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Gabriel Safdie establishes creative writing scholarship for Concordia's writers in training

Aspiring authors, poets and playwrights will benefit from Concordia graduate's generosity
July 16, 2018
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By Lucas Napier-Macdonald


Gabriel Safdie, BA 64 Gabriel Safdie has several projects on the go, including his upcoming calendar, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), featuring photographs he shot in Oaxaca, Mexico. | Photo: Chen Feng

At 77, Gabriel Safdie, BA 64, has more projects cooking than most people do in the blush of youth.

Among other things, Safdie is writing a book on the profound changes he witnessed in China over the past three decades. He visited yearly as head of the Montreal-based textile company, Safdie & Co., and still does for his photo exhibitions.

He also recently published a 12th calendar, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), featuring photographs he shot in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the holiday.

And he is helping reinvigorate the 3,000-person town of Stanstead, Que., through his company Centre des Arts de Stanstead. Alongside his wife Eva Juul, with whom he owns eight buildings in the town, Safdie hopes to turn Stanstead into a cultural oasis tourists will want to visit.

“I suppose you could say I have some energy,” he says.

A family business

Some 55 years ago, when his father was still fully active, Safdie spurned the idea of going into business. As a writer and teacher, the thought of cutting deals and opening new markets repelled him.

However, when his father passed away in the late 1980s, the younger Safdie — having occupied his most-valued role, literature and creative writing teacher, for more than 20 years — felt compelled to carry on the home textiles company his father founded in 1953.

By the time he stepped down as CEO three years ago, Safdie & Co. was valued at 12 times its original size.

“It was quite a beautiful company when I passed it on,” he says. “It was well beyond anything my father could’ve imagined, and I only wish he could have witnessed this.”

Asked how he managed the feat, Safdie claims all he needed was “to build a good team and use common sense.”

Safdie the sinophile

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Photograph from Gabriel’s collection taken in Oaxaca, Mexico, in November 2016. | Photo: Gabriel Safdie

During his time as company leader, Safdie became completely fascinated with China. In the country for two months each year on business, he’d always take time out for himself to travel to a new location and explore, taking photographs.

These visits now inform his book, provisionally titled The China Challenge: 33 Years of Work and Travel in the Middle Kingdom. The semi-autobiographical docudrama chronicles the breakneck changes the country has undergone in the last three decades, particularly since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, when Chinese troops ultimately fired on and killed many of the demonstrators.

“The massacre was a pivotal moment in Chinese history, where the country flipped over from communism to totalitarian capitalism, more capitalist than what we have in the west,” Safdie says.

On top of the book and the calendars, Safdie often exhibits his photos, including in the Middle Kingdom itself. Variations of his particularly popular exhibit “Changing China through the Eyes of a Canadian Friend,” have visited Beijing, Qingdao, Tai’an and Hangzhou, among other cities.

As he says, “The Chinese like seeing my perspective of their country. I have insight into the life there that they seem to appreciate.”

Giving back

After earning a BComm from McGill University, Safdie completed an accelerated BA in literature and creative writing at Sir George Williams University, one of Concordia’s founding institutions, in the early 1960s. He followed that with a master’s in the same field from the University of British Columbia, and then continued studying for his PhD in literature at the University of London and then the Sorbonne, in Paris.

Yet Safdie always remained fond of Concordia. In 2016 he donated $5,000 to the university to create the Gabriel Safdie Award in Creative Writing. Recently, he increased the gift by $1,000 so it could be split three ways between aspiring authors, poets and playwrights.

Safdie chose Concordia because these days, “it’s such a dynamic and exciting place to be,” he says. “I’m hearing great things from faculty and especially students, which says a lot. It’s inspiring to see a university going through such a good phase.”

He hopes that his gift will encourage people entering the literary world, where it can often take a very long time to become accomplished.

As Safdie says: “I just think it’s a great thing to do, and for me, that feels right.”

Thomas Molander, one the recipients of the 2017 Gabriel Safdie Award in Creative Writing

Thomas Molander won the Gabriel Safdie Award in Creative Writing for fiction in 2017 for To See Abundant o. The story is about an unhappy real estate agent who wants to go and watch his daughter’s band perform. 

Thomas Molander

“I was so glad when I received the award. Money is always a big concern, and now I can focus more on my writing, which is what I’m at school to do. It was also just a validating experience in general. It made me feel hopeful about my future as a writer.

I want to express to Mr. Safdie that I think it’s really admirable to support young artists. It’s tough to try to make a go of it in this field, and I’m really grateful for his generosity towards those of us who aren’t yet established.”



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