Some dubious characters that need a little watching:

 

 

OCTOBER 21, 2006

Chak Kwong Au

Sector: Education

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 18

Chak Kwong Au was an assistant professor at the Chinese University in Hong Kong before moving to Canada. He was first elected as a Richmond school trustee in 1999, then re-elected in 2002 and 2005. He has been involved in all kinds of community work, including serving as chairman of a committee to stop illegal street racing in Richmond and a loonie drive for tsunami relief in Southeast Asia. He has been a current affairs commentator, a radio and television program guest and social advocate.

Sunny Bai

  

Sector: Business

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 14

Sunny Bai and his younger brother James Wang (who goes by his mother's surname) are the president and vice-president of Canadian Overseas Holdings Inc., whose holdings are far-reaching. The company controls an immigration services firm, the Canada Swan International Travel company, Pattison College Inc., and the weekly China Journal newspaper. It also owns the master franchise for the Blenz coffee chain in China.

Caleb Chan

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 19

Publicity-shy brothers Caleb and Tom Chan have considerable golf course and real estate assets in B.C. and beyond. Caleb Chan oversees Burrard International Inc., the parent company of GolfBC, which owns nine golf courses in B.C. and five in Hawaii. The Chans are also known for sharing their wealth. The University of B.C.'s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts was largely funded by a $10-million gift from the Chan Foundation of Canada. The centre's Chan Shun Concert Hall is named for Caleb and Tom's late father.

Tung Chan

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 32

Tung Chan, who rose from busing dishes at the Terminal City Club to become district vice-president at TD Canada Trust, leaves his banking career next month to take over the reins of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., the province's largest aid agency for immigrants.

Chan was a Vancouver city councillor in the early 1990s, and has long been a driving force behind the NPA party and the West Coast arm of the federal Conservative party. His decades of community service were recognized with a Jubilee Medal in 2002.

The list of organizations to which he has donated time and energy is astonishingly long, including the Hastings Institute, Vancouver city planning commission, the Main Library steering committee, United Way, Association of Chinese-Canadian Professionals, Richmond Public Library, the Vancouver Foundation, Kwantlen University College, the Boys' and Girls' Club of Vancouver, the B.C. Chamber Orchestra, the editorial board of Business in Vancouver and many others.

Chan has said he is not the type to "hang around, or occupy a position for life." His preferred activity: "I like to start up things."

Victor Chan

Sector: Community

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 42

Victor Chan spent four years in the 1980s travelling 42,000 kilometres through Tibet. He subsequently published what remains the single most authoritative guide to the mountain kingdom.

He is a close friend and associate of the Dalai Lama, and the driving force behind Vancouver's Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education.

Henry Chau

Sector: Community

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 24

Henry Chau's enduring contribution to community life in the Lower Mainland is his advocacy on behalf of the Chinese democracy movement that sparked the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Chau's organization, the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement, or VSSDM was founded the same year as the Beijing uprising. Chau became president in 1994. The organization's principal activity is organizing the candlelight vigil that takes place outside the consulate of the People's Republic of China in Vancouver each year, on June 4, the anniversary of the massacre. Two hundred or three hundred people attend the service, but many hundreds more belong to the organization.

Juliana Chen

Sector: Arts

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 18

Juliana Chen, one of the few female magicians with an international career, was born and raised in Hunan province, where she was trained in ballet, acrobatics and jiggling from the age of 10. As a teenager she travelled the world as part of a celebrated Chinese acrobatic troupe. Sidelined by a leg injury, she began to practise magic tricks and slight-of-hand, and eventually returned to performance as a stage magician. Within four years she was ranked the top magician in China, with a decisive win at the All-China Best Magician competition. She came to Vancouver in 1988 and after a hiatus of several years resumed her performance career.

