All of us, especially Wall, owe Jim Pattison a heartfelt thank you
To entrepreneurial giant Jim Pattison, there are but two words appropriate after his $50-million donation to Saskatchewan’s new children’s hospital, now to be named in his honour. Thank you.
His largest-single-donation-in-Saskatchewan-history Tuesday in the city in which he was born — one coming on the heels of a largest-ever-in-Canada medical donation of $75 million to Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Foundation two months ago — speaks to the 88-year-old billionaire’s willingness to give back after a life of hard-fought success.
Perhaps no one has a louder thank you than Premier Brad Wall.
For starters, it is an important component of Wall’s narrative to say he and his Saskatchewan Party government can reach out to the business elite — with whom Wall is said to be too cosy — and encourage them to give back. And they don’t come more elite than Jim Pattison.
He was born in Saskatoon and spent his childhood in Luseland, where his father owned a car dealership. When it failed during the Depression, the Pattisons moved to Vancouver, where Jim Pattison built his vast fortune.
The Jim Pattison Group has annual sales of $9.6 billion, employing some 42,000 people in automotive (he got his start as a car dealer), advertising, media (including The Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! and 22 radio and television outlets), oil, coal (Westshore Terminals is this continent’s biggest coal exporter), forestry (Canfor is Canada’s largest logging company), fishing (Canadian Fishing Company is Canada’s largest salmon canner), agriculture, financing and real estate.
Pattison’s empire hasn’t been without controversy. Pattison was one of the major beneficiaries of the B.C. government rolling back its labour and environment laws. His companies have given tens of thousands to the B.C. Liberals annually. Pattison companies have been known to donate to the Sask. Party.
But there are now 50 million reasons why Saskatchewan people should be thankful Pattison has never forgotten where he came from. For this, Wall especially should be eternally grateful. This massive donation has just provided credibility to a Wall centrepiece project that might have otherwise been headed for another political controversy.
With STC and everything else right up to the tent caterpillar infestation (yes, cities say they’ve cut back on spraying budgets) this week alone, Wall has been desperate for a political win. The last thing the Sask. Party needed was suspicion that building — let along running — a credible children’s hospital was just another Wall pipe dream.
Pattison’s donation will go a long way toward making sure the children’s hospital is exactly that. His money will be used for specialized equipment, pediatric and maternal newborn fellowships, a pediatric endowment research fund and operating cost fund endowment.
For this, everyone in the province should be thankful.
But we likely should be especially grateful for the unsung efforts of Saskatchewan Children’s Hospital Foundation (now called Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital Foundation) president and CEO Brynn Boback-Lane. She not only had the moxie to go before the board of the Pattison Group and request $50 million for the naming rights, but the skills to put forward a compelling argument as to why they should receive such a huge donation.
“It was never considered or discussed,” Boback-Lane said, when asked if her foundation would have taken less money.
To the credit of the Sask. Party government, the proposal to Pattison was done in co-ordination with Health Minister Jim Reiter’s office, who was part of the final bid presentation about three months ago. Notwithstanding the massive size of the requested donation, and the competition for charitable funding, Boback-Lane was successful.
“As you can well imagine, fundraising is not easy,” Boback-Lane said. “You get more ‘nos’ than ‘yeses.’ ”
However, Boback-Lane said it’s critical to believe in what you are doing and the strength of their sizable, well-timed request to a man clearly thinking about his own legacy.
It’s a clear, rare win-win, one for which Wall — and all of us — should be thankful.