The Globe and Mail, Saturday, September 25, 1999

One for the women

Rocker Bryan Adams has teamed up with Flare magazine
to raise funds to fight breast cancer with a book of
portraits of famous Canadian women.

Margaret Atwood, Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, Sarah MacLachlan and The Globe and Mail's Jan Wong are among the women who have lent their famous faces to Made in Canada, a new book of photographs that is a joint project of Flare magazine, celebrating its 20th anniversary next week, and bad-boy rocker Bryan Adams, who snapped the photos (including his own self-portrait).

He did it because he loves photography. "I like a lot of photographers -- Julia Margaret Cameron, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, too many to list," he told The Globe and Mail earlier this week. He added, "But mostly I did it because I have known a few women who have suffered and died from this insidious disease." He and Flare are donating royalties from the book, which is published by Key Porter Books and will sell for $29.95, to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Adams, who has performed at several fundraisers for breast cancer, recently lost a close friend to the disease. Before her death at age 38, Donna (Adams will only identify her by first name in order to protect her family's privacy) posed for the photos which adorn the book's front and back covers. "I've dedicated the book to her," he said. Breast cancer kills an estimated one woman in 25 in Canada.

The project was "wonderful," he recalled, even though at times it threatened to turn into a fiasco. "I remember setting up to do a session with the angelic Neve Campbell. . . . Suddenly it started to rain, which was a serious dilemma since I had no proper lights with me. I was counting on sunlight since we were in L.A."

Adams was furious: Arranging the shoot had taken months because of scheduling conflicts. "Then Neve came into the room," he recalled, "and by some weird twist of fate, at the same second, so did the sun. We didn't wait for makeup, hair or wardrobe. I don't think I even said hello." Moments later, the sun had gone in again, but Adams had two rolls of film -- and, he says, a new appreciation of George Harrison crooning Here Comes The Sun.