Dreams in Technicolor: glitterati support literacy

The Barnum and Bailey fund-raising approach to help people learn to read gets its share of sneers. But that doesn't stop John O'Leary of Frontier Allege from dreaming in Technicolor.

When it comes to literacy, John Daniel O'Leary of Frontier College always dreams in Technicolor.

And as O'Leary gazes around the Briars golf dub on the shore of Lake Simcoe, his cinematic dreams come to life.

Swinging clubs, hitching up gaudy plus fours and pinning on literacy buttons are the likes of sportsmen Jake Gaudaur and Frank Mahovlich, publishers Bill Ardell, Jack McClelland and Michael de Pencier, actress Kathryn O'Hara, journalists Diane Francis and Shelagh Rogers, and lawyers Ralph Leon and Jake Howard—each paying $200 this summer day to be tooted at by the Great Lakes Brass Quintet, celebrated by poet Michael Ondaatje and exhorted by host Peter Gzowski.

CBC radio personailty Peter Gzowski on the links at The Briars in Ontario at the 2nd Gzowski Invitational to raise funds for Frontier College's literacy program.

"I hope some of you get infected with the same enthusiasm for the cause as I have," Gzowski says at lunch after the golf game.

Publisher de Pencier has. He shoves a wad of crumbled bills forward to enter next year's Third Peter Gzowski Invitational, automatically winning the prize for first to pay. Hoots of laughter rise from people who've just raised $20,000 for a good cause.

Most literacy groups in Canada have never tasted such excitement. They exist hand-to-mouth on genteel pleading for government grants and the meagre profits from car washes and bake sales. Yet many snipe at Frontier College.

"The whole literacy movement, not just the educators, are largely snobs," O'Leary says.

He's in Toronto now, at the former private mansion that houses Frontier, a college that gives no degree but has promoted literacy since 1899. As the director of development, the normally exuberant O'Leary watches over successful projects that find jobs for ex-convicts, help street kids to read and encourage good students to tutor poorer ones.

But right now John Daniel O'Leary is brooding.

A few literacy workers from outside have grumbled about another O'Leary Technicolor Triumph—Mila Mulroney reading to neigh borhood kids.

"It's the leftist crowd," mutters O'Leary.

After all, who else would object to trying to enlist McDonald's ("Ronald McDonald can bring back the excitement of mystery, adventure and information through reading"), or the NHL players association ("The name of the game is reading") or movie-house magnate Garth Drabinsky of Odeon-Cineplex ("You've seen the movie, now read the book") or Pizza Hut . . .