Top 7 Over 70 taking nominations for latest set of awards
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This year's Top 7 Over 70 nominations — for super seniors achieving new successes after age 70 — will close on June 15.
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The Calgary-based non-profit organization offers one of the country's most unique awards programs in that it honours the new successes of individuals over age 70, as opposed to other awards for older adults that honour legacy achievements.
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'There is an amazing amount of talent and experience that older adults are using to not only enrich their own lives, but to also enrich their communities,' Top 7 Over 70 chair Steve Allan said.
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'People over the age of 70 may be 'retired' from a full-time position they once held, but they aren't retiring from making vibrant contributions to our city,' said Allan. 'The innovations and achievements we see from people in this age group are nothing short of remarkable.'
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Top 7 Over 70 celebrates the accomplishments of older adults year-round, highlighted by the biennial program in which seven people receive a Top 7 award. Nominations for the 2025 awards close on June 15.
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Ideal nominees are people over the age of 70, living in Calgary or its surrounding communities, who have started a new venture or implemented a new idea since turning 70. These accomplishments can be in fields including health, wellness and recreation; arts and culture; science; tech; business; volunteerism and philanthropy; environment; overcoming adversity; and making a difference. The accomplishment may be in a brand new field for the nominee or it could be built on previous work, but demonstrating a new twist on recent achievements.
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Vancouver Sun
16 hours ago
- Vancouver Sun
Eat like a celebrity: Vancouver personal chef Mikaela Reuben pens plant-forward cookbook
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Mikaela Reuben's cookbook all started with a road trip. 'I gathered a few girlfriends, one was a photographer, one was a food stylist, and we spent the summer travelling from destination to destination throughout British Columbia,' she recalls of the trip that kicked off in 2019. Their road trip took them to some of their favourite places in the province, including Hornby, Saltspring and Galiano islands, as well as Squamish and Whistler. When she looks at the book now, she recalls a 'lot of laughter and a little confusion at times' during the process. Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 'I'm so proud of what we created,' she says. It was a backward way of creating the compilation of eats, considering that she hadn't yet decided which of the recipes she's cooked up during her 10-plus years as a personal chef would be featured. 'We were using the markets and the kind of situations we were in to develop the recipes,' Reuben recalls. Thankfully, the Victoria-born, Vancouver-based food creator had plenty to pull from for her first book, titled Eat to Love: Where Health Meets Flavor: 115+ Nourishing and Adaptable Plant-Forward Recipes from a Nutritional Chef (Appetite by Random House, $40). 'I was cooking things that I knew my clients had loved, and then I had to kind of go in and tweak after and make sure that each recipe worked,' she says. With the aim to match maximum nutrition with maximum flavour, Reuben's recipes are intentionally adaptable to suit preferences and dietary needs, including vegan, dairy-free or grain-free alterations. 'I've tried to build out the recipes so that they are usable, or potentially usable, by a wide audience,' she says. Praise from some of her celebrity clients, such as supermodel Karlie Kloss, Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson, for the B.C. chef's cooking are peppered on the back of the new hardcover tome. Reuben also received high praise for her cooking from Vancouver's own Ryan Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, who are clients. 'The care Mikaela puts into every detail is unmatched. From the exciting flavours to the specificities of the health benefits, she cares about it all … and you can taste it,' they said in the book. The nutritionally focused chef takes a whole-food, plant-forward approach to cooking. That angle is informed by her background in sports, dance, kinesiology, physiotherapy and nutrition. 'I just realized that in all of this body stuff I was focusing on, there was the food aspect missing,' Reuben says of the shift away from bodywork to body fuel. 