MONTREAL/October 2, 2003—
2003 Benoit Pelland Distinguished Service Award ó HAZEL MAH
The second of this year's Benoit Pelland Distinguished Service Awards is presented to Hazel Mah, BComm 78, MBA 81.
Hazel Mah is not just a great Concordia alumna. She's an outstanding business and community person, and a great Montrealer. Hazel is one of the city's premier restaurateurs, known mostly for her flagship establishment, Le Piment Rouge. Through the past 20-plus years she's had a hand in running several high-class restaurants in Montreal, Toronto and several U.S. cities. Fortunately for us, she still has time for Concordia University. Hazel was a member Concordia's Board of Governors for five years, from 1997 to 2002. Prior to that she also chaired Concordia's Annual Giving Campaign, and is an avid supporter of the Concordia Shuffle, our annual walk-a-thon from the Sir George to Loyola campuses to raise money for student scholarships and bursaries. We're rewarding her today for that commitment as well as for her continual support, moral and otherwise, of our university.
It's been a long road from where Hazel started, in the Chinese province of Hunan, where she was born in 1943. Her father, an army commander, was killed by the Communists in 1949. Her mother, a medical doctor, was sent to Hong Kong with her five children when Hazel was 3, and they moved to Taiwan three years later.
Against her mother's wishes, at 16 Hazel took a part-time job to pay for her university studies. After graduation, she became one of the 12 hostesses selected ó out of 8,000 applicants! ó for the Republic of China Pavilion at the Expo 67. While in Montreal that summer, Hazel fell for our city, and fell for a young man named Chuck Mah, an electronics engineer at Canadian Marconi. Hazel returned home, but came back to Montreal in 1968 to work for ICAO, and to marry Chuck.
In 1973, Hazel returned to school. Working nights and weekends, she earned her bachelor of commerce degree in 1978, followed by Certified General Accountant qualification in 1979 and an MBA in 198, all from Concordia. While a student, Hazel worked for pharmaceutical company Ayerst International, but in 1979 she left Ayerst and began her first restaurant business, a small Chinese teahouse on Ste. Catherine St. Soon after, Hazel reopened a shuttered steakhouse on Metcalfe St., replacing it with an authentic Chinese menu and calling it Le Piment Rouge, because red peppers are a major ingredient in the cooking of her native Hunan Province. Le Piment Rouge soon moved into the renovated Windsor Hotel building on Peel St., where it has stayed. Hazel's mother, who joined her in Canada in 1973, trained her chefs and helped make Le Piment Rouge the institution it has become, something Hazel remains proud of.
Restaurants now run in the family. Hazel's husband Chuck joined her in business in 1986, and her sons, Clarence and Glenn ó both Harvard educated ó also have entered the restaurant business.
Through it all, Hazel has never forgotten Concordia, always bringing the same wisdom, warmth, loyalty and compassion to her alma mater as she does for everything in her life. Whether lending her time to the board and other university activities, or lending her restaurant for Concordia events ó she's always willing to give back to the university that imparted upon her the opportunity to excel.
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