Organ transplantation in Canada took a giant leap forward on Oct. 30 with a $35 million donation to the Toronto-based University Health Network (UHN) by the Ajmera family. The gift, announced at the 22nd annual Grand Cru Culinary Wine Festival in Toronto, raises the family’s cumulative giving to $62 million. According to the UHN Foundation, this makes the family the largest-known single-family philanthropic donor to transplant medicine globally.
“This gift, it’s truly transformative,” says Julie Quenneville, CEO of the UHN Foundation. “It allows us to truly recruit the very best from all around the world because it builds sustainability in the program. And you know how it is: the very best attract the very best from all around the world, and people want to come and train and learn from them.”
UHN has announced that the money will establish the Ajmera Transplant Institute as a global transplantation hub. UHN is already a global leader in organ preservation and transplant innovation, pioneering new methods in preserving donor organs though a technique called ex vivo perfusion, whereby a device optimizes organs for transplantation by keeping them warm, repairing them or testing them in advance of surgery. This process has dramatically increased the number of successful transplants that can be performed from 400 to 800 per year, and UHN aims to reach 1,000. It is now the largest transplant program in Canada.
The transplant donation is just one of many by the Ajmera Family, which has made philanthropy a focal point. The co-founder of FGF Brands, Sam Ajmera came to Canada at age 26, building a bakery that began with six employees. FGF is now Canada’s largest industrial baker, with 10,000 employees and 35 locations across the country.
Having family members that were UHN patients, the Ajmeras’ charitable giving was always personal. It started with several small donations that eventually led to a $27 million gift, Quenneville says. In addition to the UHN donations, the Ajmera family has also established the Ajmera Family Chair in Urologic Oncology at the University of Toronto/Sunnybrook Hospital. The chair supports genetic and clinical research in prostate cancer.
Quenneville says that many patients are touched by the Ajmera’s giving. “When they’re sitting there and they see the name of the family, they always tell us that they look the family up and they want to see who it was that allowed them to have improved care.”
Bringing philanthropists together
The Grand Cru festival is an example of philanthropy at its finest, says Adam Halpern, a UHN board member and employee at Halpern Wine Enterprises. He says the event, which has raised $174 million for health and medical research in Canada since its inception in 2005, aims to engage a second generation of donors to learn what they value the most and how they can tie those interests to charitable giving.
Halpern is the son of Todd Halpern, who runs Halpern Wine Enterprises with his brother Colin. The Toronto-based fine wine broker secures the participation of over 115 global wine estates who donate hundreds of premium wines annually for the tasting and auction that takes place at the three-day festival.
“One of the initiatives that we’re working on at the foundation is to get more people actively donating,” says Halpern. “We have such amazing transformative gifts like this gift, but we want more people to understand and to be involved and see how they can do one more thing, and then maybe that turns into 50 more things.”
In addition to the Halpern and Ajmera families, the event honoured the HBNG Charitable Foundation co-founded by John D’Angelo, Giuseppe Maio and Claudio Memme, prominent real estate development families. Two years ago, the D’Angelo family announced a $30 million gift to help build a 15-storey surgical tower at Toronto Western Hospital, complete with robotic-equipped operating rooms.
“The new surgical tower remains our top philanthropic priority for UHN,” says Dr. Kevin Smith, UHN’s president and CEO. The largest capital project in UHN’s history, the $30 million donation kickstarted UHN’s fundraising campaign for the construction of the tower.
He says the annual Grand Cru festival is also a celebration of the incredible generosity of the donor community. “They are responsible for supporting our big, bold dreams that really do cure disease,” says Smith.
“Years from now, the impact of the generosity that we’re announcing today will be measured not only in research papers, new technologies developed here in Toronto, but in the lives of patients who will have more time with their family, more years of good health, and more reasons to hope.”
Anna Sharratt is a business and health reporter and editor with more than 20 years of experience. Based in Toronto, she has written for Canadian Family Offices since 2021. A regular contributor to the Globe and Mail, she has written for Inc.com, Forbes, Business Insider, Canadian Business, MoneySense, the National Post, the Toronto Star and other publications. She is the former managing editor of smallbiz.ca, health editor of Chatelaine and senior health writer for the CBC.
The Canadian Family Offices newsletter comes out on Sundays and Wednesdays. If you are interested in stories about Canadian enterprising families, family offices and the professionals who work with them, but like your content aggregated, you can sign up for our free newsletter here.
Please visit here to see information about our standards of journalistic excellence.