The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

15 W ednesday , January 12, 2011 O A KVILLE BEA V ER w w w .o akvillebeaver .co m Artscene By Carlie Oreskovich SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER Howard Aster has threebooks coming out thisyear and he is working on another one. He is certainly not a dilettante, and surprisingly he doesn't find the process over- whelming for, as a university pro- fessor, he is quite used to carrying such heavy loads. I was trained as an academic, he said. I always love to juggle a number of dossiers at one time. It is not a problem to do that. It is not new to me and in the past I've had to juggle family needs as well. As long as it is interesting, it's great. The former McMaster University political science profes- sor, who also operates a book pub- lishing business, Aster so far has been the author, co-author, or edi- tor of at least 12 books as well as hundreds of articles. This year his production includes a revised edi- tion of Jewish-Ukrainian Relations: Two Solitudes, China: Images of a Civilization, and Affinity: Beyond Branding. Of the three, it is the Affinity work to which he has put the most effort. This book is co-authored with his long time friend and asso- ciate, Martin Goldfarb, the leg- endary pollster of record for the Liberal Party in the 70s and 80s, as well as the key consultant for the Ford Motor Company which provides much of the grist and meat for the book. Goldfarbs connection with Ford, locally as well as internation- ally, is a fortunate coincidence for Aster who has lived in Oakville since 1970, when he started teach- ing at McMaster University. In 1976 Aster bought a house on Allan Street, which had been built in 1914 by a lumber mer- chant from Michigan and was one of the first houses in the area. This house had been sold to the Sargent family who lived there from 1960 to 1976, and was subsequently sold to Aster, representing only the third family to have lived there. He is proud to note that it is the only family home that his children have known. His son Misha now lives and works in Berlin in the music/operatic community and has written one book and is work- ing on a second; while his daugh- ter, Samara, is in London working as an assistant director in an exclu- sive art gallery. It is because of his children's relocations to Europe that he and his wife Jeanette, an internationally recognized opera producer who has worked for most of the opera hous- es in Canada and founded Opera Lyra in Ottawa, bought a farm in the Auxois region of Burgundy in France, which they have turned into a cultural centre; La Roche d'Hys-Domaine des Arts, as well as a retreat. They spend about four months a year at La Roche d'Hys, hosting a number of cultural events such as poetry writing work- shops and Humber College culi- nary arts student seminars. We like France and I think what we do there is pretty interest- ing and its a huge benefit to Canadians, said Aster. And it is convenient to get to as well. Aster notes that he is in the enviable position of being able to take a plane from Toronto Pearson International Airport at night, be in Paris in the morning and take a train that will get him to his farm for lunch that day. In addition to this, Aster main- tains an active routine with his book publishing business, attend- ing book fairs around the world; in Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong and Guadalajara, in order to fuel his Mosaic Books publishing busi- ness located on Speers Road, which was founded by Michael Walsh, a Sheridan College professor and has been operating for 25 years. Asters political interests in the Liberal Party as well as his profes- sional and academic training, kept him in touch with Goldfarb. Aster relates that early in his academic career, he would spend days read- ing through Goldfarbs companys extensive archives, which included all of the polling and research that had been conducted by the compa- ny. These were some of the most intellectually satisfying experi- ences in his life. It was like having my own private library where I could read endlessly, interesting material and I was interested in what he was doing. (Goldfarb) said read whatever you want. And I did that. Aster feels that there were at least two to three books of materi- al there and offered to work with Goldfarb on it whenever he decided to do so. They got together about a year and a half ago and he brought up the idea again. I said do you want to do some- thing and he said absolutely and I said okay lets get to work and we started meeting. The intellectual process was terrific, meeting each other and sort of running a private seminar with discussions of topics, always free ranging, but the focus was on the commercial part first. The book took shape very, very Author, professor co-writes book on art of branding BRANDING: Oakville author Howard Aster holds up one of his most recent publications, Affinity: Beyond Branding. SUBMITTED PHOTO See People page 16 Beauty & Spa Colour Correction,Hair Extensions & J H i St i ht i any colour service when you bring this ad! $20 OFF *New Clients Onl y 2441 Lakeshore Rd. W. Mon., Tues., Wed. 9:30-7:30pm, Thurs.-Fri. 9:30-8:00pm, Sat. 9:00-5:00pm www.hairchateau.com (check website for new client discount) 905 338-1237 Visit us at our new Spa Location ALL HAIR SERVICES with this ad HALF PRICE