James Cheng

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 32

Look at the Vancouver skyline and you will see the work of James Cheng. After receiving his master of architecture degree from the graduate school of design at Harvard University, Cheng established his eponymously named firm in 1978 upon winning the competition for the Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver. The firm is currently involved in major high-density mixed-used projects in China, the U.S. and Canada. Cheng is responsible for many of the towers lining False Creek and Coal Harbour built since 1999. The firm's work has received numerous awards, including Canada's governor-general's medal in architecture. Cheng has taught at UBC, served as a visiting critic at Harvard University and has been a member of juries at various competitions and award programs. He is widely recognized as the influence behind the urban high-density housing that is often referred to as the "Vancouver style."

Raymond Cheung

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 22

Raymond Cheung has established himself firmly as an innovative and hardworking businessman. At the age of 23, he started his own business importing photo sticker machines from Japan. He constantly drives himself toward new challenges. As his most recent venture, he started Richmond's Night Market, which is now in its sixth year. He knew that such an event would be an excellent opportunity for the community to come together, for vendors of all cultures to showcase their products and for the celebration of multiculturalism in one of North America's most culturally diverse communities.

Sam Cheung and Wing Wu

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: About 20

Award-winning Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant is consistently dubbed the city's best Chinese restaurant by Vancouver's top food critics, thanks in large part to the creations of long-time executive chefs Sam Cheung and Wing Wu. Cheung heads the kitchen, while Wu is in charge of the restaurant's famed dim sum at the Vancouver location.

Josephine Chiu-Duke

Sector: Education

Origin: Taiwan

Years in Canada: 24

Author, teacher, historian and high-profile public intellectual, Josephine Chiu-Duke is the best-known faculty member in UBC's Asian studies department. In the past six years she has been interviewed more than 60 times on the subject of Chinese history, politics and contemporary events. Specializing in Chinese intellectual history, and the periods of Tang and Sung dynasty China, Chiu-Duke was awarded a top Taiwanese honour in 2005 for her collection of essays honouring the liberal historian Lin Yu-sheng.

David Choi

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 37

David Choi is CEO of Royal Pacific Realty Group, the largest independent real estate organization in Western Canada. Since he founded the company in 1995, it has expanded from a staff of fewer than 30 agents to 720, and now deals with transaction volumes of $4.3 billion a year. Choi attributes the company's reach to its multi-ethnic and multilingual staff, which reflects the diverse market.

Ida Chong



Sector: Government

Origin: Canada

Ida Chong is B.C.'s Minister of Community Services and Minister Responsible for Seniors' and Womens' Issues. Her political career spans more than a decade. Chong first entered politics in 1993, as a municipal councillor for the District of Saanich. "I have always been interested in politics and wanted an opportunity to serve and represent my community," she said.

Johnson

Susing Chow



Sector: Arts

Origin: Suzhou, China

Years in Canada: 26

It would be difficult to overstate the international eminence of Johnson Susing Chow as a painter and art scholar. His work is the subject of 18 foreign-language books, and Chow has written several authoritative textbooks on Chinese art technique. His paintings are owned by the national museums of several countries, including Canada's National Gallery. In 1993, Chow founded the Chinese Canadian Artists Federation which now has more than 250 active members. A lively and insightful teacher, Chow has trained a generation of Chinese-style painters in Vancouver. He has never had a major museum exhibition in Vancouver.

James Chou

Sector: Community

Origin: Taiwan

Years in Canada: 30

James Chou has practised accounting ever since he arrived in Canada with an MBA from San Jose State University in California. But his enduring contribution here has been in the sphere of community service and multiculturalism. Since the mid-1990s, he has been deeply involved in the Taiwanese-Canadian Cultural Society -- leading the organization during the years that attendance at its annual festival grew to 50,000. Chou was also a central figure in the movement to change government policies on the tax status of foreign assets -- an issue of critical importance to many immigrants.

Bill Chu

Sector: Community

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 32

An engineer by profession, Bill Chu has been an activist on a number of fronts, largely through an organization he founded called Chinese Christians in Action. He formed a coalition against gambling expansion, acted as a spokesman for a group seeking redress for the head tax and has worked to foster ties between the Chinese and the aboriginal communities. To that end, he has organized visits between the Mount Currie reserve and Chinatown.

