Larry O'Brien (Canadian politician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Lawrence Robert O'Brien
Larry O'Brien
58th Mayor of Ottawa 2nd Mayor of the new city
In office December 1, 2006 – 2010
Preceded by	Bob Chiarelli
Born	July 19, 1949 (1949-07-19) (age 60) Ottawa, Canada
Political party	Conservative Party of Canada
Spouse(s)	Debbie O'Brien (Divorced) Colleen McBride (married)[1]
Religion	Roman Catholic[2]

Larry O'Brien (born July 19, 1949 in Ottawa) is the current mayor of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is also a current director of Calian Technologies^[3] and its former CEO and chairman.^[4]

Born Lawrence Robert O'Brien^[5], O'Brien attended Elmdale Public School, Fisher Park High School, and graduated from Merivale High School in 1968. He studied at Algonquin College School of Technology and graduated with a diploma in Technology in 1972. After graduating from Algonquin College, O'Brien decided to work in the high technology sector that was taking off, and there met Terry Matthews and Michael Cowpland. He then joined Microsystems International Ltd. In 1975 he worked for the Communications Research Centre and Motorola Communications. O'Brien finally decided to launch his first company, called Insta-Call Ltd., which went bankrupt in 1979. From then to 1982, he was the general manager of reliability-testing firm Reltek Inc. in Kanata, subsequently leaving to open Calian Technologies Ltd.

O'Brien sat on the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Science and Technology (ACST), and was chair or co-chair of the Regional Economic Diversification Opportunities (REDO), the Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade (SAGIT) on Information Technologies and Telecommunications and the Canadian Advanced Technology Association (CATA).

O'Brien was the 1996 Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade's Business Person of the Year, the 1997 recipient of the Premier's Award for Technology, the co-chair of Saint Vincent Hospital's capital campaign in 2004 which achieved the goal of raising $ 7.5 million, the United Way Community builder of 2006 award along with his ex-wife Debbie O'Brien (née Green^[6] and its former CEO and chairman.^[4]. He married Debbie in 1983 and they had two sons, Michael and Matthew. After divorcing his first wife, O'Brien married in 2008, real estate agent Colleen McBride.^[1]