How does a guy who spent his career a gazillion storeys in the sky on Wall Street end up helping homeless people on Pandora Avenue?
Well, says John McEown, when he retired to Victoria from New York 30 years ago, his Cadboro Bay church provided a weekly meal at the Upper Room, the forerunner of Our Place.
“I had a big car with a big trunk, so I would bring the lunch.”
There’s more to it than that, of course. There’s the concept of service. There’s the idea that people who are blessed have an obligation to those who aren’t. There’s the joy that comes from helping people you have never met and never will.
McEown, the 94-year-old onetime senior partner in a New York insurance brokerage, has done a lot of helping. Buckets of it, to the Mustard Seed Street Church, the symphony, the United Way, the Victoria Foundation … . Those are just some of the local ones.
He helped create Our Place’s Hand Up program, which guides vulnerable people into steady employment. When the Youth Custody Centre was converted into transitional housing for homeless people last year, he donated $18,000 to “deinstitutionalize” the facility.
“He’s an extremely compassionate man,” says Our Place executive director Don Evans. “He believes in the value of each person.”
It’s why McEown won the Generosity of Spirit Award at the National Philanthropy Day awards — the Oscars of the charity world — at the Victoria Conference Centre on Wednesday night.
It was a day to celebrate the kind of people (350 were on hand Wednesday) who act as the glue that turn a city into a community.
The sheer diversity of the ways in which people contribute was uplifting. There were the kids who feel the rush that comes from doing good. There were the women who put as much effort into running hospital gift shops as the surgeons upstairs put into their work. There were the people in business attire who seem to be at every event where people in business attire are relied upon to pony up. (This isn’t Toronto or Calgary with a corporate headquarters on every street corner. This is a government and military town with a fairly small pool of business leaders, one that is being fished by every non-profit around.)
The other winners:
• Realtor Deedrie Ballard was named Outstanding Fundraising Volunteer for raising more than $10 million for charities ranging from the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, Victoria Hospice Society and Broadmead Care Society to the Victoria Symphony and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Her efforts have ranged from sitting on high-level boards to collecting and washing coats at home to distribute to children in need.
• The Royal Jubilee Hospital Auxiliary took the Outstanding Philanthropic Service Club Award. Some of the 80 volunteers who staff the auxiliary’s two gift shops have done so for more than 30 years.
• Think Communications, a locally owned IT company, won the Corporate Citizenship Award. For the last four years, Think has been a big supporter of the Cycle of Life cycling event, which raises funds for hospice societies on Vancouver Island.
It’s an example of how personal experience plays into such choices: Think president David Saele and his business partner Tony Woods both lost a parent to cancer four days apart in 2013, and were grateful for the hospice palliative care that was available.
• Personal experience also motivated Emma Locke, the winner of the Youth in Philanthropy award for 11- to 18-year-olds.
Emma, 12, and her older sister Kennedy had life-saving heart surgery at B.C. Children’s Hospital. That led Emma to spearhead the “Two Hearts. One Wish” initiative, which has made $4,800 for the Children’s Hospital Foundation through the sale of bracelets.
• The Youth in Philanthropy award for five- to 10-year-olds went to brothers Liam, Ewan and Connor Docherty of Qualicum Beach. In 2015, the boys, who play music in public, not only asked Country Grocer if they could busk outside to raise money for the local emergency shelter, but persuaded the store to match the money they raised. The busking events brought in $1,200. More efforts followed.
Good for them. Good for all of Wednesday’s finalists. It was nice to see them recognized — though as one of the kids from 100 Girls Victoria pointed out, they’re not in it for the recognition; bless their generous hearts.