Gordon Chu



Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 25

Vancouver International Airport Authority is looking to capitalize on major markets in Asia, and Gordon Chu is the man with the plan. Chu is YVR's senior policy adviser. Before working for YVR, Chu was the Vancouver Port Authority's director of trade development, responsible for setting up the port's Beijing office in 1993 -- a move that propelled China to the port's top source of cargo.

Andrea Eng

Sector: Business

Origin: Canada

Andrea Eng, the former Miss Universe Canada representative, established her name on both sides of the Pacific in the world of real estate, working for some of Asia's most powerful tycoons. She is currently a private fund manager and global business strategist, guiding investments in real estate and high tech.

PETER ENG

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 39

Peter Eng is the head of the Allied Holdings Group of companies, which develops and owns numerous properties and hotels, with interests in the Crowne Plaza hotels in Edmonton and Toronto. Eng donated to Simon Fraser University the downtown heritage building that is now the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. Eng serves as a director at HSBC Bank Canada and was a founding board member of the B.C. Achievement Foundation.

Albert Fok

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 30

Albert Fok has been instrumental in getting the federal government to recognize Chinese traditional medicine. As an advisory member for Health Canada's Natural Health Products Directorate, and president of Kiu Shun Trading Co., Ltd., Fok has helped the government create a new category for regulating herbal remedies that were formerly classified as either food or drugs.

Johnny Fong

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 32

Johnny Fong is chairman of Canasia Toys & Gifts Inc., an importer and distributor of consumer products. He is chairman and president of International Sources Ltd., an importer and distributor based in Vancouver. He also has real estate investments. Fong is extremely active in benevolent work. To name just one of his efforts: In 2003, he was instrumental in setting up a relief campaign for families hit by the devastating Kamloops forest fire. He has raised huge amounts of money for cancer research and health care initiatives.

Robert Fung

Sector: Business

Origin: Canada

A property developer who cut his teeth with Concord Pacific, Robert Fung now focuses on restoring and developing heritage buildings on the Downtown Eastside. Fung's enlightened approach combines social conscience with a rigorous business model.

Thomas Fung

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 39

With wide-ranging interests in commercial real estate ( Centre) and media (Fairchild TV), Thomas Fung Aberdeen has amassed an enterprise worth more than $200 million US. Time magazine has named Fung as one of the most influential people in Canada. Business in Vancouver magazine chose Fung as one of the top 10 business people for the past decade.

Choo Chiat Goh

Sector: Arts

Origin: Singapore

Years in Canada: 30

Choo Chiat Goh started the Goh Ballet Academy with his wife, Lin Yee Goh, in 1978. The couple quickly established celebrated teaching careers throughout Canada, as well as Hong Kong and Japan. Goh began his training as a dancer on a scholarship at the Royal Ballet in London, England, where he studied with the great pioneers of ballet, Harold Turner and Madame Legat. At the age of 16, he was invited to join the London Festival Ballet, but declined in favour of studying in Beijing with the great Russian ballet master, Pyotr Gusiev. He graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy in 1959 and immediately joined the Central Ballet of China.

Lawrence Gu

Sector: Education

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 22

Engineering PhD Lawrence Gu, director of BCIT's international business services, won the right earlier this year for his school to host Canada's first Confucius Institute, the Chinese government's new initiative to promote Chinese language and culture around the world, in the manner of Germany's Goethe-Institute or France's Alliance Francaise. Under Gu's leadership, the institute has been an unqualified success with its language and business courses operating at near capacity.

Xiong GU

Sector: Arts Origin: China

Years in Canada: 17

Xiong Gu is a multi-media artist who was born and raised in Sichuan, China. He works in a wide variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, digital imagery, text, performance art and installation. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has had more than 35 solo exhibitions as well as three public art commissions.

Gu's family was swept up in China's oppressive Cultural Revolution, his father disgraced for his western leanings. As the son of a so-called "Capitalist Roader," Gu was forbidden by Maoist authorities to attend school and was sentenced to years of forced "re-education" in a rural work camp. He survived that experience, teaching himself to draw at night, by the light of a kerosene lamp.

