UPDATED 8:32 p.m. Friday

OTTAWA — A business titan and a prolific author are the newest Nova Scotians to be named as members of the Order of Canada.

Wadih Fares, 55, a Halifax developer and philanthropist, will be inducted “for his contributions to Nova Scotia as an entrepreneur, community leader and committed volunteer,” a release said.

Silver Donald Cameron, 75, a Halifax writer and environmentalist, is being inducted “for his contributions as a journalist, writer, educator, consultant and dedicated community activist,” the release said.

Fares is president of WM Fares Group, which among other things is completing work on the $41-million, 19-storey Trillium condo project on South Park Street in Halifax.

Fares sits on the boards of directors of many community-shaping organizations ranging from Dalhousie University to the Halifax International Airport Authority to the QEII Foundation.

“I’m honoured and really humbled with this whole thing,” Fares told The Chronicle Herald about his Order of Canada induction.

“You’re at a loss for words to describe how great that is.”

Fares came to Nova Scotia from Lebanon at age 18 to go to university. His home country was in the midst of civil war, and his mother did not want him to stay there. Fares spoke almost no English but thought he would be fine in Canada. After all, he figured, he spoke French and it’s a bilingual country.

“It was pretty tough, I’ll be honest with you,” he said Friday. “I am very fortunate to be able to look back and remember all these days and laugh about them.”

Fares is now heavily involved in the Lebanese community and immigration in general. He is honorary consul to Lebanon for the Maritime provinces and sits on the Minister’s Immigration Advisory Council.

As a member of the Pier 21 board of trustees, he pushed to make the site a museum. The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 would become the first national museum outside Ottawa.

Fares and Cameron were the only Nova Scotians among the 70 inductees announced Friday. Neither inductee knows who nominated him for the Order of Canada, but both said they are grateful to whomever it was.

Cameron began in journalism over four decades ago and has written 16 books. Along the way, he gradually became more and more interested in environmental causes. He often took up this charge in columns for The Chronicle Herald.

“It seemed to me there was a need for some real intellectual recasting of the discussion,” Cameron said in an interview.

“If we don’t do something like that, we’re going to go down making the same damn mistakes that have brought us to the difficulties in which we find ourselves now.”

Cameron now runs a website called the Green Interview, where he conducts long interviews with prominent voices in the environmental movement around the world.

Cameron was born in Toronto, though he is reluctant to admit it and quickly adds that he fled to the West Coast at age two, taking his parents with him.

He would later move to the United States, England and eventually Halifax as a post-doctoral fellow at Dalhousie. He said he immediately had a strong feeling that he had found the corner of the world that was right for him.

Cameron was thrilled with word of his induction, which will take place later this year in Ottawa.

“There’s something extremely gratifying, if you have this kind of mixed bag of a career that I’ve had, to get to the latter part of your life and to feel that your fellow citizens don’t think that your life was entirely wasted,” he said.

“It really is kind of a lovely validation.”

(pmcleod@herald.ca)