By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON November 5, 2012 There was a banquet recently at which awards were given out by the Automotive Journalists of Canada association. Burlington`s Lorraine Sommerfeld always wins an award for something – there`s that sense of entitlement she has to which you have to add that she is really pretty good. Damn good actually.
She brings to her columns as an automotive writer a sparkle, a sharp wit and more technical knowledge than some of the guys over at Canadian Tire.
We first met Sommerfeld at a Shape Burlington community event and then got to know her a bit better when we realized she and her boys were a part of the Boich family and was a best friend supporter to Arlene Miller, the late John Boich`s wife. She`s the kind of person that is `there ‘when you need her. During some of the darker days at the Boich household Sommerfeld would show up with a car that only a high maintenance wife would get to drive around and she and Arlene would head up into the Escarpment to give Arlene a sense of what it meant to really own the road.
A couple of weeks ago was – well let her tell the full story. “Last night was the AJAC banquet, where they name annual winners in the automotive journalism world. There are 5 writing categories, one photography one and one layout. I won a writing one. I really wanted to win one for my picture of the red car with the stork thing, but, they were having none of that, apparently.
“Wakefield/Castrol offers an award in Technical Topics. I submitted several of my pieces and one of them won.. It was a column of mine that has a Ferris Bueller quote in it. And the word ‘penis’.
“The problem was, I was at a table chatting away with friends, and we weren’t paying attention. Then they said my name. And we all started laughing. I finally got up and prayed I wouldn’t catch my heel on the table cloth or something, and was giggling like an idiot. After I sat down, I decided to look and see what I’d won, because of that not paying attention thing. When I read ‘technical topics’ I realized why the room had gotten so quiet. I got told later even my editor looked shocked. And my other editor told people it was because of the headline I won. He writes the headlines.
Lorraine Sommerfeld, learning to dance. she’s normally in a pair of jeans and behind the wheel of a car
Sommerfeld can be found in the Globe and Mail, the Spectator and on Rogers Cable. Maybe she will write for Our Burlington? She never offered to take me for a spin in one of those really fancy cars she gets to drive as an automotive journalist.
That`s Lorraine Sommerfeld – oh, she dances too.
