Forty million dollars. This is the largest donation amount ever received by the University of Montreal and which was unveiled this week. In fact, it is the largest donation ever received by a French-speaking university in North America. The amount marks the spirits and gives the measure of the progress made since the time when French-speaking Quebecers were perceived as being “born for a small loaf”. It opens a door that has never been opened before in Francophone university philanthropy. A door which, we hope, will be used by other patrons.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
This record donation was paid in equal parts by Quebecor and the Chopin-Péladeau Foundation and will be used to further expose our students to entrepreneurship and to support their projects. This is a declaration of confidence in the Université de Montréal and the Quebec university world. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the place that philanthropy – both exceptional and small donations – should occupy in the development of our universities.
Universities are an exceptional vehicle for deploying human potential. A space where, to paraphrase the writer Mathieu Bélisle, we appropriate “ideals that tear us away from ourselves”. Where we discover “the taste of vertigo” 1 and where the will to take risks is nurtured. Generations of women and men have thus acquired in our universities knowledge, expertise, and a sense of the common good that have been put to the service of the emergence of the strong and prosperous Quebec of today.
Likewise, youth in 2022 have great challenges ahead of them. She has big dreams too, and we want – we must – empower her to bring her ideas to fruition. The philanthropic support of our graduates is one of the keys to this project. The historical gift of the Péladeau family and Quebecor is a rich example. It will serve to sow the seeds of new businesses and sustain their momentum so that they, in turn, contribute to the economic, cultural, social and scientific development of Québec. These companies may come from all sectors of the University because good ideas flourish everywhere on our campuses and entrepreneurship is irreducible to the idea of financial profit. It can also be a vehicle for social justice and sharing.
In all our faculties, we have the ideas, the expertise, the technology – and now, the means – to bring out a new generation of committed, honest and responsible entrepreneurs, for the greater good of Quebec.
It must be said, because the opposite is sometimes asserted: philanthropy, regardless of its scale, never grants donors the power to interfere in scientific life. Strict rules ensure that it always respects the fundamental principle of academic freedom. And it should also be remembered that philanthropy in no way replaces public funding. It allows, not to do better what we already do, but to do something else, to dream a little and get out of our ordinary. It is an essential complement to the realization of projects that we choose, through which our students and our researchers can deploy their full potential. It is also a base from which our establishments will be able to compete with the best in the world.
Don’t settle for the ordinary
Precisely, what are our ambitions for the major universities of Quebec? Do we want our youth to have access to world-class training? Do we want our research environments to continue to produce discoveries that promote Quebec engineering around the world? Do we want Quebec to be seen as a hub of knowledge, a destination for the best minds in the world? Yes !
We enjoy, in Quebec, and at the University of Montreal in particular, exceptional expertise in areas such as artificial intelligence, human and animal life sciences, ecological transition and green technologies, public policies and democracy, identity issues, design or astrophysics. Every day, the research teams and the student population of the University of Montreal contribute to the international influence of Quebec as one of the largest French-language universities in the world. It is imperative to challenge the idea that the destiny of Quebec and its French-language universities is to settle for the ordinary. We have what it takes to play in the big leagues.
“I believe that those who have received a lot must give back a lot,” said the founder of Quebecor, Pierre Péladeau. He was quite right. Quebec can and must have great ambitions. We will only need the will to go beyond ourselves, with the support of our graduates and our friends.
Today, the University of Montreal has more friends than yesterday. And I bet tomorrow she’ll have more than today.
1. Mathieu Belisle, Welcome to the land of ordinary lifeLemeac, 2018