MOHAMED TARRABIN

“Helping the evacuees during the wildfire, and working with different Indigenous communities are the things I’m most proud of accomplishing.”

He’s an electrical engineer by trade, currently running the Fort Chipewyan family restaurant; he’s from Lebanon and he’s 23 years old. During the fire of 2016, the restaurant briefly became famous around the world for the sanctuary and free food it provided for all the displaced people. Yet he doesn’t really see why he’s on this list.

Maybe CBC can explain it better. “Mohamed Tarrabin runs the only restaurant in Fort Chipewyan. That Tuesday after the fire, he estimates he cooked 200 meals, and served them free of charge to those fleeing the fires.

“It was one of the best nights of my life, to be honest,” he said, “because our traditions, our religion, teaches us to help people out, and we never lived that until yesterday.”

There’s a story about how Mohamed found his way to Fort Chipewyan. That’s not important. There’s another story about why an electrical engineer is running a family restaurant. Also not important. And there may even be a story about how this young man came to leave the heat of the Lebanon for the cold of Northern Alberta.

The only thing that is important is that on that night, Mohamed Tarrabin chose to practice the best parts of his faith in the community he now calls home, and everyone in Fort Chipewyan thanks him for that.