the country in
the frame of NATO’s PfP program, as well as the democratic society
building process in the Republic.
In the meeting, also were exchanged views on a number of other
questions of regional and international significance, the reforms in
UN, humanitarian and social-economic situation in the Northern Cyprus
and others.

The Ottawa Sun
August 9, 2005 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
COURT TOLD OF HORRIFIC CAR ATTACK;
EX-BOYFRIEND WANTED TO KILL ME: DOC
BY DEREK PUDDICOMBE, OTTAWA SUN
A HEALTH Canada employee says she felt like a caged animal waiting
to be slaughtered at any moment as her former lover continually
threatened to kill her if she didn’t continue their relationship.
Three months after Lillian Arakelyan, 39, said she broke off what
she called an abusive and controlling relationship with her Armenian
boyfriend living in the U.S., he was back in Ottawa waiting for her
in an underground parking lot at her Cooper St. apartment building —
the spot where she says a brutal attack and assault took place.
Arakelyan said she had just got into her car on the morning of Aug.
3, 2004 and was about to close the car door when Gagik Artsrunyan
grabbed her and pulled her from the vehicle.
THROWN, KICKED, PUNCHED
“He grabbed me and dragged me to his car and threw me in the back
seat of his car,” said Arakelyan, who described to the court how she
was repeatedly kicked and punched during the alleged attack.
After the struggle she broke free, but said the accused caught up
with her, began to choke her, and again dragged her to his car.
Breaking free, she managed to make it to her car and began to drive
away. But she said the accused again caught up with her and jumped
into the back seat area, where he proceeded to punch her in the back
of the head.
“He was threatening to kill me and said nobody leaves him and that
he would follow me everywhere,” said Arakelyan.
Managing to drive to the Ottawa police station on Elgin St., Arakelyan
got the attention of two officers.
Arakelyan said her former boyfriend told police he only wanted to
retrieve a few belongings from her home. With promises to leave
Arakelyan alone and leave the country, he left.
However, for the next three days Arakelyan, a Canadian citizen
since 2001 after arriving in the capital from Armenia to complete
post-graduate work at the University of Ottawa, said her life was a
living nightmare.
‘I FELT TRAPPED’
The foreign-trained physician told the court that Artsrunyan hadn’t
left the country and had made dozens of phone calls and visits to
her home and witnessed him sitting in a car outside her home.
“I didn’t want to leave my apartment and I felt trapped fearing for
my life,” Arakelyan told Crown prosecutor Walter Devenz.
Arakelyan told the court she first met Artsrunyan in Armenia when
she was 16, but hadn’t heard from him since arriving in Canada seven
years ago.
She said he contacted her in May or June 2003, suggesting they start
a relationship.
After some hesitation, a relationship ensued with Artsrunyan, living
in Portland, Ore., at the time, but the affair quickly deteriorated.
Artsrunyan is charged with two counts of criminal harassment, three
counts of uttering threats and forcible confinement and assault.
The trial continues today.

Just-style.com, UK
Aug 15 2005
TURKEY: Akdas Group Eyes US, China Markets
15 Aug 2005
Turkish men’s suit maker Akdas Group is eyeing expansion to the US
and China as part of an international growth plan.
The company has set a target of 2010 for its launch onto the US and
Chinese markets.
The expansion strategy also involves boosting stores in Turkey to 50
by the end of this year and to 70 by 2007, with an eventual total of
250 stores internationally planned.
The company recently opened a new factory in Istanbul, Turkey, which
will be a base for overseas growth.
Akdas owns the Crispino brand, one of the biggest clothing names
in Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS RELEASE
August 15, 2005
Embassy of the Republic of Armenia
2225 R Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20008
Tel: 202-319-1976, x. 348; Fax: 202-319-2982
Email: [email protected]; Web:
Ambassador Markarian Meets U.S. Ex-Im Bank Acting President
On August 12, 2005, Ambassador Tatoul Markarian met with James
H. Lambright, Chairman and Acting President of the U.S. Export Import
Bank and discussed prospects for U.S.-Armenian trade relations and
the potential for the Bank’s programs in Armenia.
Mr. Lambright acknowledged Armenia’s progress in economic reforms
and positive macroeconomic trends, noting that Export-Import Bank
had announced in March the availability of short-term and medium-term
financing for Armenia’s public sector as well. Ambassador Markarian
presented Armenia’s current economic and legal reforms, and the
efforts by the Government of Armenia to promote trade and investment.
