ENHANCING THE WORLD THROUGH PUBLIC POLICY
Photography: (Opposite page) Nicola Betts; Victoria Alumni Office
David and Ann Wilson Honour Family Ties with a Vic One Professorship David Wilson Vic 6T8 laughs when he says his family’s fondest memories of Vic begin in the library. Victoria University’s E.J. Pratt Library was where David’s parents, William Vic 4T1 and Margaret (Lavery) Vic 4T1 first met in 1940. In the 1960s, David and his brother Kenneth, a U of T pre-med student, spent countless hours in the same stacks trying to boost their grades after David convinced Kenneth to pledge a fraternity. “My brother’s grades suffered and I felt responsible,” says David, former chair of the Ontario Securities Commission and vice chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia from 2002 to 2005. “From January until April exams, we went to the Vic library every night and then to Wymilwood for hot chocolate.” The plan worked. Kenneth Wilson got into medicine and David graduated with top grades. Generations of fond campus memories are a big part of the reason why David and his sister, Ann Wilson Vic 7T2, have made two significant donations to Victoria University. In 2004 they established The William and Margaret Wilson Bursary for Vic One students in financial need. This year, they created the David and Ann Wilson Professorship in Public Policy and Society in the Lester B. Pearson Stream in the Vic One program. Their gift of $750,000 was paired with special, one-time Vic funding to create a $1-million endowment. “Our family has such happy memories of Vic,” explains Ann. The Vic One professorship will help to attract a top scholar or public policy expert and ensure the University’s ability to deliver exceptional learning experiences for today’s first-year students and the generations that follow. “The Vic One program is outstanding and a model for every other college at U of T. It makes you venture beyond the narrow confines of a single discipline to provide a real breadth of understanding,” says Ann. Launched in 2003, the Vic One program features small group seminars, lectures, tutorials and informal conversations enriched by weekly plenary sessions with guest professors, visiting artists, writers, ambassadors and other public figures. Each of the five streams is named after distinguished Vic alumni and is focused on the study of literature, arts, public service, education and science. Ann and David chose to invest in the Lester B. Pearson Stream, named in honour of the former Canadian prime
Ann Wilson and her brother David Wilson in front of Old Vic.
minister and focused on the life of public service and responsible citizenship. The siblings have a strong sense of social responsibility and interest in the ability of good public decision-making to shape peoples’ lives. David is in his ninth year of service on the University of Toronto’s Governing Council and Ann is a lawyer who spent most of her career with the Government of the Province of Ontario, most recently at the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs, specializing in federal-provincial relations. Both David and Ann volunteer as president’s advisors to Vic’s Imagination Unbound campaign. “That these are two Vic grads with strong interest and involvement in public policy makes it even better,” says President Paul Gooch of the gift from the Wilsons. “Ann and David care about the issues that engage Pearson students. In this way they will help carry on the Vic tradition of public service.” This fall, Gooch will strike an advisory committee to recruit a senior Vic fellow or U of T faculty member who can assume the Wilson professorship, beginning in September 2013. “We’d like to think that we’ll be graduating more students whose eyes have been opened to the relationships among people in society,” says Ann of her investment. David agrees. “We want to enable smart, young people to enhance the world through public policy. Enhancing the store of knowledge can only make our world a better place.” vic report autumn 2012
7