March 15, 2019
Nazanin-Afshin-Jam, former beauty queen and wife of one of Canada’s once prominent politicians, will turn 40 next month.
Now the mother of three, last fall she released a record as she appears to be trying to resurrect the singing career she put on the back burner when she married Peter MacKay, then the justice minister of Canada.
The family now lives in Toronto, where Peter is a partner in Baker & McKenzie, one of the world’s most prominent law firms.
Afshin-Jam was born eight weeks after the collapse of the monarchy. Her father was manager of the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran and the family felt it advisable to leave the country in 1981 after he was freed from prison.
They moved to Vancouver where Nazanin flourished, becoming Miss World Canada in 2003 and coming in second in the global Miss World contest later that year.
She soon became an activist on human rights issues, focusing on child executions in Iran. Lobbying in Ottawa on that issue, she became acquainted with MacKay, rated as one of Canada’s most eligible bachelors, repeatedly linked with many of Canada’s most beautiful women. He proposed and they wed in 2012 while he was still in the cabinet.
MacKay was widely touted as a likely successor to Stephen Harper as leader of Canada’s Conservative Parry and prime minister. But instead, McKay retired and declined to run for the party leadership when Harper retired.
MacKay and Afshin-Jam now have two sons and a daughter: Kian Alexander MacKay, born on April 1, 2013, Valentia Makaja MacKay, born September 30, 2015; and Caledon Cyrus MacKay, born July 28, 2018.
Afshin-Jam started a singing career in 2007, long before she was linked to MacKay. She had a number of best sellers, with one song, “Someday,” rising to Number 7 on the charts. Last November, she resumed her long-dormant singing career with the release of “Left Behind,” which she wrote herself.