Canadian businessman Michael DeGroote was a prolific philanthropist, and was the first person to have his name attached to a business school in Canada.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Michael DeGroote, a businessman and philanthropist well known for his contributions to McMaster University, has died at the age of 89.
Mr. DeGroote immigrated to Canada at the age of 14 and left school in Grade 9 to support his family. He would go on to purchase Laidlaw Transport, beginning a prolific career consolidating many more businesses until Laidlaw was the continent’s largest school-bus company and third-largest waste-management company.
The billionaire was known as a prolific philanthropist, and was the first person to have his name attached to a business school in Canada, and the first philanthropist to have a medical school named after him in Canada. Both facilities were at McMaster University, where he donated $105-million in 2003. At the time, it was the largest cash donation in Canadian history.
“As an immigrant who only got to ninth grade before he had to make his own way, Michael deeply appreciated the value of education,” said David Farrar, president of McMaster University.
Mr. DeGroote began backing McMaster with a $3-million donation in the 1980s. His donations to the Hamilton university over the years would grow to more than $175-million.
Mr. Farrar said Mr. DeGroote’s business skills included balancing constant expansion with prudent management. “Michael started with one truck and built one of the country’s largest transport firms. He was an entrepreneur with an innate sense of how to manage risk.”
Mr. DeGroote would go on to become one of Canada’s youngest billionaires, was an Officer of the Order of Canada, and at one point owned the Hamilton Tiger-Cats football team.
Paul O’Byrne, dean and vice-president of McMaster’s Faculty of Health Sciences, said Mr. DeGroote’s donations had a dramatic impact on the school and allowed it to create a new four-storey research building and take on more medical and nursing students. It also enabled McMaster to start a new program around leadership in the medical world.
“What made him really quite special is he was really quite determined to do something really useful, particularly in the educational sphere,” said Dr. O’Byrne, who added that Mr. DeGroote’s inability to receive higher education was part of why he was determined to fund students and research.
“I suspect that was part of it – despite the fact that he didn’t have tertiary education, he did extraordinarily well, but I think he recognized that that may have been something he was disadvantaged by.”
Dr. O’Byrne said he met with Mr. DeGroote many times. He lauded his kindness, thoughtfulness, and the interest he took in people. “He always had a kind word for everybody.”
Mr. DeGroote’s storied career did not escape controversy, however. He and several associates paid $23-million in 1993 to the Ontario Securities Commission to settle allegations of insider trading in Laidlaw Inc. shares, in one of the biggest settlements of its kind by the agency at the time.
In 2011, Mr. DeGroote made an investment that he would later describe as embarrassing and regrettable. He partnered with three dubious businessmen – two of whom had criminal convictions for possessing illegal handguns – to acquire and rebrand a chain of casinos in the Dominican Republic. The business imploded after Mr. DeGroote sued the men and accused them of misappropriating some of the $112-million he lent them.
As the partnership crumbled, the Montreal Mafia inserted itself on the ground in the Dominican, with some mob figures attempting to take control of the casinos by force, a 2015 joint investigation by The Globe and Mail and CBC’s the fifth estate found. Mr. DeGroote said that he was not complicit in any way with organized crime becoming involved in the dispute. Ontario court records indicate that Mr. DeGroote’s lawsuit is proceeding, with a coming hearing scheduled for Sept. 28.
An obituary for Mr. DeGroote says he had many other business ventures after his planned retirement in 1990, which ended within months because he became “bored,” the obituary said. The wide-ranging companies he acquired after the initial retirement included a U.S. waste-management company and AutoNation, a major U.S. auto retailer.
Mr. DeGroote leaves behind four children, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
“Nothing was better than the quality time he would have when surrounded with family and special friends,” said his obituary, which also stated that a private funeral will be held in his hometown of Langton, Ont.
“He will be remembered for his ingenuity, compassion, grit and blunt sense of humour.”
With reports from Andrew Willis