Media executive Salah Bachir was a singular figure of bedazzled benevolence

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Salah Bachir crashed into Canadian culture with a singular verve, imprinting his generous vision across massive swaths of the country’s arts and queer communities. He breathed life into Canada’s film magazines while brushing elbows with the people who bring life onto the screen. He sought out the stories that made those people relatable, while his own style brought a flashy rebelliousness to corporate Canada. He was outspoken about his own queerness and chose brooches over neckties – “he was too busy putting jewellery on,” his husband, the visual artist Jacob Yerex, said.

In spite of his stylistic flair, Mr. Bachir did not necessarily enjoy the spotlight, so he directed it elsewhere. At the galas he hosted – an endless stream, according to his friends – he shone it on causes he deemed important and people whom he mentored and befriended.

For Mathieu Chantelois, the executive vice-president of communications and strategy with the Canada Media Fund, this became almost like a father-son relationship.

“Salah introduced me to two prime ministers, two premiers, two mayors, two governors-general, to Elton John, to k.d. lang, to Valentino – but what he really did was he introduced me to his wonderful circle of friends,” said Mr. Chantelois, who first came under Mr. Bachir’s wing while editing the Quebec edition of his Famous Players magazine a quarter-century ago, and would later become executive director of Pride Toronto. “He was surrounded by incredible people – people that were advocating for queer rights in this country, people that were fighting for newcomers, for immigrants, for social justice.”

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This included Mr. Bachir’s work with The 519, the storied community centre for 2SLGBTQ+ people in Toronto’s Gay Village. Two decades ago, he led a capital campaign to renovate and expand The 519’s building; a wing now bears his name. He also led its annual fundraising gala for years. “Salah helped make The 519’s future possible,” said Maura Lawless, its executive director. “He understood that queer communities needed a place to gather, organize, celebrate and receive care – and that such a place deserved ambition and investment.”

Mr. Bachir racked up an extraordinary amount of accolades: he was a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario; he served as chancellor of OCAD University; he received five honorary doctorates; he served twice as grand marshal of the Toronto Pride parade. (“I always felt Salah was pretty much the grand marshal of everything he got involved with,” said his friend, filmmaker Atom Egoyan.)

Gallery spaces and community centres across Toronto bear Mr. Bachir’s name, including at the 519 and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Stephan Jost, the gallery’s director and chief executive, said Mr. Bachir was “always the life of a party – he loved art and people and smart conversation that connected all of the threads. He lived surrounded by art and immersed himself in a world of artists, thinkers, and creators.”

The film executive, philanthropist and merry gala-runner received medical assistance in death on Oct. 8 after years of kidney problems, which were followed by a compromised immune system, an inability to walk or stand, and what he told friends was relentless pain. He was 71.

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Salah John Bachir was born on Oct. 3, 1955, in Kfar Hatta, Lebanon, and moved to Canada with his family at the age of 10, settling in the Toronto-area suburb of Rexdale. He studied at the University of Waterloo, where his time in student journalism gave him an affection for salesmanship. Selling newspaper ads helped him understand the importance of relationships in getting things done.

This was profoundly helpful when, after working at his brother George’s early video-rental store, the pair launched the magazine Videomania in 1982, focused on the fast-rising world of home video. Mr. Bachir rarely rested – in fact, friends say he rarely slept at all – and soon after he launched Premiere Magazine and the Focus on Video trade show, which helped him build his wealth and a bustling network of film-industry bigwigs.

“He was a success because he was fun to do business with,” said Cathy Prowse, who worked closely with Mr. Bachir for three decades across numerous ventures.

As the industry shifted, so did Mr. Bachir, moving on from the home-video world to the cinema world, but his focus on advertising remained. He launched Famous Players Media in 1999 in partnership with the cinema chain, and with Viacom, where he worked on advertising while still keeping a hand on its in-house Famous magazines. When Cineplex Galaxy bought Famous Players six years later, he went on to become president of Cineplex Media – a position he held until 2021.

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“He knew all the players because of that,” said his friend Nancy Lockhart, who knew Mr. Bachir for four decades and served with him on the Canadian Film Centre’s board. His ability to maintain relationships extended well beyond his life in business, she said: It helped him build a network of people to tap when raising money for causes he believed in.