It was agreed to work together to promote Ex-Im Bank’s programs in
Armenia and to review Armenia’s risk classification in international
institutions to better reflect the country’s significant achievements
in securing macroeconomic stability and fostering double-digit
economic growth.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azerbaijani Official Accuses Opposition of Plotting Coup
CRI, China
Aug 15 2005
2005-8-16 2:36:24 CRIENGLISH.com
Azerbaijani Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov accused the opposition
Monday of planning to stage a coup, saying any such attempt will
be foiled.
The prosecutor general warned the opposition that “the Azerbaijani
authorities are strong enough and any such unconstitutional attempts
will be thwarted by legal means.”
Tensions in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation are running high ahead
of the November parliamentary elections.
Former president Ayaz Mutalibov and former parliamentary speaker Rasul
Guliyev, both of whom are living abroad, have announced plans to run
in the elections.
Garalov said Mutalibov and Guliyev will be arrested if they return
to Azerbaijan.
Mutalibov, who took the helm of Azerbaijan after the country gained
independence in the early 1990s, is accused of grave crimes that
include losing Azerbaijani territories to Armenia in the armed conflict
over the disputed, mostly ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Guliyev, who now heads the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, faces
large-scale misappropriation charges.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
by Christopher Hutsul, Toronto Star
The Toronto Star, Canada
August 14, 2005 Sunday
Sako Ghanaghounian saunters through Kensington Market with his chin up,
a good 15 paces ahead of his mom and dad. En route from his home on
Kensington Ave. to daycare on Bellevue Ave. on a hot summer morning,
the five-year-old greets his friends with the grace of a nobleman. They
all know his name.
“Buenos dias, Tony,” says Sako without stopping.
“Buenos dias, Sako,” responds the fruit vendor, jostling pineapples.
Heading northbound, Sako sidesteps two drunks outside a bar, presses
his face against the window of the butcher shop, waves at Rita, then
steps into the bakery for his usual morning snack – a spinach bagel.
He breezes through waves of fish smell, tromping with sandalled feet
on sidewalks slick with brown stuff leaking from garbage bags and the
occasional oily mash of errant vegetables. He plunks himself down at
Louie’s coffee shop, where Ozzie pours him a tall cup of tap water,
just as he does every morning.
The children who grow up here, the princes and princesses of
Kensington, the market rats, experience a childhood as unique as the
market itself.
What was once a Jewish market, a place to buy poultry and dry goods,
has become a melee of cultures and lifestyles. The pioneers of this
place were the owners of the trendy T-shirt shops, hipster furniture
stores and punk-rock watering holes. Now artists and hippies share
the sidewalks with bullhorn-wielding socialists and teenaged bargain
hunters. This is a village where rich and poor, chic and crazy,
young and old, bump bumpers and bike wheels, finding, miraculously,
a way to get along.
Sako, for instance, was there when market residents and vendors
protested the opening of a Nike-owned store on Augusta Ave. a few
years ago. Residents believed the store’s presence compromised the
independent spirit of the market, and took issue with the company’s
questionable labour practices. Sako was too young to know what was
going on, but his mother, sociologist Mai Phan, wanted to immerse
him in the spirit of activism that flavours market life.
There are other eclectic neighbourhoods in the city, to be sure,
but none could claim to be quite as socially and culturally diverse
as Kensington – especially by day, when merchants from a variety of
backgrounds take to their stores in a community already rich with
Portuguese, Chinese and Vietnamese residents. The Danforth, Chinatown
and Little Italy – all vibrant neighbourhoods – are ethnic cliques
by comparison. Kensington Market, nestled between busy streets,
is emblematic of Canada’s vision of a cultural mosaic.
Love it or hate it, the market captures our imagination, and occupies
a sense of Toronto folklore, past and present. In her novel The Way
the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald describes Kensington Market as
experienced by a child.
“The sights and the sounds envelop her, she is comforted by the
ramshackle opulence of it all,” writes MacDonald. “Feathers lilt up
with the breeze of passing feet, narrow streets are gridlocked with
cars at the mercy of pedestrians as disregarding as pigeons. Madeline
looks up; buds are on the trees and the thousand market smells have
begun to blossom too in the warmth of the April noon…”
The market, as described here, is not the cleanest place to raise
a child. In fact, it’s filthy. It isn’t the most restful either.
Rather, it’s hectic day and night and the air is filled with hoots
and honking. It probably isn’t even the safest place. There’s crack
cocaine and petty theft and heavy street traffic.
