He’s always led an extraordinary life.

He started university at 14.

He helped to develop a patent for a gene therapy device at 20.

Now, Dr. Wael Haddara, an intensive-care physician, is packing an iPhone filled with personal pictures of heads of state and political celebrities, including former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry.

That’s because for more than a year and a half, Haddara has lived two extraordinary lives – one in here in Canada, where he is the medical director of the surgical intensive care unit at University Hospital, teaches at Western University and sits on the board of a mosque, and the other in his native Egypt where he was a trusted advisor to ousted president Mohamed Mursi.

He’s far below radar to most Canadians. But the 42-year-old father of three has quietly been popping up behind the scenes with Egypt thrust under the international spotlight — showing up at the United Nations, in Washington and the presidential palace in Cairo. He’s appeared as a spokesperson in the New York Times and on European news networks.

“It was an opportunity to bridge my two identities,” says Haddara, of his decision to help the Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party after the 2011 Egyptian revolution led to its first elections.

“I see myself as someone who has a foot in both cultures. I value my Egyptian roots and values and I also know there are a lot of great things about Canada and the United States and other Western Nations. The opportunity to be that bridge builder seemed to be the reason why my life evolved the way it did.”

Haddara is no stranger to bridge building in London where he’s known for interfaith work. But he says he fell into the role of Mursi’s media advisor before the 2012 election, during a family visit to Egypt six months earlier.

The doctor – whose blog is filled with insight on Mideast politics, Islamic issues, medical controversies and even a bit of poetry – ended up speaking with party members who appreciated his North American perspective. They asked him to help with their media campaign for the 2012 election. He agreed, taking leave from the hospital during a personally tough year in which his mother became ill and died.

He travelled to Washington and spent several weeks in Egypt.

His heart swelled with pride and hope as he watched Mursi was declared president on TV.

“It was surreal,” he says. “To feel like you are part of a country’s first free, real, fairly-held elections that were actually competitive where the result was not pre-determined – and you have a ringside seat . . . you actually did something? You had a small part, but a part of it?

“It felt like walking into the warm sunshine after a long cold winter. It was really like, ‘Wow, this country is finally going somewhere.’”

He maintained that feeling of optimism throughout the year that followed, advising the president while maintaining his incredibly busy life here.

His role as advisor ended in July when Mursi was ousted by the military after protests fuelled by fears Mursi would impose an Islamist agenda.

Haddara parks his Corolla and arrives for the interview dressed casually. A slim, bespectacled man, with a neatly-trimmed beard, he’s not one to call attention to himself. He’s known for downplaying his achievements and for the respect he shows people in general. “He’s a mentor to many. He has a lot of time for people others would not have time for,” says friend Ali D. Chahbar.

This day, on request, he brings a folder full of souvenirs — a UN ID badge, his name plate from an Italian state dinner and more. He’s left his favourite, an Egyptian flag with Mursi’s signature, at home. Before Mursi was elected, he and Haddara had a running joke. Haddara wanted Mursi to sign a flag, which would become valuable — Haddara’s “pension plan” — if Mursi won.

A year ago, Dr. Ron Butler Googled Wael Haddara’s name for fun. He’d been following his longtime friend and colleague’s commutes to Egypt.

A photo popped up of an Egyptian delegation at the United Nations.

“There was Wael. . .,” says Butler, director of the cardiac surgical recovery unit. Butler says he sent the photo around to other hospital colleagues.

“People were flabbergasted,” he says. “Wael was fairly low key about what he was doing. ”He had delegated his hospital responsibilities and was in constant contact. . . most people had no clue. He was off meeting with heads of state,” says Butler.

At the hospital, Haddara is widely respected as a go-to person.

“From a physician’s perspective . . . I find him to have a very insightful problem-solving ability and to be very level-headed and diplomatic,” says Butler.

As a friend, Butler was excited about Haddara’s work in the Mideast. “I value his perspective and opinion,” he says.

As does Haddara’s research supervisor for the work he did on his master’s in education.

