Executors at odds with Cancer Society
Lawyer, nephew suggested some of $2M bequest go into fighting pancreatic cancer but say society wouldn’t listen
TORONTO — The executors of an Ontario man’s will are in a dispute with the Canadian Cancer Society over their request that a major portion of a multimilliondollar bequest to the charity be directed towards research into pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest of all malignancies.
However, the Cancer Society says its policy is to follow a donor’s wishes to the letter, as set out in their will, and has refused to entertain the idea.
Robert Clark, a Kingston entrepreneur who died in 2016 at age 78, bequeathed $12 million to a number of charities, including $2 million to the Canadian Cancer Society. The CCS received half the money last year, and partial disbursements have also been made to the other charities named in his will. In November, co-executors Walter Viner, Clark’s longtime lawyer and best friend, and nephew Jason Clark saw a TV news item about the Pancreatic Cancer Canada Foundation (PCCF) seeking $2 million to fund PancOne, a project aimed at bolstering research into the disease.
The story featured a Torontoarea man, videotaped before his death at 57 from pancreatic cancer, and his plea for donations to provide a “chance at hope” for others. Moved by his story and the desperate outlook for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — only seven per cent survive five years — Viner and Clark contacted the PCCF with the idea of approaching the Cancer Society about a partnership between the two charities to direct some or all of the bequest to PancOne. “Bob would have watched this program and said ’I can help out, I can help out a whole bunch of people by delivering some money to pancreatic cancer,’” said Viner, now a certified executor adviser. For Jason Clark, who worked closely with his uncle for 25 years at St. Lawrence Cruise Lines, one of the companies founded by the elder Clark, a joint research venture seemed a no-brainer.
A Jan. 11 conference call was arranged with Sara Oates, the society’s executive vice-president of finance and operations, during which the executors pitched the idea of a CCS-PCCF partnership to direct at least some of the bequest to pancreatic cancer research. But Clark said the message they received from Oates was essentially “just send us the money and then we’ll have a conversation.”
Oates said bequests are a key component of revenue raised by the Cancer Society and that it’s critical the charity act in accordance with a donor’s specific wishes. “So in this situation, based on the official documentation provided to us, our goal through the whole of this process . . . has been to ensure that we followed the wishes of the donor,” she said.