It would be no place for a child – if not for the colour, the energy,
the art and the diversity.
I spent some time with people who grew up here or who raise children
here to gain an understanding of what the world looks like when home
is Toronto’s famous Kensington Market.
Michele Gould and her daughter, Maizy, couldn’t have picked a worse
time to move into the market. In the days of Toronto’s infamous
garbage strike the market was at its rankest.
Maizy’s folks had moved into the market in 2002 not because they
loved it, but because it made good business sense. Maizy’s dad had
just opened a hair salon on St. Patrick St. and figured if rent
got too steep, he could move the salon into the main floor of their
Kensington Ave. home.
Early on, when Maizy was a baby, it seemed like a mistake.
“When I first moved here, I asked Paul, ‘Why did you drag me to the
armpit of Toronto?'” says Michele. “The whole place (stank).”
But the garbage strike ended, Maizy grew up, and Michele became
acquainted with the merchants. The guys at Casa Acoreana always snuck
Maizy a cookie, and Tony at the fruit market always greeted her with
a shiny apple. Michele’s trepidation melted away. She began to get
the feeling that people were looking out for her family. It reminded
her of the small Newfoundland town she’d grown up in.
“It started to sink in slowly. Little things … like how every Friday
my neighbours and I would gather on our porch for a barbecue to make
as much noise as we could because we had to rival the noise coming
from the Last Temptation,” a local bar, she says laughing. “I think
it’s really cool.”
So does Maizy. The rambunctious little four-year-old kid with an
untameable head of blonde hair lives in a community of artists and
therefore sees the world as a place for expression. For role models
Maizy has to go no farther than Rain, who lives on the ground floor.
Twentysomething Rain, eternally stylish, is an interpretive dancer,
visual artist and fixture at the city’s coolest art parties. Among
other things, she makes small doughnuts out of fabric. She’s idolized
by young Maizy.
“Whenever Maizy plays dress-up, she runs down to Rain’s apartment,”
says Michele. “She wants to show off her outfit.”
And there’s no shortage of other kids to hang out with. There’s
Sako next door, and Molly across the street. Up the way lives Jason,
the rugged tyke whose parents run a fruit shop.
“He’s kind of the street boss,” laughs Michele.
Next year, Maizy will have to venture outside the market. She’s
enrolled in school that has a French immersion program. There’s a
chance they could move.
“I ran the idea of selling the house by her, and she was freaking out,”
says Michele. “She loves it here and never wants to leave.”
That makes Michele uncomfortable. She knows her daughter feels safe
and loved in this neighbourhood, but would hate for it to become a
crutch. “I see some of the kids who have grown up in the market and
never left. So I wonder sometimes if Kensington kids become Kensington
adults. I wonder if it’s actually opening doors or closing them.”
Seth Scriver – a man known better in some circles simply as Seth –
graduated from Kensington kid to Kensington adult when he returned
from a stint at art school in Halifax a couple of years ago. Today,
the 27-year-old lives across the street from his childhood home.
The decision to settle here doesn’t seem to have closed doors for
Scriver. He is a celebrated artist and illustrator, and a sock-puppet
maker. In his drawings and paintings, hairy critters, bulbous monsters
and googly-eyed amoeba frolic in sparse landscapes. This is what you
might draw after spending your life in the midst of the characters who
roam the streets of Kensington. A suited white man is more likely to
turn heads here than squeegee kids with foot-high Mohawks, dreadlocked,
and the caped guy who looks like Gandalf The Grey.
“I was definitely influenced by the people walking around in the
market and the people who came into my parents’ store,” says Seth,
who is friendly and soft-spoken.
Like other kids here, Seth spent his summers in the eighties helping
out in his parents’ store, in his case, the vintage shop Courage My
Love. It wasn’t child labour, just part of his daily chores.
He roamed free in the market with his older sister. They busked at the
corner of Baldwin St. and Kensington Ave., and spent their earnings
on plantain cakes from a Jamaican shop. They played baseball in the
alleyways, mostly with Chinese kids. Seth didn’t actually realize
that he wasn’t Chinese until he was older.
He remembers seeing more animals in the area back then: chickens,
rabbits and other live things for sale.
Plus, there were musicians, painters and craftsmen from around the
world. There was also graffiti.
“I grew up with graffiti all around me and I just thought it was a part
of everyday life, so one day, I just started adding my own,” says Seth.
The graffiti led to drawing and painting, and, eventually, a blossoming
career.
