I first started drinking Canadian wine, illegally, as a reprobate teenager growing up in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley in the 1980s. The tipple of choice among my high-school chums was a cloying little number known as Ruby Red. We weren’t so much interested in its bouquet as its aphrodisiacal qualities. That is to say, it was regarded as an effective loosener of inhibitions. Paired with convenience-store hamburgers and a bag of Old Dutch chips, our repast was complete.

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Canadian filmmaker Mark Lewis is raising the curtain worldwide this season. In the fall, he has an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, part of the prestigious Gershon Iskowitz Award he was recently given. Before then, however — at this summer’s Venice Biennale — Lewis will transform a 1950s pavilion into an entirely new cinematic space. Entitled Cold Morning, Lewis’s film layers a foreground of silent actors atop a background shot at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. The project’s curator, Barbara Fischer of the University of Toronto, calls the Biennale one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art in the world. “It’s exciting to be able to represent Canada in that international context,” she says. Given the intensity of Lewis’s work, Venice should be feeling pretty excited, too. Aeroplan Arrival caught up with Mark Lewis during the filming of Cold Morning in Toronto.

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Diana Krall was born in Nanaimo, B.C., more than 11,000 km from Brazil and the bossa nova music that inspired her latest album, Quiet Nights. The 44-year-old singer-pianist started tinkling the ivories as a toddler and was gigging locally by her mid-teens. Her third album, 1996’s All for You: A Dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio, spent 70 weeks on Billboard’s Traditional Jazz chart and earned a Grammy nomination. By the end of the ’90s, with the Grammy-winning single “When I Look in Your Eyes,” Krall was an international star with crossover appeal rare to the jazz world. This decade has been just as steady, beginning with the number-one hit “The Look of Love” and concluding with her 10th and latest studio album, Quiet Nights. In this exclusive interview, Krall talks about Brazil’s musical heritage, what to do in Rio and where she loves to perform.

Scottish dance-rock band Franz Ferdinand has been just about everywhere since its breakthrough self-titled debut in 2004. The band’s lead singer Alex Kapranos picks the best the world has to offer.

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Mark Fast and his natty knitwear. PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLOTTE PLAYER

Most Canadians would slot knitwear into the “utterly mundane” category: sweaters and scarves to keep us warm during the long winters. Mark Fast is different. The Winnipeg-born, London-based designer is elevating the concept of knitwear to high art. Blending Lycra yarns with angora and cashmere to create luxe, sculptural dresses, the 28-year-old knits everything by hand, rejecting the idea of disposable fashion and putting the focus on timeless investment pieces.

Last season, Fast won a coveted spot to show during London Fashion Week, and his clothes are being carried by upscale retailers like Holt Renfrew. He’s not letting success go to his head, though. “I dream of being able to live near Vancouver in a log cabin in the forest as I work on my label every day,” he says. Watch for Fast next spring at Toronto’s LG Fashion Week.

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