'For me, one can't exist without the other.' She found her way into the world of personal cheffing by chance, encountering the late Hollywood caterer and personal chef Wayne Forman in a friend's kitchen where she was cooking a meal. Impressed by her dish, Forman and Reuben stayed in touch. One day, she picked up the phone and it was Forman on the line asking if she might be available to cook for a client. That call would change her life. 'The next day at school, I asked for a year leave of absence, and I bought a one-way ticket,' Reuben says. 'I ended up never going back.' Reuben worked with Forman, who catered films and cooked for stars, as well as cooking on the road for bands such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, for a few years. Busy with his own business, he ended up passing clients along to Reuben to help her create her own roster. 'He really, truly gave me one client that believed in me from the beginning, and I ended up working with him for a few years,' she says. 'And to be honest, once I kind of mastered the art of food and healthy food tasting good, I continued to get clients through word of mouth from different communities and networks.' Spending about six months a year back home in B.C., the rest of her time is spent travelling the world as a personal chef to celebrities or working as a consultant. 'I'll teach other chefs how to use healthy ingredients if they're maybe really well trained in culinary but they don't know a lot about nutrition,' she explains. 'Or, if someone's an aspiring chef, and they know a lot about nutrition because they've taken some classes, I'll go in teach them a little bit about cooking.' With Eat to Love, Reuben brings that knowledge to other people's cooking. 'It's for anyone that is curious about bringing a little more health and flavour into their kitchen,' Reuben explains. The book also includes information such as pantry staples to help readers easily stock their shelves like Reuben does. 'People can reference what's in my pantry and what I used to create the whole book,' she says. When prompted to pick a favourite recipe from the collection — a question that makes most cookbook authors cringe — Reuben pointed to a sauce section in the book rather than a single recipe. 'If I were to tell any reader to do one thing, it would be to look at my green sauce section. There's a cilantro pesto, a regular chimichurri, and a chermoula,' she says. 'Just to inspire people to add even more herbs into the cooking … 'Herbs are being neglected a little bit, and they offer so much support to our bodies.' Lentil Bolognese 1 tbsp (15 mL) extra virgin olive oil + more to serve 1½ cups (375 mL) diced red onions 1¼ tsp (6 mL) sea salt + more to taste 1½ cups (375 mL) thinly sliced celery 1 cup (250 mL) dry red lentils, rinsed 1 cup (250 mL) water 2 (14 oz/398 mL) cans diced tomatoes 1 cup (250 mL) roughly chopped fresh basil + more to garnish 2 tbsp. (30 mL) minced drained capers 1 tbsp. (15 mL) pressed garlic (or more if you love garlic) 1½ tbsp. (22.5 mL) balsamic vinegar 1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice ½ tsp (2.5 mL) chili flakes + more to taste (optional) Zucchini Noodles 8 cups zucchini noodles (about 4 medium zucchini) (see note) 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil Fresh ground pepper and sea salt to taste Note: You can cut the noodles to your desired length with kitchen scissors. Instead of spiralized noodles, you can make 8 cups of zucchini ribbons. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the red onions and 1 tsp of the salt and sauté for 3 minutes. Add the celery and sauté for 3 minutes, until the onions and celery are soft and translucent. Add the lentils and water, and bring to a simmer. Stir well, then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the tomatoes, basil, capers, garlic, vinegar, lemon juice, chili flakes and remaining ¼ teaspoon of salt. Simmer, uncovered and stirring often, for 15 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Season with more salt or chili flakes to taste. (Store cooled sauce in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.) Meanwhile, in a large bowl, toss the zucchini noodles with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Arrange the noodles on the prepared pans so that they are lying flat (overlapping is OK). Place both pans in the oven and roast for 5 minutes, until the zucchini noodles are steaming and softening. Serve the zucchini noodles topped with the lentil Bolognese, sprinkled with salt and, if using, chili flakes, and garnished with olive oil and basil. Makes 4 servings. Excerpted from Eat to Love by Mikaela Reuben. Copyright © 2025 Mikaela Reuben. Photographs by Robyn Penn. Published by Appetite by Random House, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
CBC
a day ago
- CBC
16-unit affordable housing project breaks ground in Mount Pleasant neighbourhood
