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Date Posted: 08:21:22 04/06/09 Mon
MISS WORLD CANADA: Shy Queen's student to take on world after winning national title
Posted By JORDAN PRESS
http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1511627
Donning a white, zip-up hoodie, Lena Ma is unassuming as she walks through the John Deutsch University Centre. The only time she's noticed is when the lens of a photographer's camera is trained on her, forcing a group of young men to stop and look.
The fourth-year Queen's University music and life sciences student has been in front of the camera quite a bit lately after winning one of the country's largest beauty pageants.
"I'm getting used to it," the 21- year-old Ma said with a laugh. "I'm pretty shy."
In December, Ma will head to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she will represent Canada at the Miss World pageant. Two weeks ago, she won the Canadian competition. One day later, she was back in class.
Never in the history of the Miss World pageant has a Canadian won the competition, but Ma is already a trailblazer in one sense. This year, she became the first woman of Chinese origin to win the title of Miss World Canada.
Competing against women from 109 other countries, Ma smiles and says she knows her odds of winning the title are less than 1%.
"I can only do my best," she said.
Ma was born in China, lived for a time in Japan when she was four, and then came to Canada at age nine with her parents, both of whom have doctorate degrees.
She grew up in Toronto and learned English and French to go along with her first language, Mandarin, and Japanese.
When she was 17, her mother, Sherry Yin, decided to enter Ma into the Miss Chinese Toronto competition. Yin figured it would help her daughter shed her normally shy exterior.
Ma won the competition, the first time she had ever been in a pageant.
Ma said that being in the pageant helped her shed some of her shyness.
She didn't enter another competition for years until a friend entered the Miss World Canada pageant and later suggested Ma give it a shot.
Last year, Ma sent in an application for the competition and went through an interview process before landing a spot in the pageant.
"I had never competed in a western pageant before. I thought it would be different," she said.
That fact elicited some nerves when she was one of 45 girls selected for the pageant. In the end, she finished in the top five.
"I thought they would look for someone who looks more Canadian. I didn't think I would make it that far," she said.
This year, she went back and won.
"This year, it's such a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity (to go to Africa)," Ma said. "I really wanted that chance."
Ma said she believed part of her success was exuding more confidence on stage.
Her victory means she'll spend one month in South Africa -- all expenses paid -- receive a year's supply of Revlon hair care products and a personal trainer for the summer.
"I don't know how that's going to work out. I never go to the gym," Ma said with a laugh.
The Miss World competition, founded in 1951, is the oldest surviving international pageant. The telecast of the finals in South Africa is expected to attract viewers from more than 200 countries.
The pageant also expects its contestants to do fundraising. This year, Ma and her fellow Canadian contestants raised more than $25,000 for S. O. S. Children's Villages Canada, an international organization that helps orphaned and abandoned children in more than 130 countries.
That money was on top of the $5,000 Ma and her family helped raise for the charity in 2008.
If she wins the Miss World pageant, Ma said she'll be doing more charity work during the year, and finishing up her life sciences degree. When Ma makes public appearances, she trades in her white hoodie for her Miss World Canada sash and tiara.
The rest of the time, the sash and tiara stay in a drawer at her parents' home in Toronto.
Ma said that in the two weeks since winning the pageant, she really hasn't had a chance to let the win sink in. The soprano singer and honours student said she has been thinking about her graduation recital -- memorizing 13 songs for the one-hour concert -- and her five exams.
- - -
The skinny on Lena
Age: 21
Height: Five-foot-11
Studying: Music and Life Sciences at Queen's University
Speaks: Mandarin, Japanese, English, French
Future plans: Physiotherapist or occupational therapist
Miss World Canada tidbit: Lena Ma wasn't the only Queen's student competing at the pageant this year. First-year student Fay Yachetti, 19, was also in the competition this year.
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