“Wael is a very learned, thoughtful engaged and passionate person, I was not surprised he had this other meaningful interest,” said Lorelei Lingard, director of the centre for education, research and innovation at Western’s medical school. .

Taking the plunge into Egyptian politics didn’t come easy to Haddara. But he felt compelled. What drove him will resonate with many immigrants, who’ve left behind strife, uncertainty and loved ones. “Most of us living in this part of the world felt there was so very little that we were doing to help Egypt in a time where really it needed a lot of help,” says Haddara.

And suddenly he had the opportunity — thanks to the revolution.

Like Egyptians worldwide, Haddara was “glued to the TV” during the revolution against 30-year president Hosni Mubarak in January 2011.

“It is safe to say something lit up inside of me.” he says. “It was incredibly powerful. People were organized and peaceful and able to achieve something that seemed to be impossible.”

Mubarak stepped down – a “galvanizing moment.”

Eleven months later, Haddara visited cousins in Egypt while on a medical business trip to Saudi Arabia.

“I get there and, obviously, everyone is talking politics,” Haddara says.

A family friend asked Haddara if he’d meet with Essam el Haddad, a leader of the Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party. With his perspective often sought out by members of Muslim and medical community in London, Haddara says he was willing to talk.

“They felt the party was off kilter a little bit and the more advice they got the better,” says Haddara, former president of the Muslim Association of Canada. “People have this sense that I’m engaged, I’m involved.,” he says. “Post-9/11, we all (Western Muslim communities) did a lot of media work and government relations . . . and there is this thought (in the Arab world) that Canadian or American Muslims are hip and happening.”

Gearing up for the upcoming elections, FJP members wanted to hear what a Canadian Muslim felt the Arab Spring should focus on.

“Freedom and rights and what enables those things,” says Haddara. “Only free people can choose one path or another.”

After the meeting, he went on to his conference and that was that. Or so he thought.

He got a message in March 2012. With his experience dealing with the media, would he meet members of the FJP in Washington for the Carnegie Peace talks? The party wanted an articulate Western voice to help outline its agenda to Washington. The Muslim Brotherhood’s reputation in North America is that of a rigid Islamic organization. It wanted to shed that image, or at least flesh it out.

For Haddara, the peace talks were spark of joy during an awful time. His mother — who’d left Newfoundland for London with his father two years earlier, to be closer to their sons — was sick from complications from surgery at the hospital where he works. He jumped at the chance to help the party.

He returned and his mom was dying in the hospital where he works. She died in April.

After that, Haddara found it “very hard to come back to work,” he says. “There was this void I was left with, and it was almost impossible to fill.”

“Surely, there must be someone more qualified than me,” Haddara told his FJP connections. They wanted him to help their presidential candidate, Mohammed Mursi.

It was May 2012. The election campaign was ramping up. Haddara was back in Egypt, with his dad and brother, to mourn for his mother with her sisters there.

He was in a bad place. He missed her.

But Mursi needed help engaging the media. Haddara agreed to meet with him.

“I knew nothing about him at the time. Zero,” says Haddara.

They connected, he says, bonded by their separate emotional turmoils – Haddara’s grief for his mother, and Mursi’s distress at being asked to run for president when he’d hoping to soon retire.

They commiserated and talked. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but Mursi was sincere and warmer than the man you see on the news. Haddara liked him instantly.

Haddara says he spent several weeks in Egypt, helping Mursi to frame messages. He arrived home just before the election, which Mursi won by a slim majority, which meant there’d be a run-off vote. Mursi called Haddara in London and asked for more help.

Despite his wife and kids’ objections, Haddara went back. He was still consumed by his mother’s death, making at life at home painful.

“I went back to work (at the hospital) and I’d find myself crying . . . completely unprovoked, standing there and a memory washes over you.”

“So I took off.”

More campaigning, only this time Mursi won by a clear majority.

And now, President Mursi wanted him on his team.

Haddara wrestled over what to do. His life was in Canada, but Egypt pulled on his heart strings.

Was he meant to sacrifice the good life he’d built here for something that might be bigger in the world? He traveled to Egypt to scope out the situation, but after six weeks — he was also finishing a master’s degree in medical education – he decided he could do the work while based in London.