A new mixed-income affordable housing project broke ground in a northwest community on Thursday as the mayor highlighted Calgary's top spot in national housing starts. "For too long, affordable housing has been framed as something that cities simply cannot afford," Mayor Jyoti Gondek told reporters at the groundbreaking. "Here in Calgary, we are shifting that narrative because the truth is, we can't afford not to be investing in homes like this. We are putting dignity first." Sitting on the former site of St. Joseph School, the 16-unit mixed-income project will provide homes for about 45 people, with a planned opening in the summer of 2026. The head of Calgary Housing says the approach to subsidized housing has changed. "People from a variety of backgrounds will be able to live here and engage in this community as well as pursue their financial opportunity and success," Sarah Woodgate said. "That is why every home for affordable housing matters. All maintenance and other costs are covered through the rent revenue." Rent is pegged to income, so some people will pay more. "To increase affordable housing supply, you need three ingredients: land, predictable funding, including capital and financing, and also streamlined government processes," she said. $7.9M project, with $5.2M from province, federal government The project sits on city-owned land with funding and support from all levels of government. It'll cost about $7.9 million, with the province kicking in $3.7 million and another $1.5 million from a joint provincial-federal program. Current Calgary Housing works with about 27,000 residents, with a goal of 40,000. There are 680 homes under construction, with a future goal of 3,000. Gondek said cities across the country are looking at Calgary's model. Calgary's new housing starts tops the nation at about 14 per cent, and account for 55 per cent in the province, she said. "Every community should have a variety of housing so people can age in place, so people's adult children can live in the same neighbourhood they live in, and we can all have a great quality of life," the mayor said. Terry Wong, councillor for the area, Ward 7, said the location next to a dog park and playground has been welcomed by the community. "When I talk to the Mount Pleasant Community Association and the residents here, they want population, they want diversity, because that's what makes a community what it is," Wong said.
CBC
a day ago
- CBC
'That raised a lot of alarms': Convicted killer's DNA found at crime scene, murder trial hears
Social Sharing Drops of blood found near the body of a murdered woman came back matching the DNA of a convicted killer, a Calgary judge heard Thursday as Christopher Dunlop's trial entered its second day. Dunlop faces charges of first-degree murder and indignity to a human body in connection with the death of Judy Maerz. Maerz's body was found in Deerfoot Athletic Park on Feb. 16, 2023. She'd been stabbed 79 times and her body was set on fire after her death. One year earlier, Dunlop had finished serving a 13-year manslaughter sentence for the death of Laura Furlan. Both women were working in Calgary's sex trade at the time of their deaths. On Thursday, Court of King's Bench Justice Colin Feasby heard how Dunlop came back onto police radar as investigators' prime suspect in the Maerz killing. Const. James Weeks with the Calgary Police Service's forensic crime scene unit testified that the day after Maerz was killed, he submitted a blood sample collected from the crime scene into an in-house rapid DNA testing machine. The machine is able to identify whether a sample came from a male or a female within two hours. 'That raised a lot of alarms' Weeks testified that investigators expected the blood was from the victim and were surprised when the machine returned a profile of a male subject. "That raised a lot of alarms for the homicide unit," said Weeks. Learning more about whose blood they'd discovered became the "immediate focus of attention" for police. Weeks said he then hand-delivered a swab to the RCMP's lab in Edmonton and had to wait seven days for the results. "I received notification that the report identified not only had the subject been male but that particular male was in the Canadian national database," said Weeks. "That person happened to be Christopher Dunlop." 'Clear animus toward sex workers' Dunlop's DNA had previously been taken by court order as part of the sentence he faced for his manslaughter conviction. Two weeks after Maerz's body was discovered, court heard, police seized a purse from Dunlop's garage with the victim's DNA on it. Prosecutors Hyatt Mograbee and Greg Piper told the court Dunlop has a "clear animus toward sex workers." After killing Furlan in 2009, Dunlop told undercover officers that he'd set out "looking for someone who wouldn't be missed," someone he could "f--k up."
