Movie star Brookes Shields drops comments about her lousy marriage with tennis star Andre Agassi. Like regular folks. Just another day at a Baffin bed and breakfast.
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Pond Inlet (Mar 26/01) - If only the walls of the Cedar Lodge Bed and Breakfast could talk.
They could be the National Enquirer's best source of information.
More likely they would describe one of the modest bed and breakfast's most famous visitors as a "very nice person."
That is how Michelle Jacquard described Brooke Shields, who was in the north Baffin hamlet last November.
"She is just a regular person who grew up in a very different world than the rest of us," Jacquard said.
Shields was in Pond Inlet for an article for Marie Claire magazine.
The publication wanted a celebrity to sleep in an iglu. After Meg Ryan turned down the challenge due to time constraints, Shields okayed it.
It was a quick visit, but one Jacquard will remember. Shields told her of the widely publicized marriage and break-up with tennis star Andre Agassi.
"She said she had a marriage that didn't work out and I thought, I know, I watch TV," Jacquard said.
She said Shields is just one of the many "really interesting people" who have passed through their doors.
Jacquard and husband Jimmy opened the establishment in 1998 and have played host to archaeologists, researchers, film crews, journalists and photographers.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had a reservation at Cedar Lodge last summer, but cancelled.
They had coffee with John Ralston Saul when he was in Pond Inlet working on a book recently, hosted Premier Paul Okalik and many other people from around the world.
"We had a family from California," Jacquard said. "The kids didn't own any long pants until they came up here."
Jacquard said most people who stayed with them while visiting the North for the first time are able to roll with its, at times, harsh punches. For others, it's obvious that what they find is not the climate the expected.
Jacquard said she never expected she would meet the people she has.
"Last night Pretty Baby was on TV. It was so weird to see (Shields) as a 10-year-old on TV when she was just lying on my couch watching Alice in Wonderland one afternoon."
