Profiles | Ottawa Magazine

An Unorthodox Message: Up close and political with Imam Zijad Delic

By Lisa Gregoire

Imam Zijad Delic, who serves the South Nepean Muslim Community, has served a number of Muslim organizations here and in Vancouver, but Ottawans likely know best him as the guy who got snubbed by Defence Minister Peter MacKay. Photography by Dwayne Brown, www.dwaynebrown.com.

It’s 8 o’clock on a sweltering Saturday night in July and 90 minutes into a Voices of Muslim Youth town hall meeting at Ben Franklin Place in Nepean when Imam Zijad Delic arrives in a charcoal grey shirt and slacks, speaking notes in hand. This is his third and final obligation for the day — the first was to buy a kitten for his daughter’s birthday; the second, a two-hour lecture at the University of Ottawa about honouring Ramadan in contemporary life. Weary and slightly rumpled, he sits among the 80 or so Muslims gathered to discuss social problems emerging within Ottawa’s burgeoning Muslim community — family violence, youth crime, poverty, cultural isolation. The audience is mostly African-Canadian and two-thirds are women.

In a few moments, Delic will join retired refugee judge, former newspaperman, and Order of Canada recipient Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan onstage for a panel discussion about Canadian citizenship, but he can’t wait. He commandeers an audience microphone to weigh in on the topic of heedless leaders and unresponsive mosques. “Muslims have to take responsibility. We can’t blame anyone else if we fail,” he says, shifting markedly from the moral indignation of previous speakers. Though Muslims constitute nearly 10 percent of Ottawa’s population — an estimated 80,000 — too few volunteer to improve the conditions of their vulnerable brethren, he says. “Pointing fingers at others and not doing your job is not fair. We need social workers, foster parents, and imams able to juggle the past and present.” Applause is immediate and sustained.

This is classic Delic: earnest and frequently contentious. Delic is the former executive director of Ottawa’s downtown Islamic Care Centre (ICC) and recently appointed imam of the South Nepean Muslim Community, home to about 8,000 Muslims. With a bachelor’s degree in Islamic and Arabic studies from the International Islamic University of Islamabad, Pakistan, a master’s degree in education from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Delic, 46, has served a number of Muslim organizations here and in Vancouver, but Ottawans likely know best him as the guy who got snubbed by Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

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PROFILE: Talking plans with Canadian Museum of Civilization CEO Mark O’Neill

Mark O’Neill steps out from the shadow of Victor Rabinovitch, taking over from his more theatrical predecessor as CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation
by Paul Gessell

Photography by Luther Caverly

Mark O’Neill sounds like the kind of man every father wishes his daughter would marry. He is a hard-working, family-oriented, church-going Kiwanis Club member who, when asked to name his local heroes, cites broadcaster Max Keeping, businessman Dave Smith, and his father, William O’Neill — men about town who have managed to combine successful careers with high-profile philanthropy. For O’Neill, wild and crazy means a well-timed joke, a slight spikiness to the hair, dancing up a storm at office parties, and spending evenings at home glued to television’s Turner Classic Movies, hoping an Alfred Hitchcock thriller will appear.

This past summer Stephen Harper’s cabinet appointed O’Neill president and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, the Crown agency that runs the Museum of Civilization and its affiliate, the Canadian War Museum. And though his Irish-Catholic family-values background likely appealed to the current cabinet, O’Neill boasts many other attributes that made him a front-runner when former CEO Victor Rabinovitch announced his retirement.

Indeed, the father of two teenagers has spent his entire working life in Ottawa, in the federal public service, since studying political science at Carleton University. For most of his career, he toiled in such programs as multiculturalism, book publishing, and the protection of cultural property. In hindsight, one could say O’Neill was being groomed for his current job, one of the country’s top cultural posts.

It was in 1996 that O’Neill’s career took a sudden turn. That year he became executive assistant to Victor Rabinovitch, then an assistant deputy minister at Heritage. The low-key, nose-to-the-grindstone O’Neill has been living in the shadow of the far more garrulous and theatrical Rabinovitch off and on since. Rabinovitch became CEO of Civilization Corp. in 2000. A year later he hired his former executive assistant to be Civilization’s corporate secretary. From there, O’Neill steadily worked his way up the executive ladder, becoming director of the War Museum and then succeeding the retiring Rabinovitch as corporate CEO. At 48, O’Neill becomes the chief guardian of such national treasures as Rocket Richard’s No. 9 Canadiens hockey sweater and an impressive collection of Victoria Crosses. He also stickhandles a $70-million budget for the two museums and their 350 full-time employees. Attendance last year was 1.2 million at Civilization and 470,000 at the War Museum.

