Billionaire James Pattison is donating $30 million to new construction at Royal Columbian Hospital in Vancouver.
James Pattison, 94, is one of the richest people in Canada. He got his start selling cars for Pontiac and GM, and eventually invested his way into real wealth when he opened Jim Pattison Group Inc. He was on the board for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and owns the Guinness World Records franchise, among many other things. In 2018, his net worth was estimated to be around $5.7 billion.
Pattison has a well-established history of philanthropy, and has donated several million to various hospitals in British Columbia and Alberta. For example, in 2017, he donated $75 million to the building of a new hospital in False Creek, the largest donation ever made by one person for healthcare in Canada.
“We’ve got the base of our company – it’s taken us 57 years to build – where we can do some serious things and give serious money away as time goes by. The bigger we get the more money we make, and the more we can give away. We’re just getting into it,” Pattison said about donating in a 2018 interview.
On Wednesday, James Pattison announced to media that he would be donating $30 million to the Royal Columbian Hospital in Vancouver, B.C., to help them finish a $1.5 billion renovation project. When complete, the project will boost the hospital’s capacity by over 50 percent, making it able to keep up with the ever-increasing healthcare demands of British Columbia.
“As the company has grown, we’ve been able to support hospitals across the country,” Pattison told Postmedia News following an event outside Royal Columbian on Wednesday.
He said he wanted to direct his generosity to hospitals and healthcare facilities because “that’s a place a lot of people, whether you’re old or young or rich or poor, sooner or later people at some time may need a hospital.”
Photo: St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, B.C. Credit: Adam Melnyk / Shutterstock.com