COLTON LEWIS: PHILANTHROPIST

There is but one objective for Colton Lewis — to ensure Brett Wiese's name lives on.

Wiese's young life was tragically cut short when he was stabbed at a house party three years ago. Lewis, also injured in the attack, survived and, through the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business, helped initiate the Brett Wiese Memorial Scholarship fund.

For his tireless endeavours toward that aim, Lewis was in 2016 handed the Outstanding Youth Philanthropist Award among Calgary's Generosity of Spirit honourees.

“The biggest thing was being able to honour Brett,” Lewis said. “Shed a positive light on such a tragic situation. A lot of the media surrounding the incident has been based on the trial and the actual incident itself. Being able to talk about Brett in a positive light was huge for all of us. For me, that was the biggest thing.”

Creating the endowment was a natural move for Lewis.

“Absolutely,” he said. “It was obvious the second I woke up from the hospital that this is one of the things we were going to try to do. The university made it all possible, they were the ones that made it happen so quickly because they put so many resources toward it.”

He says as an endowment, it will be awarded every year in perpetuity.

“It allows Brett to live on with the university forever, too.”

Lewis, who now works for an oil and gas company, was born in Calgary, went to a hockey academy on the coast and then returned to attend university. His aim is to see this award become even more wide reaching.

“We've been able to get quite a bit of additional traction on the scholarship itself,” he said.

“Ultimately, the goal is to get it to $1 million so that we can have a new student coming to the university and a new student graduating every year under Brett's name. So we'll have four students underneath that scholarship. It's always going to grow.”