Mr. Bachir rallied around causes that helped underserved communities, including LGBTQ organizations, and the artistic world, in which he deeply immersed himself. He earned the half-joking nickname “Gala Salah” for the dozens of fundraising galas he hosted to raise money.

“If you had Salah on your side and he believed in what you were trying to do, he was a magician,” said Chris Abraham, artistic director of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto, for which Mr. Bachir raised a “significant amount of money” in the past decade.

This endless stream of fundraising galas allowed Mr. Bachir to develop a series of rules for success, which his husband, Mr. Yerex, can recount from memory: “Short speeches. Always have food on the table when people arrive. Entertain people. Always pay the talent.” This meant bringing in well-known artists – be they visual artists whose work would be auctioned off or singers such as Molly Johnson, whose performances would keep guests thrilled.

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Mr. Bachir loved telling stories about his network of celebrity friends, culminating in his 2023 book First to Leave the Party: My Life with Ordinary People … Who Happen to be Famous, with the imprint Signal. He talked Lebanese food with Marlon Brando; he had regular check-in calls with filmmaker Norman Jewison.

“Salah built these really personal, meaningful relationships with really famous people, but treated everyone exactly the same,” said Heather George, executive director of the Woodland Cultural Centre, a Brantford, Ont., hub for Haudenosaunee knowledge and Indigenous culture; Mr. Bachir co-chaired the centre’s fundraising campaign for a new building.

“His idea was that people were coming to contribute to the cause, but it was important that people left feeling like they received something,” Mr. Yerex said.

Even Mr. Bachir’s wedding in 2015 reflected his gala strategy. Not only did it feature musical performances, including by Ms. lang, but they rented the venue for two nights: one for the wedding itself, and another to hold the bash all over again as a fundraiser for St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto – for a garden bearing the couple’s name that, coincidentally, opened this month.

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The pair met online in 2005; Mr. Yerex had just come out, and he took comfort in Mr. Bachir’s pride in his gayness. “He was the manifestation of what I was attracted to,” Mr. Yerex said. It helped, too, that Mr. Yerex was an artist; Mr. Bachir’s “deep involvement in the art world just knocked my socks off.” Their homes were covered, wall-to-wall, in art pieces.

Generosity also extended to Mr. Bachir’s personal relationships. Ms. Lockhart recalled telling him once that she was planning to attend a big party in England. “He said, ‘I have just the evening gown for you.’ He would buy stuff and keep it, and when an occasion arose, he would say, ‘This is for you,’” she said.

Mr. Bachir spent much of his later life struggling with health problems. He lived with HIV and Type 1 diabetes, and spent the 2010s struggling with his kidneys; he needed dialysis for seven years until 2019, when he received a transplant. (He made sure to thank his donor, Tracey Agnew, in his self-written obituary.) It was through this process that he became a patron of St. Joseph’s Health Centre; both of its dialysis centres are named after him and Mr. Yerex, and the couple also arranged for lights to illuminate the hospital’s exterior over the winter.

In fact, he purchased a literal truckload of lights as a surprise, said Maria Dyck, president and CEO of the St. Joseph’s Health Centre Foundation. “I got a call from our shipping and receiving department – ‘Maria, your UPS truck is here,’” she recalled. “He then raised the funds for the installation and started a tradition of the hospital lighting up over the holidays.

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“Through his care, Salah came to know and deeply value the contributions of St. Joe’s physicians, nurses and staff, and he thought the hospital’s dark exterior didn’t reflect the warmth and care within.”

He told friends that complications from the transplant, however, only furthered his decline in health, leading to his decision to receive medical assistance in dying this month at his home in Toronto.

Mr. Bachir leaves Mr. Yerex; his stepdaughter, Ivy Yerex; siblings, Anissa Beale, George Bachir and Ziad Bachir; and an extended family that includes eight nieces and nephews, eight grandnieces and grandnephews, and 15 godchildren.

For his funeral service, at the Turner & Porter Yorke chapel in Toronto’s west end on Thursday at 11 a.m., he insisted that those in attendance wear vibrant colours – and that his favourite colour, black, be banned.