The Canada rumor mill says that Nazanin Afshin-
Jam, the former Miss World Canada, is the new girlfriend of Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay.
MacKay, who was previously Canada’s foreign minister, cuts a handsome figure and has a bit of a playboy reputation.
It isn’t clear, however, whether they really are in any sort of a relationship. MacKay escorted Afshin-Jam to a formal dinner event in Toronto last Wednesday and was photographed with her there. That started the rumors. But whether there is something more to the MacKay/Afshin-Jam relationship remains to be seen.
Afshin-Jam’s spokeswoman, Valentina Medici, said very little—thereby feeding the rumor mill. She said Afshin-Jam and MacKay met six years ago when Afshin-Jam went to Ottawa to speak about human rights abuses.
“Mr. MacKay was very helpful and they became friends,” Medici said, declining to share any more details.
Afshin-Jam is 31 years old, 14 years junior to MacKay, 48, who represents Pictou, Nova Scotia, in Parliament.
Afshin-Jam won the title of Miss World Canada in 2003. She then joined dozens of others from around the world for the global competition, where she came in second to Miss Ireland, the daughter of singer Chris DeBurgh, famed for his recording of “The Lady in Red.”
Afshin-Jam is now a human rights activist who devotes unpaid full-time hours trying to save children in Iran from execution.
She has a degree in international relations and political science from the University of British Columbia, studied at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and is working on a master’s degree in diplomacy with a concentration in international conflict management.
She is fluent in English, French and Persian and speaks some Spanish, too. She started flying planes when she was a teenager. She had a bit part in the movie sequel to Scooby Doo.
Afshin-Jam immigrated with her family to North Vancouver, British Columbia, after they fled Iran for Spain when she was an infant.
Her father had been general manger of the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran where music, alcohol and the mingling of men and women was the norm.
With the revolution, he was thrown in jail, lashed and was reportedly headed for the firing squad when a friend secured his release. Afshin-Jam was still in grade school when she saw the scars on his back. That helped propel her into human rights activism.
“Do you ever think about what your life would be like if your family stayed there?” she was asked in an April 2006 interview with the National Review Online.
“All the time,” she replied. “This is why I am so dedicated to helping those stuck in such a repressive regime.”
Her winning of the title of Miss World Canada in 2003 spurred a French human rights activist to send her a letter that moved her in human rights activism.
The letter was about the case of another young woman with the same first name — Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi — an Iranian teenager who was sentenced to death by stoning for killing one of three men who were trying to rape her and her niece.
Afshin-Jam took up her cause and circulated a petition that garnered more than 300,000 signatures worldwide and is often credited as being instrumental in saving the teen.
Her efforts also caught the attention of Belinda Stronach, then a member of Parliament—and at the time the girlfriend of Peter MacKay. A generous donation from Stronach helped pay the bond that got Fatehi released from jail.
Stronach later switched from the Conservative Party to the Liberal party—and that immediately ended the MacKay/Stronach affair in May 2005.
Soon, news reports were linking MacKay romatically to Sophie Desmarais, daughter of Paul Desmarais, one of Canada’s most powerful industrialists. But that relationship, if there ever really was one, faded.
MacKay became foreign minister in 2006 and, in that role, often met with Condoleezza Rice, his American counterpart. The Canadian media soon were peddling reports of a potential love affair there, though she is 11 years older than MacKay and there was never any indication they ever saw each other outside officials forums.
MacKay was soon seen in public dating Jana Juginovic, now 36, an executive with the CTV news channel in Canada. On November 1, 2009, they announced their engagement. But in June 2010, they announced they had decided, amicably, to end the engagement.
So MacKay, who has never married, is now free and on the loose.
Afshin-Jam, in addition to her human rights work, has also recorded an album, featuring a political song about Iran but also another that at one point features her running in a red décolleté dress and at another point smacking the tip of her tongue against her palate as she stares into the camera and says, “You were my lover.”
“I always go back to what are the blessings God has given me and how can I best use them,” Afshin-Jam told the Vancouver Sun in October 2008. “Beauty is a blessing and it shouldn’t be something that’s looked down on . . . [But] I always have to prove myself because [my body] is just a shell. It’s not who I am.”
