Diamond pioneer donates $9M to target Alzheimer’s
Charles Fipke makes huge gift to UBC, moved by plight of friend and former premier Bill Bennett
The University of British Columbia’s quest to understand Alzheimer’s disease is being bolstered by gifts totalling more than $9 million from Kelowna’s Charles Fipke.
Fipke’s geological discoveries made Canada one of the world’s leading producers of diamonds.
On Tuesday, the university announced Fipke has given $3 million to endow a professorship dedicated to Alzheimer’s research, and has pledged $600,000 to outfit the professor’s lab with cutting-edge equipment at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, a partnership between the UBC Faculty of Medicine and Vancouver Coastal Health.
He has also committed $5.5 million to support the purchase of the most novel and coveted brain imaging technology.
Fipke was moved to make the gifts by the plight of longtime friend Bill Bennett, former premier of B.C., who suffers from Alzheimer’s. His son Brad expressed the Bennett family’s gratitude at a ceremony honouring Fipke’s philanthropy.
“Our family is incredibly grateful to Chuck Fipke for this generous donation to Alzheimer’s research and we are very moved by his reasons for doing it,” Brad Bennett said. “The end game has to be to find a cure for this. We still don’t know what causes this disease, and there are far too many people afflicted with it and far too many families like ours suffering the horrible consequences.
“They say with Alzheimer’s patients you say goodbye twice, the first of those being the most difficult because you’re saying goodbye to the person you knew and loved while they are still alive.”
UBC President Dr. Arvind Gupta said Fipke is putting UBC at the global forefront of Alzheimer’s research. “Investing in the most creative, dedicated and determined scientists, and putting the most sophisticated technology at their fingertips is the surest means to making breakthroughs against this disease,” Gupta said.
Dr. Haakon Nygaard, the new Fipke Professor in Alzheimer’s Research, has joined the Faculty of Medicine from the Yale School of Medicine.
Fipke also pledged funds for a machine that combines positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The PET-MRI will enable Nygaard and other scientists to conduct studies that wouldn’t be possible using two machines separately.
“I was stunned to learn about Bill Bennett’s illness – yet another great mind stricken by Alzheimer’s,” Fipke said. “I want to do anything I can to help UBC’s researchers find a cure.”
A UBC alumnus, Fipke had previously given $8.7 million to the university, mostly for buildings and equipment at UBC’s Okanagan campus.