After the Cultural Revolution, Gu studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, earning a master's degree in fine arts. In 1989, he fled China as a result of his participation in the dissident China/Avant Garde show and in the Tiananmen Square demonstration. In the fall of 2004, Gu returned to China for the Shanghai Biennale, where he was a featured artist. The biennale is China's foremost showcase for contemporary art.

Gu has twice been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is now an associate professor and teaches painting, drawing and contemporary art theory at the University of British Columbia.

Chan Gunn

Sector: Medicine

Origin: Malaysia

Years in Canada: 40

Chan Gunn's pioneering work on the concept of pain following neuropathy led to a major shift in the diagnosis and treatment of pain. His Institute for the Study and Treatment of Pain has treated more than 10,000 patients in its first decade of operation.

David Ho

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 22

Entrepreneur David Ho launched Harmony Airways (initially known as HMY Airways) in 2002, after he and his young daughter were stranded in Maui for 18 hours after their flight was delayed. Ho's response: Start his own airline. Harmony now offers flights between at least a dozen North American cities. Ho attributes the success of the airline to its 370 employees.

Edmund Ho

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 18

Edmund Ho is the president and CEO of Ascalade Communications Inc., a Richmond-based company that designs and manufactures wireless communications products for brand giants such as NEC, Philips and Toshiba. Ascalade is creating a buzz in the industry with its latest portable phones that allow people to use the popular free Internet phone service, Skype, without a computer.

Gary Ho

Sector: Community

Origin: Taiwan

Years in Canada: 14

Commercial developer Gary Ho heads the Canadian arm of the Tzu Chi Foundation, a Taiwan-based Buddhist charity with five million members worldwide. Tzu Chi operates in many countries, with 2,100 active volunteers in B.C. and about 8,000 donors. Local contributions include more than $6 million to Vancouver Children's Hospital, UBC, the Red Cross, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Salvation Army; as well as almost $2 million to create the Tzu Chi Institute for Complementary Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital in 1996. 

James Ho

Sector: Business

Origin: Taiwan

Years in Canada: over 34

In 1976, while attending Simon Fraser University, James Ho began pursuing a career in the financial services industry through the establishment of Quantum Financial Services Ltd.. In 1989, he established a foreign exchange business called RCG Forex Services Corp. He is president of both of these companies. Fulfilling a longstanding desire to promote multiculturalism through broadcasting, he acquired radio station AM1320 in 1993. He then led a group of well-known investors to acquire television Channel M in 2003.

Victor Leung Mau Ho

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: Seven

Victor Leung Mau Ho was named the editor of Vancouver's Sing Tao Daily last year. He worked for Fairchild Radio of Toronto from 1998 to 2002 as chief editor (current affairs). He also worked with Radio and Television Hong Kong as a script writer (2003-04) for public affairs programming. Ho is one of the founding editors of Yazhou Zhoukan in Hong Kong, the only Chinese newsweekly magazine since the late 1980s.

Andrea Stephanie Holmes

Sector: Sports

Origin: Canada

A congenital below-the-knee amputee, Andrea Stephanie Holmes competed in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens in the long jump, placing seventh. She accomplished this in less than two years of training while completing her degree in commerce at the University of Victoria. She is still on Team Canada, training with the goal of winning the gold medal in the long jump at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. As well, for four years, she has held the national record in the long jump.

Kenneth Hsieh

Sector: Arts

Origin: Canada

Trained at UBC and in Japan, Kenneth Hsieh is the assistant conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. This season, he will conduct the orchestra in more than 35 concerts. He is also the music director of the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, a group for young professional musicians. His mentors have included Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Lee Kum-Sing, Krzysztof Penderecki and Simon Rattle.