“If I’d lived anywhere else, I don’t think I would have been the same
artist,” he smiles.
For a young Oswald Pavao, the world was split in two. There was
Kensington Market, and everything outside Kensington Market.
Pavao takes a break from his office – the espresso kiosk at the
corner of Augusta and Baldwin – to reflect on a childhood that began
in Portugal, and unfolded in the heart of the market in the late ’60s.
He was 2 when his family left Portugal. They gravitated to Kensington
Market, where they established Casa Acoreana, which has become a
staple of the market, famous for its coffee, bulk candy and spices.
While his parents tended the shop, Pavao explored.
“I tried all the food,” he laughs. “My favourite were the potato
latkes. I couldn’t get enough of those. And the debrezini sausages,
I’d never have that back home.”
The story of his arrival to Kensington from a foreign land is a common
one. After the original Jewish community that established the market in
the early 1900s began to gravitate north in the ’50s, the area became
a kind of ethnic revolving door, accommodating immigrants – Italians,
Ukrainians, Portuguese, Vietnamese and people from Caribbean nations
– as they arrived in waves from their homelands. Today, the market’s
diversity reflects the various cultures that have made their way here
since the mid-century.
But none of that mattered to a young Pavao, who saw the market as a
playground. His mother knew that at any given time, he’d be playing
floor hockey at St. Christopher House, or a game called “Hot Beans”
in the park. (The game required a player to chase his opponents,
attempting to whip them in the pants with a previously hidden belt
before they reached a safety zone). At Christmas, he and his buddies
went door to door collecting canned goods for the food bank. He
did these things with children from a range of ethnic backgrounds –
Chinese, Jewish, black – never knowing that racism existed.
“Everybody treated everybody with respect,” says Pavao. “To see that at
a young age makes you colour-blind. You could try to tell a kid that
grows up there that there’s a difference, and he won’t see it because
he’s colour-blind. This is peaceful. This is like heaven on earth.”
Pavao realized at some point that the diversity and openness he
experienced in his day-to-day life didn’t always extend beyond the
borders of the market.
“We didn’t have an image that we had to live up to,” he says. “You
didn’t have to be a certain way or act a certain way. We could just
say, hey this is who I am. You don’t like the way I dress, that’s
fine, that’s your problem. “It’s just a different atmosphere out in
the real world. Out there, sometimes you go to say hi to someone in
the morning and they look like they’re going to punch your eyes out.
Or I’d hear the N-word, and I’d think, give it a rest. Those are
things that I don’t see here.”
Scott Schieman, a professor of sociology at University of Toronto,
would agree.
“Kids who grow up here would be more tolerant because of the exposure
to diversity,” says Schieman, “and because they’re used to sharing
space with all different types of people.”
Though the market has Jewish roots, it’s taken the form of a kind of
culinary United Nations in recent years. Cultures ranging from Lebanese
to Ethiopian to Mexican to Vietnamese to Armenian are represented here.
Schieman lives near the market, but not in it. He studies
neighbourhoods and their effect on people’s well-being. He says the
market is a vibrant, stimulating place to grow up. Schieman says
the market is also unique in its physical structure and economics.
Whereas other busy parts of town, like the Beaches or Annex, have
busy thoroughfares (Queen St. E., Bloor St.) as their focal points,
Kensington Market is a network of narrow streets, tucked away from
the thoroughfare. All of which gives the impression of a village.
It’s the energy in the streets that makes the market special, says
Schieman. People are less private here. They spill out of their tiny
homes, let life unfold on the streets.
“Sociologists have for a long time been interested in the way a
city’s composition and structure influence the quality of the social
relationships. And it always comes back to, when people are out on
streets, they’re connecting with other people …”
Schieman believes the market’s cultural climate has allowed independent
businesses to flourish, which has led to tight bonds and a heightened
sense of community.
“Rather than going into a Wal-Mart where people don’t know you,
you’re making ties with neighbours and friends, establishing bonds,”
says Schieman.
Despite the blissfulness of Maizy’s childhood and that of her friends,
this neighbourhood is hardly problem-free. Kensington Market is a
gritty place. Fatima Alves, who has worked with kids in the market
over the past 30 years, has seen it all.
It’s naptime in the day care room at St. Stephens Community Centre,
so Alves speaks softly. She doesn’t want to rouse the resting children.
Leafing through a book of old photographs, she leans over to show
me the black-and-white picture of a small fruit shack. “This was my
uncle’s store,” she tells me. “I used to love coming to the market
to visit him. I always felt special here.”