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THE LIST: Sarah Mercer hits the big time! Her portraits will be in the celebrity grab bags at this weekend’s Primetime Emmy Awards

Self portrait by Sarah Mercer

When Sarah Mercer returned from a year in Afghanistan with the Canadian Navy, she took a friend’s advice and picked up a Nikon. “I found it hard to talk about what I saw there,” Mercer recalls. “Photography was a way of expressing myself.” And express she did: her first project involved taking a self-portrait every day for a year. Armed with her camera, a Speedlight, and a remote control, Mercer posted the daily pic — sometimes dark, sometimes daring, and always poignant — on her blog, www.geekgirly.ca. Three years later, and with just one photography training course under her belt, Mercer is excitedly sending prints to Hollywood for the celebrity grab bags at the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Here are the 10 things this promising photographer can’t live without.

1. My camera I started with a Nikon D50 — my friend Connor helped me pick it out. It sat on a shelf for a few weeks, but once I started, I didn’t stop. I have since upgraded to a Nikon D80.

2. My morning coffee At Bread & Sons. I usually match it with a scone.

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PROFILE: A lunchtime chat with NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau

By Justin Kingsley

Photography by Colin Rowe

It happened to be the first time in her life that she had actually been to Las Vegas. She didn’t gamble, really, other than a few coins in a slot machine. A new pair of deck shoes came home in her suitcase, but that’s because she’s a sailor, not a shopper.

She went to Vegas with a girlfriend to create distance from the ritual her life had become: taking care of Logan, her beloved son, a fifth year of living back at home with her parents and working days and nights in a bar, serving drinks. “My goal [in Las Vegas] was to shoot a gun,” she told me, “but I never got the chance.”

The truth is that there’s not much Vegas in Ruth Ellen Brosseau, but that didn’t change a thing for the public, or the media, during the last election.

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PROFILE: Patrick John Mills is an artist outside the frame

A prolific artist in his own right, Patrick John Mills brings a new edge to the local arts scene by packing his gallery with bold artwork and taking it back to the beaver pelt

By Allison Smith

Photography by Graham Law.

Tucked away on a residential street in Hintonburg, the gallery at 286 Hinchey Avenue might seem at first glance to be a simple detached home — albeit a well-landscaped one peppered with metalwork and other eclectic art. But pop into the space on a “first Thursday,” when the Patrick John Mills Gallery hosts its monthly exhibition openings, and it’s an entirely different scene. These vernissages, which regularly reach capacity, offer art lovers something a little different — not to mention a great party.

Tall and broad, Patrick John Mills is easy to pick out among the other art aficionados. His fiery red hair and wild blue eyes project an intensity that anyone who has met Mills can attest to. Often clad in paint-stained denim, Mills eats, breathes, and sleeps art. He also has strong views on the direction art (and artists) should be going. “I don’t think that in today’s society, an artist needs to go up to Algonquin Park and paint a landscape,” he says. “Life’s more complicated than that. That kind of art seems lost in our society.”

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REASON TO LOVE OTTAWA #36: Doesn’t everyone love Lowell Green?

Because we’ve had LOWELL GREEN since before Rob Ford was even born

It’s not something you would normally ask a man of almost 75, sounding, as it might, like an ageist question. But this is the seemingly rhinoceros-skinned Lowell Green, cantankerous and iconic host of the long-running CFRA radio talk show that’s named after him. So I ask, over lunch, if he thinks he’s still relevant.

A veteran of the quick response, he replies at once: “More relevant than ever. The bent of most journalists today, particularly younger journalists, is to the left wing. I’m one of the few in the mainstream media who are more conservative, questioning a lot of this stuff.”

As anyone knows who listens to Green’s show or has read his latest, hyperbolic book, Mayday! Mayday! Curb immigration. Stop multiculturalism. Or it’s the end of the Canada we know!, lefties are anathema to the man. He may be opposed to capital punishment and, in 1984, represented the Liberals in an Ottawa Centre by-election. He may even, in the late 1960s, have tried to wrest the nomination away from a sitting Liberal MP in Quebec’s Pontiac riding. But leftism, he now says, is a non-starter that just encourages bad behaviour by shifting responsibility for it from the individual to society. He combats this attitude with blunt comments that go against the grain of political correctness. “I’m sorry you had a rotten childhood. So did I. In the end, you’ve got to take responsibility and realize there are consequences.”

