February 13, 2019, was an historic day for McGill, and for philanthropy in Canada. McGill alumnus and volunteer John McCall MacBain, BA’80, LLD’14, together with his wife Dr. Marcy McCall MacBain, made an extraordinary gift of $200 million to create a landmark new scholarship program. It is the single-largest gift in Canadian history.
The McCall MacBain Scholarships at McGill will provide outstanding students who want to pursue a master’s or professional degree with a comprehensive package of support, covering tuition and fees, living expenses, mentorship and advising, retreats, workshops, and internships. This makes them the most generous graduate-level scholarships in the country.
Canada’s former Governor General and former McGill Principal, the Right Honourable David Johnston, calls the McCall MacBain Scholarships “a remarkable contribution to education in Canada, giving the country its place in the world as a nation of knowledge and innovation. It is also an initiative that promotes equality of educational opportunity.”
The McCall MacBains have been longtime supporters of McGill and deeply influential patrons of higher education around the world. Through their foundation, they have given generously to the Mandela Rhodes Scholarships in South Africa, the Kupe Leadership Scholarships at the University of Auckland, and the Loran Scholars Foundation in Canada. In 2013, they committed £75 million to the Rhodes Trust in Oxford to help fund the Rhodes Scholarships and aid in the program’s global expansion.
Following are excerpts from a recent interview with John and Marcy McCall MacBain.
As someone who has been giving back to McGill since your time as a student, what are your views on volunteering?
John: Marcy and I have always believed that it’s important to give back to one’s community. There are many different ways to contribute.
McGill allowed me to get involved in various leadership positions. I just took advantage of that. I started with volunteering at Welcome Week. Then I got involved in Winter Carnival, and later on I was elected president of the McGill University Students’ Society. While I was in that position, a new principal – David Johnston – was appointed. So I met him and took him down to the Château Champlain Hotel for lunch. The student council paid.
Now I serve as Chair of the Principal’s International Advisory Board (PIAB). It’s a fascinating group, with people from all over the world. We provide guidance on several long term projects and offer the Principal some perspective of how these issues are being tackled by organizations in other parts of the world.
Why did you choose to establish the scholarship program at McGill?
John: As graduates of Canada's publicly-funded university system, Marcy and I know firsthand how universities like McGill can reduce social barriers and foster talent at the highest of levels. I received my undergraduate degree as a scholarship student at McGill and it truly changed my trajectory. We are confident that, with its combination of academic excellence and global reach, McGill is an institution where even more exceptional students can realize the aspirations they have for themselves and for the welfare of others.
Another thing that appealed to us was the importance of interdisciplinary studies at McGill and the openness among faculties. As today’s world problems become more complex, that openness is very important. Montreal is an important factor too. If you look at the QS rankings, this is an enormously attractive city for students. It is exciting. It is relatively affordable.
I should also mention that it has been fun and easy to work with McGill on this. That is the truth.
What is your vision for the McCall MacBain Scholarships?
John: We have been involved in scholarship programs internationally for the past 12 years through our foundation. We felt that now was the time to take what we’ve learned and use that to build something new.
We want to make this the program that will really attract students who have the best potential for the future. In the end, if we have the best program at an excellent university, and are able to reach deep into communities to find those students, we think this will help McGill produce some future leaders. In 100 years, we might have 7,000 alumni of this scholarship. That would be a good pool to come back and mentor our students, but also to become alumni leaders around the world and help McGill and Montreal. So we’re putting in a lot of effort into that.
I hope one day, it will be a McCall MacBain Scholar who becomes the high school teacher who makes a difference in the lives of his or her students; a McCall MacBain Scholar who becomes the professor of mathematics who propels the field forward. Some of these scholars will be coming from around the world, so maybe someday there will be a McCall MacBain Scholar at the UN who finds ways to improve the lives of people in Afghanistan.
Why did you choose to have these scholarships support graduate students?
Marcy: From my time at university, I know what it feels like to come out of an undergraduate degree with school debt. You feel that the possibilities are more limited because there is pressure to pay back your student loans. It’s something that can change your decisions, especially when it comes to expensive degrees.
This is an important moment in the learning journey. We want to help people be more limitless in these decisions. We want to free them up, so that they can focus more clearly on what they want to do next. We want to encourage people to take that extra leap, to accelerate their learning.
What is a key lesson you have learned in working with other leading scholarship programs?
John: One of the things we have learned is that it’s often not the errors you make in the selection room that are important; it’s the people who didn’t even make it into the room for an interview. It’s important to cast a wide net.
The success of the scholarship is only going to be as good as the scholars we attract. And we must make a committed effort to find those who really deserve an opportunity and may not have been given one before.
Marcy: We are setting up selection committees – eight to 12 of them – across Canada. And, over time, we’ll be creating another six to 10 selection committees in different parts of the world. The idea is to work really hard on the selection process.
We’ll be working with people on the committees to really focus on detecting potential. It might not always be the most predictable candidates. We’ll be looking for hidden gems. We fundamentally believe that talent is everywhere, but opportunities are not.
Learn more about the McCall MacBain Scholars at McGill.