As the child-care director for the centre, Alves has worked with
generations of children, and says the market offers both challenges
and rewards. “These children have a neighbourhood focus … and they
have street smarts.”
Street smarts are important for children here.
It isn’t a place to roam free. Alves stopped taking the kids to tiny
Sonya Park – which is more of a narrow indentation between homes than
a green space – on Oxford St two years ago because there were too many
drunks sprawled out on the playground equipment. You couldn’t play
there without bumping into a homeless person. Now they visit Bellevue
Park, which is larger, but still a gathering spot for homeless people,
squeegee kids and drunks.
“We find it’s hard to get the park sometimes,” says Alves. “It belongs
to everyone, not just us, so a lot of things go on that we’re not
crazy about. There have been some times that we’ve had to leave
earlier than we wanted to.”
These challenges aren’t restricted to the park. One time, they
spotted a man who appeared to be mentally ill outside the day care,
masturbating on a bench. They put a flowerpot in the window to obscure
the view.
“It’s such a diverse neighbourhood that occasionally you get weird
things happening,” says Alves. “But you can’t get too uptight
about it.”
“This is the focal point of the market,” says Toronto Police Sgt.
Daryle Gerry, hopping off his patrol bicycle in Bellevue Park. “You
get all different groups in here. You get children playing, homeless
people hanging out in the corner drinking wine. You get artists,
musicians, people smoking pot …”
Just as he says this, a shirtless, bearded man across the park starts
hollering obscenities at no one in particular. Gerry excuses himself
to tend to the man.
“You get some guys like that,” says Gerry, upon returning from an
attempt to pacify the man. “He obviously has mental problems.”
Gerry has been patrolling the area for five years. He’s says there’s
been a drop in the presence of crack cocaine in the area since they
shut down a crack house a few months ago. Save for petty theft,
there’s little crime in the area. He says it’s a safe place to live,
as long as you don’t mind the odd encounter with characters like the
yeller – not to mention the scent of marijuana.
“Sometimes you have to put up with foul language and criminal activity
in the park, but I’d say it’s a safe place. It has its moments,
just like any other place.”
At 4, Sako has already seen so much – the beauty of cultural diversity
and art, and the struggles of homelessness and mental illness. It’s
all on display in the market, and all a mother can do is try her best
to explain what these things are as they arise.
“I don’t think I could have been as good a mother in another
environment,” says Mai Phan, Sako’s mother, sitting on her front stoop,
which the family shares with a vintage clothes store. “The market
provides an opportunity to teach Sako about life and different kinds
of people … and how to avoid certain things without being scared
of them.
“You can talk to a child about drugs or crazy people or homelessness,
but if you talk about it abstractly, if it’s something they don’t see,
they’re going to be afraid of it.
“If they see it with their own eyes, they’re less fearful – it’s less
intimidating. You can talk about those things honestly.”
Maizy’s mother, Michele, feels the market works both ways. “She gets
tons and tons of love from lots of people, but I sometimes worry that
she’s seeing too much. I’ve seen people doing crack behind the house.
It bothers me, but at the same time, that’s just life. There’s a
balance. I know that people around me care for Maizy and look out
for her, and not every neighbourhood is like that.”
Mai knows when Sako is older, he will face a world outside the market
that’s tenser, more homogenized and less colourful.
“If this is his first reference point, then the suburban lifestyle
will be an eye-opener for him,” says Mai, who grew up in Etobicoke.
“For those of us who didn’t grow up here, this is novel. But for them,
this is normal.
“I’m confident this is the best place we could could have found for
Sako to get him started. Anywhere we go from now, he has that strong
foundation, he could adapt to anywhere. He won’t be afraid of people
or new situations, he likes trying knew things … It has a lot to
do with the fact that we have lived here.”
On an early evening stroll to the ice cream shop, Sako delivers his
final round of hellos to the merchants of his neighbourhood. They’re
closing shop, sweeping the sidewalks, and drawing the shutters.
“Buenos dias, Tony,” says Sako to the fruit vendor.
“No, Sako,” says Tony. “It’s buenas noches. That means good evening.”
For the prince of this village, it’s a good evening indeed.
Kensington “You can talk to a child about drugs or crazy people
or homelessness. If they see it with their own eyes, they’re less
fearful.”
– Sako’s mother, Mai Phan
Kensington “I’m confident this is the best place we could have found
for Sako to get him started.”
Mai Phan, Sako’s mom