Wadih Fares

Wadih Fares was born in the village of Diman in northern Lebanon on 13 July 1956, to parents Georgette and Maurice Fares. His father ran an asphalt plant and built roads and bridges. Fares attended a private high school that provided him an international baccalaureate, and with a high academic performance he was accepted to attend the national university in Beirut. His education was cut short by the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, when he was conscripted into military service. After three months of deployment, Fares returned home following a night of heavy bombardment, and his mother insisted that he leave Lebanon and go to Canada. He obtained permission to leave from an army general and travelled to Paris, and from there across the Atlantic to Halifax.

Arriving in Canada in 1976 at the age of 18, Fares spoke Arabic and French but no English. He enrolled as a foreign arrival at Dalhousie University and began studying engineering, but encountered great difficulty due to his lack of English. He pushed through with the assistance of dictionaries and his friends in Halifax's Lebanese community, eventually learning the language. Fares graduated from Dalhousie with a diploma in engineering, and the Technical University of Nova Scotia with a Bachelor of Engineering. After completing his education, he took a position with Irving's precast concrete division in Bedford and Saint John, purchased a house, and married his wife, Cathy. He remained at Irving until the age of 26, when he was let go from the company after visiting his parents in Lebanon despite his request for vacation time being denied.

WM Fares Group

Not long after leaving Irving, Fares received his first commission to design a single-family home for a friend. Satisfied with his work, the same friend then commissioned him to design a 12-unit apartment building. After word of his services began to spread, he established WM Fares Group in 1983 and hired a secretary. Soon after, the company grew to include a part-time accountant and a draftsperson. WM Fares Group continued to expand over the following years, situating itself as a well-known development company in the Halifax area. Now with established connections in the industry, Fares began his first independent development project with a Halifax townhouse, purchasing the land following an investment from a relative. Over the following decades, WM Fares Group designed and built a wide range of buildings that transformed the skyline of Halifax, while also completing projects across the Maritime provinces, Ontario, and Alberta. Two of Fares' three children joined the business: his daughter Zana Fares-Choueiri, an engineer, joined WM Fares Group in 2006 and became head of their construction operations. His son Maurice Fares is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company.

WM Fares Group is perhaps best known for the Trillium, a $40-million high-rise condominium in downtown Halifax which was the first skyscraper erected in the downtown area in 25 years. The project began in 2008 and was completed in 2012, following which it was awarded a Lieutenant Governor's Award of Excellence in Engineering. By 2021, WM Fares Group had about 50 employees, owned 1,200 apartment units, and was designing over $1-billion in construction projects at once.

Honorary consulship

Fares has served as the Honorary Consul of Lebanon for the Maritimes since 1995, and is considered a leader in the Lebanese-Canadian community. During the 2006 Lebanon War, he criticized the Canadian government for failing to call for a ceasefire, accusing them of going back on Canada's traditional approach to Middle Eastern conflicts and giving a "green-light" to Israel to continue its campaign against Hezbollah.

Fares carries out his charitable endeavours through the WM Fares Family Foundation. In 2022, the foundation donated $500,000 to support cancer-fighting technology at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax.

During the 2012 Halifax municipal election, Fares and his wife donated $3,800 to the campaigns of five councillors and the mayor. In 2024 Halifax municipal election, Fares donated $2,500 to the mayoral campaign of Andy Fillmore. His son Maurice also donated to Fillmore's campaign.

The National Post listed Fares among Nova Scotia's top political donors in 2020, having made 12 donations to the three major parties: $7,691.24 to the Progressive Conservatives, $7,504 to the Liberals, and $2,873.12 to the NDP.