By Robert Bostelaar, Ottawa Citizen | Link to Article
Four decades later, the Ottawa technology entrepreneur-turned-public servant has recorded a song about his journey and the country he says so warmly adopted him. Its unabashed title: Thank You, Merci Canada.
By Robert Bostelaar, Ottawa Citizen | Link to Article
Four decades later, the Ottawa technology entrepreneur-turned-public servant has recorded a song about his journey and the country he says so warmly adopted him. Its unabashed title: Thank You, Merci Canada.
“I’ve been here 40 years and owned a business and wanted to do something, but I never had the ability or courage,” Vu explained this week. “In the end I said ‘I’m a musician, so why not write a song about it and put it on YouTube?’”
He clarifies: “I’m not really a professional musician. Just a hobbyist musician.”
Hung Vu, born Vũ Tiết Hùng (his family name comes first) is a modest man.
The business he owned was Milkyway Networks, one of Ottawa’s early-Internet corporate stars. After Milkyway was sold in 1998, Vu had roles in other fast-arcing tech firms — Third Brigade was one — and for the past six years he has been a senior IT security specialist for the federal government.
And his music hobby? Vu began composing songs as a teenager, writing in Vietnamese, French and English to embrace, he says, different tastes and styles. He plays classical and rock guitar and bass guitar. He was in the bands Les Lunettes and Viva, big in the Vietnamese communities of Montreal and Ottawa.