The Gazette

They came from points as far as Italy, as inevitable as New York City and as near as Westmount - about 250 architects, academics, relatives, financiers, artists and politicos - to a former industrial space in darkest Griffintown called the Darling Foundry. The occasion was the 80th birthday of Phyllis Lambert, arguably the brainiest and boldest scion of the Bronfman family and undeniably one of the world's leading architectural activists. Widely known as Joan of Architecture, and so called in a documentary film premiered in the course of the evening, the native Montrealer arrived at 6:35, looking as inscrutably middle-aged as ever.