Terry Hui

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: Unavailable

Terry Hui is the president and CEO of Concord Pacific Group Inc., responsible for reshaping False Creek north. Concord Pacific revamped the former Expo 86 lands, which it purchased in the late 1980s, and has turned the area into what the company touts as North America's largest master-planned community.

Maggie Ip

Sector: Community

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: over 40

Maggie Ip, who came to Canada in the 1960s as a grad student, was a co-founder of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., the immigrant aid organization that has become one of the largest of its kind in Canada. Ip also served as a Vancouver city councillor in the mid-1990s. With her husband, Kelly, Ip is widely regarded as a leading contributor to the cause of multiculturalism in the Lower Mainland.

Peter Joe

Sector: Business

Origin: Canada

Sunrise Soya Foods was founded by Peter's father, Lesley Joe, in 1956. Since taking over as CEO in 1984, Peter has built the company into the largest tofu manufacturer in Canada with production facilities in Vancouver and Toronto and about 200 employees. Joe is a current director and past president of Soy Foods Canada. He is also a finalist in the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards (Pacific region).

Joseph Koo

Sector: Arts

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 10

Joseph Koo has composed more than 2,000 songs in his career, many of which are now considered classic Cantopop. Koo attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the early '60s. Upon graduation, he returned to Hong Kong and worked for both the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest movie studios. Later, he joined TVB as their director of music, where from the late 1970's until immigrating to Canada in the 1990s, he collaborated with the lyricist Wong Jim on many memorable TV theme songs. In 1982, Queen Elizabeth awarded him member of The Order of the British Empire.

Dorothy Kostrzewa

Sector: Government

Origin: Canada

When she won her first term as alderman in the Township of Chilliwack, in 1969, Dorothy Kostrzewa became the first Chinese-Canadian woman elected to public office in Canada. She has served in that role, and more recently as a city councillor in Chilliwack for more than 20 years. In her working life, before she entered politics, Kostrzewa was the accountant at a hospital in Chilliwack. She will become the city's acting mayor in December.

Lydia Kwa

Sector: Arts

Origin: Singapore

Years in Canada: 26

Lydia Kwa has published two novels and a book of poems. Her latest book, The Walking Boy, was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2005 in B.C. Her first novel, This Place Called Absence, was nominated for the amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award. She is a psychologist in private practice. She also teaches a spring workshop as part of the Simon Fraser University writing and publishing program.

Eugene Hsiao Yu Kwan

Sector: Business

Origin: Shanghai

Years in Canada: 56

Lawyer Eugene Hsiao Yu Kwan is a senior counsel at Stikeman Elliott, where he practises corporate and commercial law. In his 35 years at the B.C. bar, he has advised many of the province's largest offshore investors and was formerly the managing partner of Stikeman Elliott's Hong Kong office. Away from his legal practice, Kwan is the owner and operator of Domaine de Chaberton estate winery in Langley, and a director of the Fraser Valley Wineries Association.

Jenny Wai Ching Kwan

Sector: Government

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 31

Jenny Wai Ching Kwan's first career as a legal advocate on the Downtown Eastside gave way to a high-profile life in the political arena. Vancouver's youngest-ever city councillor at the age of 28, Kwan moved to provincial politics in 1996 with the NDP. She was a cabinet minister in her early 30s, and was one of only two NDP members to survive the 2001 election. She continues to represent the Vancouver-Mount Pleasant riding.

Julia Kwan

Sector: Arts

Country of origin: Canada

Years in Canada: 40

Julia Kwan is a filmmaker living in Vancouver. A second (or one-and-a-half) generation Chinese-Canadian of immigrant parents, Kwan was a resident director at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, where she made her award-winning short, Three Sisters on Moon Lake. In 2005, Kwan made her feature film debut with Eve and the Fire Horse.

Eva Kwok

Sector: Business

Origin: Malaysia

Years in Canada: 39

Eva Kwok has served on the boards of more companies and organizations than you can count on two hands. Kwok is a director of the B.C. Progress Board, a member of the Asia Pacific Trade Council, as well as a board member for several companies controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing. She is also a director for BMO Financial Group. Her own firm, Amara International Investment Corp., helped develop Burnaby's Crystal Mall.

