Margaret McCain announces $8 m donation to Dal

Nova Scotian philanthropist helps build new common area.

Margaret McCain announces a donation of $8 million to Dalhousie University to build a new commons area in the LSC. (Photo: Chelcie Soroka)

Margaret McCain announces a donation of $8 million to Dalhousie University to build a new commons area in the LSC. (Photo: Chelcie Soroka)

Margaret McCain announced a donation of $8 million from her and her late husband, Wallace McCain, to Dalhousie University this morning. 

The donation, part of Dalhousie's Bold Ambitions campaign, will pay for a new common area in the courtyard of the LSC (Life Sciences Centre). The Wallace McCain Learning Commons, in memory of McCain's husband who passed away in May of this year, is expected to be completed in September 2013.

The McCain family, the same McCains that make frozen french fries and partially own Maple Leaf, have a history of philanthropy and are especially interested in education.

McCain, 77, says the commons will be a place for students to "hang out" and "give people a chance to gather and to talk and to interact.

Margaret McCain turns the sod on the site for the new learning commons to be built in the LSC courtyard. (Photo: Chelcie Soroka)

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Margaret McCain turns the sod on the site for the new learning commons to be built in the LSC courtyard. (Photo: Chelcie Soroka)

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An $8 million donation from Margaret McCain will pay for the construction of a new learning commons in the Life Sciences Centre.

"We want the university experience to be far more than a series of appointments because we believe that you learn a lot more outside the classroom then you do in it. You have to give young people the space and the place."

McCain has donated to Dalhousie previously, along with Mount Allison University, the University of New Brunswick and St. Francis Xavier University. She was the first female Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick.

In addition to education, she has a strong interest in early childhood development and, with her husband, founded the Margaret & Wallace McCain Family Foundation.

"There's satisfaction in being able to make a difference in people's lives," says McCain.

"My husband always said it was more fun to give it away then to make it, and that's exactly what we're doing. We're rolling back the fruits of his labours into society and most of it to universities and hospitals."

McCain says any tax benefits she receives from making large donations will be put towards future donations.
 
New learning commons will improve LSC

President of Dalhousie Dr. Tom Traves says the commons will "create essentially, an intellectual and social centre for the university.

"This has worked out brilliantly in the Killam Library and we want to extend this across the university. No space cries out for a better social space and enhanced learning environment than the Life Sciences Centre."

The new commons will have comfortable seating along with a living wall, aquariums, a rock wall and a green roof -- features designed to be environmentally friendly as well as teaching tools.

After announcing her donation, McCain, using a golden shovel, turned the sod in a patch of grass in the courtyard of the LSC. The courtyard, rarely used and connecting the four buildings of the LSC, is the site of the new commons. Construction will begin in April 2012. 

Donations may come at a cost 

Justin Barbati is a second year student studying marine biology. He says he feels the donation will make a big difference to the LSC. "To a multi-million dollar university it may not be as big a deal but I guess if they're concentrating it on the life sciences, then I think it'll make a difference."

But Barbati has some reservations about the injection of cash. "I don't like that donations are essentially coming from a huge multi-national corporation. A lot of the problems that we're working on here in the Life Sciences Centre have to do with sustainability. I think it's always sort of been like this when big buildings are named after famous people -- it usually comes back to the smaller people like us not really agreeing with it, just based on the fact that all the money is coming from this corporation that we don't necessarily support."

He says the companies and the people making the donations may be working against what students and staff are working towards.
 
McCain hinted at donating more money to universities in the future, but gave no details.

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