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Congrats to all the inductees!

Canadian Walk Of Fame Gets Some New Names
TORONTO — It’s showtime for Peter Somoulias, the Toronto businessman behind the televised Canada’s Walk Of Fame gala at Roy Thomson Hall tonight.
On his plate is organizing 11 Walk Of Fame inductees, among them country-pop superstar Shania Twain, actor Mike Myers, model Linda Evangelista and hundreds of high-profile guests including telecast host Andrea Martin and presenters Celine Dion and Dan Aykroyd.
‘HUGE DEMAND FOR TICKETS’
“Everything’s in place. It’s just now a question of executing all the little details,” Somoulias said yesterday. “When you have the number of national and international celebrities that we have coming and the media focus and the huge demand for tickets, it’s challenging. And when you’re producing a live show for two hours for the first time …”
The gala portion of the Walk Of Fame induction will be broadcast live on Global TV from 9-11 p.m. Various presenters will introduce each Walk Of Fame inductee during the telecast. It’s a first for the presentations.
Colin Mochrie is delivering a newscast during the show. Musical performers include Tom Cochrane and Sarah Harmer.
It’s taken five years to get to this point — as long as the Walk Of Fame has been around. Somoulias says when he started out he didn’t consider that a live broadcast would ever be an element of the event.
“We didn’t start out to be a television show,” he said. “But the public interest surpassed anything we could have ever imagined.
“And this was the first year we’ve had all 11 inductees attending at the same time. We’ve never had that before. And given the national and international standing of a number of these inductees, as well as their presenters and performers, the presentation was made to us, ‘Well, go live across the country.’
And we said, as we usually say, ‘Why not?'”
More than 100 journalists will cover the event, from the Hollywood Reporter to Entertainment Tonight, and Somoulias suspects the SARS outbreak had something to do with increased interest outside Canada.
BARRED BY THEIR INSURERS
“I gotta imagine that perhaps a small part of that interest might also be about what’s going on in Toronto,” he said.
“I think SARS has affected everybody who is dealing with any kind of celebrity and show production. We’re affected to a lesser extent, because we’re Canadians and we don’t rely on international celebrities.”
Somoulias said some international guests had expressed interest in attending the event, but “their insurance companies prohibited them from travelling. These were guests of the inductees who were going to come up here and be part of this in support of their friends.”
Somoulias says members of the public will get quite close to the celebrities (from 4 to 5 metres).