For a year until July, when Mursi was deposed, he did just that — globe-trotting, writing speeches, setting up interviews for Mursi, and working at the hospital.

When news broke that two young London men had died as terrorists in last January’s attack on an Algerian gas plant, and reports said they’d attended London’s mosque, the media turned to the city’s Muslim community for answers. Often, the calls were directed to Haddara, who’d respond by text, phone or e-mail, often from Cairo, at all hours of the night.

Once asked to comment on whether security agents had dropped the ball on the situation by losing track of the terror suspects years earlier, he offered an olive branch.

“It must be incredibly difficult for law enforcement and intelligence officers to know exactly when to pull the trigger.” he responded in a text from Egypt. “Too early and they are accused of fear-mongering and profiling. Too late . . . and well, this. But their must be a better way.”

His sensitivity and eloquance amid the hysteria surrounding the story was typical of his ability to step back and offer a rounded assessment.

“To me, Wael has always demonstrated his great ability and willingness to help his community — and by community I mean the world community,” said David Hassan, a longtime friend of Haddara. “He makes himself available to help whenever he thinks he can and does a lot of work in interfaith and in disseminating the true picture of Islam in Canada. This (work in Egypt) is an extension of that. He wants to help democracy flourish.”

Hassan says he has learned a lot from his good friend over the years, and he was “fascinated” to learn of Haddara’s other, behind-the-scenes life last year.

“I would ask him about it every time I saw him.”

Haddara was to return to Egypt in July, but things changed quickly with the anti-Mursi protests, he says.

On July 3, the military arrested Mursi and several members of the party. Since then, Haddara has gone from giving advice on media appearances to making them.

He has to, he says; everyone else is in jail.

Since the coup, Haddara has remained in constant communication with contacts in Egypt. He’s worried about former associates, including Mursi. In the wake of the ouster, he’s been all over Twitter and speaking to media and setting up talks at think-tanks and universities.

“My ongoing work is raising awareness about the coup and the abuses urgently happening in Egypt,” he says.

This week, he was booked on an panel about Egypt’s future hosted by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Next week, it’s the PBS show Frontline; the week after, a BBC special.

Asked for an anecdote that left a strong impression, Haddara thinks back to earlier this summer, weeks before the coup.

“June 14 was an exceptionally difficult day — (Egyptian) parliament was dissolved and the military issued a decree allowing them to arrest any civilian,” he starts. “Everyone was in a panic. There was a final TV appearance that night. The anchor opened by saying, ‘difficult day,’ and the president replied, ‘a beautiful day.’ The anchor did a double take: “Really?.” And the president replied, ‘Of course. it’s a day in the service of Egypt, so it must be beautiful.’

The floodgates of emotion that were pent up all day just opened up.”

Haddara doesn’t know what’s next, but says he’s happy he got involved in such groundbreaking events for his birth country.

It was “stressful and frightening,” he says, but the past year dangled unprecedented hope for Egyptians, including his own family still there.

“There were ups and downs — more of the latter. But it was the promise of the outcome, a free democratic Egypt in which people can choose their leaders openly and freely. that kept us going.”

WAEL HADDARA

— Twitter: @waelhaddara & @whaddaramed

— Born: Oct. 25, 1971 in Egypt.

— Moved to Kuwait in 1980 at age 9.

— Immigrated to St. John’s, N.L. in 1986, at 14; started pharmacy degree at Memorial University

— Parents, graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, taught engineering at Memorial.

— Father started Newfoundland’s first mosque for the then 10 Muslim families in St. John’s.

— Considers himself an honourary Newfoundlander, only “without the Screech.”

— Moved to Hamilton to research drug development and design at McMaster University.

— Helped develop a gene therapy device at 20; worked as a pharmacist.

— Married wife Mihad at 23.

— Graduated from Queen’s University medical school in 1999 and moved to London with his wife.

— For years sat on the board of the Muslim Association of Canada and was president for a term.

— Endocrinologist, specialist in thyroid cancer;recently completed his master’s in education. Considering doing a PhD.