"It's our charity"

She heads the laboratory at Toronto’s Scarborough Hospital and has chaired the C$ 17.6 billion budget Metro Toronto District Health Council which advises the ministry of health. She also leads a team of event managers and has inspired them to raise C$ 1,851,101 in three years – 85 percent of the targeted C$ 2.2 million required to rebuild the Zoroastrian Society of Ontario’s (ZSO) Mehraban Guiv Darbe Mehr on Bayview Avenue to a plan closer to community requirements.

"It’s a big project and we need it, but in the meantime the ceiling is falling!” declares the affable and glamorous Dr Dhun Noria, underlining the urgency of the fund collection drive. She describes the existing structure as "an inefficient, old building” based on a pillar construction where you can’t move the walls, with "archaic heating and cooling.” Apart from these inadequacies the major complaint is that it has become too small for the increasing Zoroastrian community in Toronto and Noria is committed to her task of finding the finance to get the reconstruction going: "The community needs it. Let’s do it as our charity.”

Not one to talk idly, the Noria family has contributed the maximum to the project in hard cash — over C$ 320,000 according to the ZSO-BCCC (Building Capital Campaign Committee) circular of August 12, 2005 — apart from the gift of her personal time and effort which includes typing the newsletters and keeping an account of the money collected as she has no ZSO-designated secretary to help her. She did not mention this sum when she met Parsiana in Toronto on July 14, 2005. Instead she was ecstatic over the receipt of C$ 250,000 from the Zoroastrian Charity Funds of Hong Kong, Canton and Macau and C$ 100,000 which Keki and Zaver Jokhi of Hong Kong personally contributed. The Pallonji Mistry family of Bombay have also donated US$ 10,000 to the Darbe Mehr kitty. Substantial sums apart, Noria interprets these donations as an endorsement of the ZSO’s credibility. "The ZSO is always there, taking care of all the needs of the community, despite the second organization,” she notes. The establishment of the Ontario Zoroastrian Community Foundation (OZCF) has been viewed as a faction fight in some quarters though the OZCF maintains it is serving the increasing Zoroastrian immigrant community in an area far from the ZSO base.

The event leaders from the ZSO-BCCC — "a very good team” — meet every second Friday. The two-hour, professionally managed meetings are committed to discussing the agenda items. There is "no talk of anything except fundraising, no side talk,” she says. In the course of a year, between June 25, 2004 and July 10, 2005 over16 events had been organized including a walkathon and barbeque picnic, a golf classic, five nights of theater, jashans and food fairs, dinners and dinner dances, according to the report she submitted to the 2005 annual general meeting of the ZSO. Overriding them all was the Bangles and Bowties (B&B) Ball at Le Parc Banquet and Convention Center on May 28, 2005 where the chief guest was the lieutenant governor of Ontario, James Bartleman. In his message on the occasion he noted, "As the Queen’s representative in Ontario, I commend all of you for your commitment to your community along with your active participation in Canada’s shared multicultural citizenship.”

The lieutenant governor’s endorsement strengthens Noria’s own resolve to "make sure the community profile improves in the local media.” She is happy with the coverage in The National Post, the Toronto Sun and India Times as also in the American Television Network which contributed C$ 50,000 in media publicity sponsorship for the B&B Ball. Non-Zoroastrian support from Canadian friends and donors is a measure of acceptance: "They donate to our cause because they believe the community is worth helping…The test is when the dollars come in.” The head of the University Health Network has been one of the contributors, she notes in passing.

"If you build credibility in whatever field outside your community, (it works) because you’ve got the reputation,” says Noria. Some time ago Noria and her friends got together to put up a building for medical service providers. The Scarborough North Medical Arts Building, which they now own, houses about 75 physicians and a variety of medical facilities. Nor is the ZSO, which she has served in various capacities including that of vice president in the mid 1980s when she was part of the team organizing the North American Zoroastrian Congress in Toronto, the only charity to occupy her time and interest. A member of the foundation board of the Scarborough Hospital, Noria has been helping them with the construction of the Women’s Health Clinic, providing a large chunk of money. She also supports the Cancer Society, the HIV-Aids Society, among others. In 2004 the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce elected her Businesswoman of the Year. This was followed by a similar endorsement from the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce. "I truly believe it’s now time to give back. Canada has been very good to us. We must now give back, contribute in whatever form we can.”

Hyderabad born Dhun (née Pestonji) says she had two career objectives in her youth: medicine and the diplomatic service. It was easier to get into medicine then and she garnered two gold medals with her initial graduation as a doctor – in surgery and pathology. When Farokh Noria whom she had been dating for seven years got his admission for nuclear physics into McGill University, his mother insisted he marry and take his bride with him. As a young married woman in Canada who wanted to have a family, Dhun says she gravitated to pathology as a specialty more conducive to family life than surgery, acquiring her FRCP in that field. The need to support his family led Farokh to join Coro-Canada, a maker of fashion jewelry, where as an "idea man” his scientific bent led him to discover new materials for such manufactures. His wife describes him as a perfectionist who is known in the industry as the "professor emeritus of fashion jewelry.” Setting up his own firm Normak Fashions Private Limited in Hyderabad, Farokh now supplies upmarket stores in North America and sells in India under the name of Estelle, Dhun informs us. Their daughter Sabrena is a doctor who has chosen to enter the field of pediatric research. Their son Zubin has his own business called Hydra Ink Incorporated.

Both hailing from very well-connected families of Hyderabad, sports, games and especially big-game hunting and fishing are recreations they have grown up with. From time to time Farokh and Dhun keep their fishing appointments with the elite international fraternity in the fjords of Norway or the salmon fisheries of Alaska. The fun is in tussling with and landing a sizable catch of several tons. International etiquette requires that the fish is then returned, unhurt, to the water, she explains. Both are also happy chefs and their spacious, well-appointed kitchen is a comfortable working milieu where they are joined by Sabrena who loves to bake. Raja, their white German Shepherd wanders in and out of the tastefully furnished rooms and the colorful garden which Dhun enjoys maintaining, with Chiko, the South American macau, having an occasional say as a member of the family. An avid golfer, Zubin prefers to have his fun on the course. But the doctor remembers that when they first came to this part of the world, she had no more than eight dollars in her purse!

Noria describes herself as very liberal in her views. Surveying the community fissures everywhere, she notes that there are "more things in common than those that divide us. Let us work on the commonalities.” She says she has "told the other organization (OZCF), ‘Let us finish this project. This is my mandate. Then I’ll take some rest and start again on the other side (of town) if the community so decides…If people feel they are willing to contribute, I’m willing to help after I take a little break to recharge my batteries.’”