Financial Post/Canoe: Red Hat donor sets charity example

“The announcement last week that Joyce Young, a woman whom few
had ever heard about before, gave $40-million to the Hamilton
Community Foundation should shame wealthy Canadians into taking
similar action.”

“When her entrepreneurial nephew, Robert Young, sought
start-up money Mrs. Young contributed to the launch of Red Hat
Inc., a software company based in Durham, North Carolina. In turn,
he gave her shares in Red Hat when it went public last summer.
After prices skyrocketed, she donated those 400,000 shares to the
Hamilton, Ont. foundation. ‘It was frightening to be able to
make so much money when there are people who are hungry, and others
in line for cancer treatment,’ she said.”

“All of the other recent large donations by individual Canadians
and corporations pale by comparison to Mrs. Young’s unselfish
largesse. Peter Munk, chairman of Barrick Gold Corp., gave
$6-million and had a cardiac centre named after him at Toronto
Hospital. Joe Rotman, chief executive of Clairvest Group Inc., and
Seymour Schulich, chair and chief executive of Franco-Nevada Mining
Corp. Ltd., each donated about $15-million and in return had
business schools named in their honour at University of Toronto and
York University respectively. These are sizeable sums, to be sure,
but they are no match for Mrs. Young’s gift. She gave away
everything she had as soon as that money came into her hands. “

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