In fact, he did have a lousy childhood, or at least partly so, according to his memoir, The Pork Chop and Other Stories (which, according to Green’s website, was eastern Ontario’s bestselling book in 2005). Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Green wrote that he’s the son of a “manipulative, mean-spirited, rigid woman” and the child of a broken marriage.

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REASON TO LOVE OTTAWA #17: Featuring Nick Charney!

Because NICK CHARNEY is shaking things up in the public service.

Nick Charney is like a big kid: restless, imaginative, and confident. At 6-1, he is big, and when rubbing elbows with senior policy advisers, the 29-year-old has surely been called a baby.

But Charney isn’t a kid — in fact, he’s a father, and when his brood started to expand in 2007, he gave up an all-expenses-paid trip to Anaheim with the Ottawa Senators so that he could work for the federal public service. That’s right: he traded an exciting job as a corporate event planner with the Stanley Cup hopefuls to take a cubicle post that, due to circumstances and the nature of bureaucracy, made him feel a bit useless. As Charney explains, the move was “like a kick in the ass.”

“I was the weird guy on the bus crying on my way to work,” he recalls. Charney saw opportunities in his job but says the environment was simply not conducive to speaking up. “You can’t make waves in a job when you’re apprehensive about being employed.”

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PROFILE: Queen of the Hill

Meet Kady O’Malley, the digital phenom who’s changing the way politics is covered, one tweet at a time By Rob Thomas

(Photography: Luther Caverly)

Kady O’Malley can be difficult to pin down. At first she suggests meeting at Brixton’s, a pub just steps from the CBC Radio-Canada centre on Sparks Street. “It’s cute,” O’Malley explains in an email. “I’ll be the stressed-out blond!”

But circumstances change quickly when you’re a CBC parliamentary reporter, and two days later the Hill looks like a better option. “Since it’s starting to look like tomorrow could be shaping up to be a bit zanier than expected, what would you say to changing the venue to the legendary fifth floor cafeteria in Centre Block?” This “legendary” cafeteria turns out to be a lunch counter with some decent seating.

“It’s where people actually eat during the winter because it’s way too much work to walk down to Sparks Street,” O’Malley notes. “There’s also the parliamentary restaurant, but that’s too rich for my blood.” She orders a turkey sandwich while pointing out the key to the cafeteria’s success: it’s open whenever the House of Commons is sitting — by order of Parliament.

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PROFILES: Meet Ottawa’s internationally renowned design blogger

A self-professed design junkie, local blogger Kim Johnson has attracted a devoted international following of like-minded souls who share her passion for all things beautiful around the house By Patrick Langston

Photography by Dwayne Brown

Kim Johnson calls it her creative outlet. It’s also her way of trying to inspire the world — one room at a time — to celebrate beautiful design. The Centretown resident is co-founder of the traffic-heavy blog Desire to Inspire www.desiretoinspire.net). She and her blogging partner, Jo Walker of Ipswich, Australia, are both self-confessed “interior design junkies” with an uncontrollable urge to share their common passion. Since launching their blog four years ago, the two women have posted countless photos of delicious home designs (including their own), cool products, and their respective pets, along with commentaries on all of the above.

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PROFILE: Meet artist Eric Chan, better known to his fans as Eepmon

He’s an artist, a teacher, a scholar of the digital age. And a bit of a monkey.

Photograph by Christian Lalonde, photoluxstudio.com

Eric Chan came up with the concept for his alter ego, eepmon, while doodling in class one day. While he insists he doesn’t pay much heed to horoscopes, when he researched his Chinese zodiac sign, the Year of the Monkey, something clicked. Eepmon, a mashup of ape man, emerged as a way to remind himself to stay positive in work and play.

These days Chan spends time at the front of a classroom, teaching computer foundations and design at Algonquin College (where he attended just four years ago). Born and raised in Ottawa, Chan also manages an online store, collaborates on public art, designs corporate promotional material, helps promote Ottawa to the world as a digital arts capital — the list goes on. Not unlike a playful primate, he swings between these pursuits with ease, in part because he’s a pro at parlaying good ideas into bigger things.

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