Salah Bachir’s friends and family remembered the executive, philanthropist and party host as someone who always found ways to contribute.
That included hosting family festivities at his historic home in Paris, Ont., soliciting donations for the Toronto dialysis unit where he was a patient and throwing gala fund-raising events for charities he cherished.
The member of the Order of Canada died on Oct. 8 and his funeral was in Toronto.
His death prompted a wave of tributes from politicians, community organizations like Toronto centre The 519 and institutions like the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University, where Bachir was once chancellor.
“I first met Salah when he called me to complain about the state of the televisions in the dialysis unit at St. Joe’s,” said Maria Dyck, president and CEO of Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Health Centre Foundation. “I said we didn’t have the funds to replace them and didn’t want to charge dialysis patients to watch television.”
Bachir gathered donations to replace the televisions, the first step in what became a long partnership with St. Joe’s. His galas, known as the Salah Bachir Show, helped “raise significant funds that enhanced care for countless patients,” according to a news release the hospital put out after Bachir’s death.
His propensity to throw a fundraising event earned him the nickname “Gala Salah.”
Salah Bachir was born in Lebanon in 1955 and came to Canada in 1965. (Facebook)
The names of Bachir and his husband, Jacob Yerex, are on two dialysis units and in a garden at the west Toronto hospital. A wing at OCAD University and 2SLBGTQ+ community centre The 519 are also named after the couple, thanks to their philanthropy. The family has asked that memorial donations be directed to the Salah Bachir fund at The 519.
Dyck noted Bachir had used his event-planning expertise to plan his own funeral — which included moving gospel music, whimsical Dr. Seuss passages and the Tennessee Mountain Homos, a Dolly Parton tribute choir — and asked people attending to dress in colours as opposed to traditional black.
Several members of his family also spoke.
His daughter, Ivy, said the family of three spent their final day together reading poetry and drinking wine, while Bachir’s nephews remembered an uncle who was interested in what everyone was doing and engaged with the family.
John Salah Bashir recounted a time where his uncle was doing an interview on news channel CP24 and threw in a shoutout for his brother on live TV.
He said, “‘Christopher, I am here on the news,'” John recounted. “It was really funny.”
According to an Oct. 9 news release from OCAD, where Bachir was chancellor from 2017 to 2021, he was born in Lebanon in 1955 and came to Canada in 1965 with his family, settling in Toronto.
A reply to his obituary posted on Facebook said he maintained links to his hometown — Kfarhata in North Lebanon.
“May his soul rest in eternal peace, and may his memory and generosity remain forever engraved in the hearts of the people of Kfarhata,” a Facebook user named Bassam Sawaya wrote.
In a Facebook post, Kristyn Wong-Tam, MPP for Toronto Centre, remembered Bachir as an “an icon to the 2SLGBTQ and creative communities.”
“His name was synonymous with kindness and generosity,” they wrote. “Salah was everywhere, his work and magic touched so many. He was beloved and always ready to help. I will always be grateful for his thoughtful guidance whenever I reached out. He gave his time freely and never asked for anything in return.”
Bachir attended Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto, according to Brent Hawkes, a retired reverend who presided over the funeral. The church is well known for its acceptance of 2SLGBTQ+ parishioners and was at the forefront of the fight to have gay marriage legalized in Canada in the early 2000s.
Bachir was a magazine publisher in the 1980s, producing film-related titles Videomania and Premiere. In 1999, he launched in-cinema advertising company Famous Players Media, a partnership with Famous Players and Viacom, with magazines Famous, Famous Quebec and Famous Kids, the OCAD post said.
After Cineplex acquired Famous Players, Bachir became president of Cineplex Media, and oversaw its partnership with Scotiabank and the development of the Scene Rewards card.
He was a patron of the arts and avid art collector, a founding member of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research and in addition to being chancellor at OCAD, donated generously to the university, it said.
“In 2017, he received an honorary doctorate from OCAD U in recognition of his contributions to business, philanthropy and the arts,” it said. “He also received honorary doctorates from the University of Alberta, Toronto Metropolitan University, York University and Wilfrid Laurier University.”
Steve Howes, a Brant County councillor who represents Paris, told CBC Hamilton that Bachir’s historic manse in the picturesque town was often a hub of activity. Howes said Bachir and Yerex bought their “country home” there about 30 years ago, spending a significant amount of time there, including most of the COVID-19 pandemic years.
“He was the kind of guy who, if he thought the Christmas decorations downtown weren’t up to snuff, he’d say ‘let’s have a conversation,'” which inevitably led to Bachir making a donation, Howes said.
He said Bachir and Yerex also contributed to park updates, a hospital, and a community health hub in the town, as well as the Woodland Cultural Centre, the former Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford that is now a museum.
Howes said the couple had been spending more time in Toronto over the past year or so, but that they are well known and respected in the town of about 15,000 which lit its dam orange to mark Bachir’s death.
“He didn’t just adopt Paris; he spent time making it a better place,” Howes said.