Grace Kwok

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 38

Grace Kwok, owner of Anson Realty Ltd., is consistently named one of Vancouver's top realtors. Recognized as one of the first to start the trend of pre-selling condominiums in the Lower Mainland, Kwok estimates she has sold at least 8,000 units during her 26 years in the business. Kwok is also a marketing consultant for real estate development projects in Toronto and San Diego.

David See-Chai Lam

Sector: Government

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 39

David See-Chai Lam served as lieutenant-governor of B.C. from 1988 to 1995. He was the first Canadian of Chinese heritage to hold a vice-regal post. Lam has an Economics degree at Lingnan University in China and an MBA from Temple University in Philadelphia. He became a prominent real estate businessman in Vancouver, and was a leading proponent of many ambitious development schemes. He is also noted for being a leading philanthropist. In 1986, he helped found the Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival.

Tony Lam

Sector: Community

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 32

Tony Lam, president of the Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Area Society and executive director of the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, has the job of revitalizing a neighbourhood that for years has been struggling to compete with Richmond. Lam's strategy is to make Chinatown more accessible to mainstream visitors. He started Chinatown's summertime night market 11 years ago, and the event is still going strong.

Evelyn Lau

Sector: Arts

Origin: Canada

Evelyn Lau's memoir of her adolescence, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, was published when she was 18. It was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Lau is also the author of four poetry collections, two short story collections, a book of essays and a novel. Named one of the most influential people in the arts, her work has won four Western Magazine awards, a National Magazine Award, the Milton Acorn Poetry Prize, the Air Canada Award and the Vantage Women of Originality Award.

Cindy Lee

Sector: Business

Origin: Taiwan

Years in Canada: 34

The CEO and founder of T&T Supermarket Inc. opened the first store at Burnaby's Metrotown in 1993, providing an alternative for families tired of shopping at individual grocery stores in Chinatown. Since then, T&T Supermarket Inc. has become Canada's largest Asian supermarket chain, with eight stores in B.C. and 14 across Canada.

Henry Lee

Sector: Business

Origin: Hong Kong

Years in Canada: 38

Henry Lee is president and director of leading music store chain Tom Lee Music Co. Ltd., started by his family in 1969. Lee also heads several other family businesses, including retail, investment and real estate firms with properties in Asia and North America. Next year, he'll take on yet another role -- as chairman of Vancouver Board of Trade.

Kwok-Chu Lee

Sector: Community

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 12

Kwok-Chu Lee is an acknowledged master of the Chinese art of placement and arrangement known as feng shui, but he is a true polymath, expert in many fields including physiognomy, qigong, Taoist exercises, Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and health. His calligraphy, often executed under the pen name of Master Lam Chun, has been the subject of more than 30 international exhibitions. Since arriving in Canada, Lee has been a generous patron of the Richmond Public Library, to which he has donated considerable money and more than 54,000 books to help build the institution's Chinese-language holdings.

Richard T. Lee

Sector: Government

Origin: China

Years in Canada: 35

Richard T. Lee worked as a programmer analyst at TRIUMF, Canada's national particle research facility, before he was first elected MLA for Burnaby North in 2001. In 2005, Lee was re-elected and appointed parliamentary secretary for the Asia-Pacific Initiative. Currently, Lee serves as a member of the select standing committee on finance and government services and the select standing committee on education.

Robert H. (Bob) Lee

Sector: Business

Origin: Canada

Born and raised in Vancouver, Robert H. (Bob) Lee was one of the first businessmen in the province to understand the magnitude of opportunities in Asian markets, and his influence sparked major offshore investments here. Lee attended UBC and served the interests of his alma mater for many years, first as a governor, and later as chancellor. His most enduring contribution was developing the university's Properties Trust in 1987, which has generated massive revenues from UBC's land holdings. Lee's community involvement has also led him to leadership roles with the Vancouver Foundation, the Port Corporation, the Board of Trade and many other institutions.