John Wilson McConnell
A Key Philanthropist (1877-1963)

When John Wilson McConnell, owner and retired publisher of the Montreal Star, died in November 1963, Montreal’s rival English newspaper, The Gazette, described him as “one of the world’s great philanthropists.” Its front-page obituary cited his contribution of more than $15 million to McGill University and noted that the Montreal philanthropist had “played a key role in building the institutions in this city.”

Born on July 1 in 1877 to a farming family in Muskoka, Ontario, McConnell left home at 14 to work in Toronto and in less than a decade had moved from his first job that paid $3 a week to one with the Standard Chemical Company that paid him $300 a month by the time he was transferred to Montreal at age 24. Over the next decade, the budding financier gained control of a department store that he later sold to the T. Eaton Company. By 1912 he had obtained control of Montreal’s St. Lawrence Sugar Refineries.

McConnell’s zest for business spilled over into the community. On moving to Montreal in 1901, he roomed at the YMCA, and, when it launched a $320,000 fund-raising appeal in 1909, he organized ten teams that raised half the amount in a 12-day campaign.

During the war he played a key role in helping organize the first two war bond drives and was later appointed Director of Licences for the Wartime Trade Board, a position he filled free of charge, “making him one of the first dollar-a-year men of the Canadian government.”

A farmer's son, John Wilson McConnell was born in Muskoka, Ontario, on July 1, 1877 and went on to become one of Canada's leading businessmen. A key Canadian benefactor, J.W. McConnell's generous gifts to McGill University and to the Montreal Neurological Institute made him "one of the world's greatest philanthropists." [Photo, courtesy The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation]

Following the war, a visionary McConnell was invited to serve on the board of more than 15 corporations, among them the Bank of Montreal, CPR, Sun Life Assurance, International Nickel, Dominion Bridge, Holt Renfrew, and Dominion Rubber. At the same time, community involvement put him on the board of management of the Montreal General Hospital from 1922 to 1937, made him a governor of McGill University in 1927 and of the Royal Victoria Hospital the following year. He remained a governor of McGill for almost 30 years and was instrumental in the building of the Montreal Neurological Institute, the Engineering Building named in his honour, and a residence also named for him.

McConnell’s generosity was not confined to the two hospitals on which he was a board member. He purchased “cobalt bombs” for the Jewish General, Notre Dame, the Hôtel-Dieu hospitals in both Montreal and Quebec City, and another for the Imperial Cancer Campaign. When World War II broke out, Lord Beaverbrook asked McConnell to help finance the training of pilots in the U.S.A. to ferry aircraft across the Atlantic and publicly announced that McConnell had donated a personal cheque for $1 million for the “Wings for Britain” campaign, commonly referred to as the “Spitfire Fund.” A squadron was also named after him. By then he had established the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.

In the postwar years McConnell kept up his generous community support for worthy causes. In her book, Out of Character, Maureen Forrester recalls that McConnell invited her to his office and offered to underwrite her expenses, which over the next three years amounted to some $25,000. When the United Church of Canada announced it needed to expand its facilities for housing elderly people, he spent $1 million for the land and the building of a new home. He also made generous personal donations to the Fraser River and Manitoba Flood Relief Funds and to other appeals publicized in the Montreal Star.

In the early 1950s he underwrote the cost of building a boys and girls club in Montreal’s east end for $400,000. Another at Point St. Charles cost $1 million, and a third was built when he bought the Griffintown Club and converted it into a rehab centre. When he later visited the Point St. Charles Club, he allowed his picture to be taken with a group of youngsters, but not a word of his generosity was ever published in his own newspaper, as he made it clear to his editorial staff that his policy was to shun personal publicity, a fact confirmed by Maureen Forrester, who was told that he would underwrite her expenses on one condition: “I could never tell anyone publicly that he had helped me as long as he was alive.”

With introductions from McGill University Principal F. Cyril James, John W. McConnell, bowing, & Mrs. McConnell, curtsying, are received by Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the Arts Building of McGill University, 1951. J.W. McConnell was a long-time governor and generous benefactor of McGill University. [Photo, courtesy The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation]

At age 87 and in failing health, he died in Montreal. The hundreds of messages of condolence and recollections of a lifetime of achievements and philanthropic generosity included those of Prime Minister L.B. Pearson and former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. But perhaps the greatest tribute had been written years earlier when a labour organization published a profile of him, saying, in part: “Although a rich man, he realizes that wealth is a responsibility and gives the possessor of it an opportunity of helping his fellow men and contributing to their happiness, as well as that of the nation of which they are citizens.”

Mel James