Dr. Nabih Abdelmalek was born in Egypt in 1929. He met his wife, Jean, while studying in Manchester, England. They married and started a family in Cairo. In the mid-1960s, he was offered a research position at Northern Electric (which eventually became Nortel) in Ottawa, Canada. He moved his family to Ottawa in 1965, and ultimately became a Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada.

In the late 1960s, the small community of Copts living in Ottawa were welcomed to use St. Margaret’s Anglican Church for Coptic Orthodox services. Abouna Raphael travelled from Montréal one Saturday each month to lead the services.

 

In 1978, a visiting Anglican Bishop offered to send money to the Coptic Church in Egypt. When some Ottawa Copts learned of this, they said "They send money to Egypt, and we don't?". So they contributed the first $4000 to what would become the Christian-Canadian Coptic Fund. Dr. Abdelmalek administered the charity for almost four decades, collecting contributions and working with dedicated volunteers, couriers, Coptic Priests and Churches to get crucial assistance to Egypt. At the time of his passing in 2015, contributions had grown to over $1M annually.