Cancer research meets theatre for Montreal charity

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Barry Cole is the president and chairman of the Montreal-based Cole Foundation, a foundation his Uncle Jack founded in 1980 to honour Jack’s daughter, who died of leukemia in 1967.

Today, the foundation’s two mandates would be “unrecognizable” to Uncle Jack, according to Barry, but he says that his uncle would be equal measures proud and bemused by what the foundation stands for.

While the foundation has now evolved to fund theatre projects that encourage racial and cultural tolerance in Montreal, its original mandate to fund cancer research remains strong.

“As was the intent of its founder Jack Cole, the Cole Foundation has a very targeted mission in health and research in pediatric and young adult leukemia and lymphomas,” says Pierre Chartrand, the retired scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and a member of the foundation’s board.

“By concentrating its efforts on supporting the establishment of new researchers in this field, the Cole Foundation has been able to achieve significant impact in helping create a critical mass of researchers and clinical scientists in this area.”

The origins of the foundation are as simple and straightforward as its mandates – Jack Cole wanted to help someone he loved, and he had the means to do it. Here, Barry explains how the family became involved in the foundation, and what challenges they faced along the way, including what to do if he gets “taken down by a bus” and has to pass the reins on to someone else.

How did your foundation or philanthropic initiatives first come to be?

“My uncle, JN (Jack) Cole, started the foundation in 1980 when he retired from business. He was vice-chair of Wood Gundy. His daughter, my cousin, had died in 1967 of leukemia.

When he retired, he wanted something to do. His wife had passed away, his daughter had passed away, he was by himself, and so he set up a foundation for pediatric oncology/hematology, for hospitals across the country, in particular looking at leukemia as an issue.

Then there was a semicolon in the mandate, and after the semicolon it said, essentially, ‘And anything else the board director sees fit to do, as long as he can get a tax receipt.’ This was 1980. I don’t know if the government would allow something that open-ended now.

So, the first half of the mandate concentrated on medicine, and he set up a chair for pediatric oncology/hematology at McGill University with the medical faculty there.

On the second half of the mandate, it really became a vehicle for his own philanthropy, and was far and wide.

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He went to the symphony, so he gave a grant to the symphony. He didn’t go to the opera, so he didn’t give a grant to the opera.

He was panhandled coming out of his office, so he gave money to the Old Brewery Mission and the Salvation Army.

It was idiosyncratic. It was far and wide. There was no philosophy behind it, as such. It was simply, ‘What do I want to support, and how can I support it?’ I call it shotgun philanthropy.”

How have the philanthropic initiatives evolved?

“Jack asked me to join the board in the late-1990s. I was living in Victoria at the time, so I would fly in for the Annual General Meeting. He had one meeting a year, basically, covering ‘This is what we have done with the money. Say yes; don’t ask any questions.’ It was always over lunch, so you could say, ‘Could I have another glass of wine? Will you pass the salt?’ But that was essentially it.

He passed away in 2004, and his secretary, who was then managing the foundation, passed away in 2006, and the board asked me to take on the presidency shortly thereafter, in 2007.

Now, my background has not been in medicine. It’s been in performing arts management, so I’ve worked in the non-profit sector all my life. I’ve been an impresario, I’ve managed a symphony orchestra, I’ve worked with the Canada Council in the music section, and I’ve managed theatre companies.

… Working in the non-profit sector is comfortable for me. Working in a foundation is very comfortable, because when you manage an orchestra, you’re looking for money. When you work with the Canada Council, you’re receiving requests for money, and you have to analyze applications. So, my interest was in saying, ‘What is the policy around what we’re giving money for?’”

And how did you reconcile your non-profit experience with the future of the foundation at that point?

“What you find is that Montreal gives money to [hundreds of] organizations. So, which one is more important, and how do you decide which one to fund? That’s a big challenge. I said, ‘We have to have a focus; we have to have a policy – to have a question to solve or to address.’

And, at that time, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission was in session in Quebec, looking at the reasonable accommodation of immigrants into Quebec society. One of the statements in the report from the commissioners was that Quebecers were not welcoming to immigrants to the degree that they should be, and so immigrants were becoming ghettoized. And so, I asked, ‘How do you break down the ghetto?’”

“Coming from the arts community, I said, ‘Well, theatre is stories. If I can tell you my story, or have you tell me your story, then I can be a little more enlightened about your cultural history, your background, the joys and the sorrows of your family life, whatever it happens to be.’ And so, on the second half of the mandate, we decided to set up a theatre program, to fund plays that are to be presented in Montreal, that showed different cultures on stage.”

Where did you go from forming the questions to solutions?

“When I talked to the theatre companies, one of the things I said to them was, ‘What are the names of [some culturally representative plays]?’ No one could name any plays, so I decided we would commission new plays, and translate the plays into French or into English, coming from wherever the people were writing and sharing them. So, we set up this theatre program for intercultural dialogue, which preceded the government, the province, or the municipality, having any program for diversity.’

