2016 ARIDO Awards and Gala
This year, as in many years past, the annual gala dinner to announce the winners of the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO) Awards sold out weeks in advance, with 600 guests in the Toronto Hilton ballroom paying $200 a head. The event recognizes excellence, innovation and creativity in interior design. The dinner was bookended fore and aft in the ballroom lobby, by a networking cocktail reception and a post-dinner party featuring a doughnut wall. (Doughnuts are a defining trait of our national character. Canadians are fiercely loyal to their home-grown Tim Hortons doughnut shops, foiling Krispy Kreme’s northern expansion). Notably absent was the celebrity guest-of-honor speech. ARIDO’s grandees decided to axe this increasingly controversial segment after one gala-speech disaster too many. These included Craig Kielburger, the child’s-rights activist founder of Free the Children, who had addressed the august crowd as “decorators,” blissfully unaware that this is the …
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