What a great story.
CAMH reveals identity of megadonor who has given $200-million to the hospital
Bruce McKean, father-in-law of Shopify’s CEO, has finally been identified for his generosity to mental health care in Canada
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A few years ago, out of the blue, a guy e-mailed the CAMH Foundation, the group that raises funds for Canada’s biggest mental-health institution, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He said he was
thinking of donating some money.
After giving him a tour of the sprawling CAMH campus on Toronto’s Queen Street West, a guide asked him what sum he had in mind. Fifty million dollars, he said. That got everyone’s attention.
Since that first visit, he has donated more than $200-million – the most, the foundation believes, anyone has ever given to the cause of mental health in Canada.
Around the corridors of CAMH, he became a legend. But he was a legend without a name. He didn’t want his name on a plaque or a building. His mother had always told him: “Your reward will be in heaven.”
For years, the donor’s identity was a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of higher-ups. To ensure his privacy, they referred to him only as Anonymous. In e-mails, they shortened it to Anon.
They can stop speaking in code now. On Thursday, CAMH revealed the identity of its silent benefactor. His name is Bruce McKean, and he is the furthest thing from a typical big-time donor.
For years, Mr. McKean's identity was a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of higher-ups at CAMH.SAMMY KOGAN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Mr. McKean, who is 78 and favours lumberjack shirts and jeans
, grew up in modest circumstances in postwar Victoria. The family of five ate a lot of cabbage and boiled potatoes.
The bright young Mr. McKean decided he wanted to be like Lester Pearson, the diplomat who later became prime minister, and win the Nobel Prize.
After a stint in the Naval Reserve, then a couple of years doing development work overseas, he joined Canada’s foreign service, serving in New Delhi, Bangkok and finally Cairo. When his infant daughter Fiona became gravely ill in Egypt and almost died, he and his wife, Dale, also a diplomat, decided to return to the safer shores of Canada.
He took a job in the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, then jumped to the private sector, travelling the world for international mining companies. But the family was hardly rich. They lived in a big old house in Ottawa that tilted slightly because of a poor foundation.
It was a video game that changed his life. Mr. McKean was into Asheron’s Call, a fantasy role-playing game released in 1999. His daughter played, too. She went as Fiona Pendragon. He called himself Basil Fawlty.
It was played all over the world, and Fiona met some German guys through the game. One of them was named Tobias.
They became a couple. Eventually she went to Germany to be with him. When she came home to Canada, he came with her.
Her parents took them in. Tobi, a software guy, set up in Fiona’s childhood bedroom. He decided to start an online snowboard store, but all the sites he visited for help with internet sales were lousy. He thought: I can do better than this.
Mr. McKean helped with startup expenses for Tobi’s new company. “In return,” he recalled, “I got a piece of paper, and that piece of paper turned into shares and those shares turned into money.”
A lot of money. He had become one of the original investors in Shopify. The Ottawa-based online-sales giant led by Tobias Lütke is now worth more than $100-billion.
Mr. McKean and his wife suddenly had a problem, if an enviable one: They had more money than they could spend in several lifetimes. The solution was simple: Give it away. But to what cause?
Mr. McKean had witnessed the devastation caused by mental illness up close. His uncle, his brother-in-law and his cousin’s husband had died by suicide. He set up a charitable foundation, Waverley House, that since 2017 has given millions to organizations from the University of Victoria to the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre.
The case he knew best was his godson’s. Dale had studied Farsi at university in California. She became close friends with an Iranian who would go on to become a leading scientist. Years later, when the 1979 Islamic Revolution erupted, Bruce and Dale helped him escape with his family to Canada, where they eventually moved into a house just down the street.
The two families became intertwined. They celebrated all the big holidays together, both Canadian and Persian. The scientist’s three kids – two daughters and a son – were always over at Bruce and Dale’s place.
Mr. McKean became godfather to the boy, a smart, curious kid who loved caring for the many family pets – gerbils, chicks, fish, cats, a rabbit, a succession of dogs.
But in high school he started going off the rails. He experimented with drugs. He got mixed up with a bad crowd.
It was the start of a hellish ordeal familiar to countless families with members who suffer from complex mental illnesses. For years, the son was in and out of jail, in and out of hospital, on and off the streets. As his godfather, Mr. McKean often stepped up to help, dealing with police, parole officers, emergency room doctors.
Finally, a few years ago, his godson was admitted to CAMH for treatment. He stayed for months, and it made a big difference. Today, at 47, he lives in an Ottawa group home, still ill but off the streets.
A grateful Mr. McKean approached CAMH. He ended up giving not $50-million but $100-million. His 2018 donation went toward funding research. The second $100-million, announced at a news conference Thursday, will help pay for two buildings: the Temerty Discovery Centre and a new forensic psychiatry building.
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The new CAMH buildings that are benefiting from Mr. McKean's donations are under construction and will be completed by 2029.SAMMY KOGAN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
The first, expected to open in 2027, will give researchers a modern new home for their work. The second, to open in 2029, will replace the overcrowded, outdated building where patients who have run afoul of the law receive care. They will have a light-filled living space, their own bathrooms and better access to shared rooms for therapy and exercise.
That should help those who Mr. McKean calls the hardest cases in mental health, some of whom have committed violent crimes while suffering through terrifying delusions. Whatever they have done, they need someone to help them, he said. “We aspire to be human beings. How can we not?”
When they are committed to hospital instead of jail, he said, “it shouldn’t be a life sentence.” The aim “is recovery – ending the pain, finding stability.”
Cheers and whoops rang out when CAMH leaders introduced Mr. McKean Thursday. Fiona laid her head on her dad’s shoulder.
Why is he taking his mask off now? To send a message. These days, he said, we can see the crisis in mental health all around us – on sidewalks, in parks, on buses and subways. When he walks around downtown Toronto, “there are people on the streets that I recognize, because my godson was one of them.”
But he still isn’t putting his name on any buildings. Like his foundation
, the forensic facility will be called Waverley House, after the street in Ottawa where his family lived for three decades, where his son-in-law dreamed up Shopify and where a beautiful young boy who loved animals once played.
Editor’s note: The headline of this article has been updated to clarify that the total value of Bruce McKean’s donations to CAMH to date is $200-million.