We have funded, now, over 200 productions in Montreal, and 80 or 90 new plays have been commissioned with our money, and 80 or 90 plays have been translated with our money. So, we’ve developed a repertoire in this whole area.”

What about bringing the first half of the mandate into the future?

“On the first half of the mandate, which was the pediatric and young adult leukemia/lymphoma, we brought together the senior administrators of medical research from the hospitals, the research institutes and the universities in Montreal, and said, ‘We have to have a marriage. We have money. You have ideas. We need your ideas. You need our money. Let’s look at how we can spend this money to build the ecosystem of research in Montreal.’

These people formed a committee and came back three or four months later with a number of proposals for us.

One was to set up a fellowship program for PhDs and postdocs [postdoctoral researchers]. Another was to set up a program they called ‘Transition,’ which would support a young researcher – a postdoc who has now been hired as a researcher for a hospital or a university, and to give them money for three years to start their research.

The problem we have in Canada is that the competitions nationally and provincially have a [low acceptance] rate. So, a young researcher will lose by definition to a well-seasoned professional who has many years of experience and lots of documentation to show what they’re trying to do.

So, we provided three years of funding. Now it’s $60,000 a year for three years – $180,000 for them to start their research.”

Has the mandate been successful?

“This has been wonderfully successful. We have now supported 35 hires in Montreal. We have a whole cohort of young researchers who, in the next 15 years, will be the senior researchers in this city and in the country.”

How did the next generations get involved in the philanthropic ventures, and how were they prepared for that role?

“It’s challenging, because the foundation has decided that it would only give grants in Montreal. Jack lived in Montreal and raised the money in Montreal and spent the money in Montreal. My father, Jack’s brother, was transferred to Toronto as a young man and married in Toronto. I was born and educated in Toronto. So, there was a Cole family in Toronto, and a Cole family in Montreal.

When I joined the board, I was the only other Cole on the board of the foundation. When I became president, I asked my sister, who was then in Toronto, to become a member of the board. Between the two of us, we have three children. Initially, we asked them to come and be auditors at the board – they were interested in the organization and just came to meetings to listen. Then they wanted to be on the board, not just auditors.

My sister and I appointed our children to the board, but we had a reality of one child in Alberta, one in Ontario, and one in Senegal, West Africa. The Alberta one and the Ontario one could come to meetings, but my daughter in West Africa would phone me and talk to me about what she thought of the agenda.

How do you keep the board sound, in terms of advisors across mandates?

“We recognize that the people on the board come and represent different constituencies. We have a number of people on the board who represent the medical faculties, because we’re dealing with medical issues and advanced research. I have no medical background to make a judgement, and very few others on the board do, so we have people from the medical field there to advise us. We have community members. We have accountants. We have lawyers. We also have someone on the board who comes from the theatre community.”

Is there a way to manage both worlds, where people within each mandate want to give more to their background and cause?

“In order to say thank you to [board members] we’ve instituted giving each person $10,000 that they can give away themselves that does not have to be part of the Cole Foundation mandate. It has to be in Canada, and it has to be a non-profit, and we have to get a tax receipt. But we give people a chance to donate to causes that they appreciate. And, often, when you’re in a foundation, people know you’re on a foundation and they [ask for money outside of the mandates of the foundation].”

What do you think your Uncle Jack would think about the foundation’s direction?

“If you looked at a statement of our gifts, you’d be hard pressed to say, ‘Oh, that’s a leukemia foundation,’ because there are so many different things that are being funded by us.

But the original mandate of looking after leukemia/lymphoma is very much intact. How that is realized is totally different than what my uncle would have done. We have different resources now, but if he were alive or could look down, he wouldn’t recognize the foundation. I think he’d be very proud of what we’ve done.”

How does your family still stay involved?

“My daughter who is in Senegal still comes up with issues she wants to address or have us consider. She works in a related field, in the non-profit humanitarian sector in Africa, on the development of programs for women and girls.

My sister functions as a strong supporter.

The foundation functions out of Montreal and is very much a product of my determination and my work.

We are facing the challenge of, ‘If Barry gets hit by a bus, where does the foundation go?’ That’s a discussion we’re having now.”

Do you have any advice for other families that may be looking at preparing next generations for leadership roles in the family’s philanthropy?

“I just recently read a book, which I’d like to share with you, called Wealth in Families, by Charles W. Collier.

He wrote this in 2006, and at that time was the senior philanthropic advisor at Harvard University.

It talks about the role of kids, the impact on children, how you bring them together, family dynamics, how you define processes that you want to follow through on, and how you define areas that you want to give money to.

It’s a lovely book for people with substantial wealth looking at what the possibilities are.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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