Skip to main content
obituary

Sandy and Cécile Mactaggart stand with a Tibetan robe they donated to the University of Alberta, where Mr. Mactaggart had previously served as a board member and chancellor. University president David Turpin says their donations to the school totalled more than $65-million.John Ulan/The Globe and Mail

Sandy Mactaggart, the Edmonton businessman, philanthropist, adventurer and champion of arts and education who died this month at 89, left an outsized legacy that is difficult to measure.

Most people will remember him for his monumental acts: He created a successful business empire, co-founded beloved arts and social institutions, and donated millions of dollars to his community and to the University of Alberta in particular, an institution where he also served as chancellor.

His friends and family, however, recall a man with humble beginnings as a wartime child evacuee in a new country, whose extraordinary public works reflected his personality and deeply held convictions. They remember him as adventurous and daring, but also thoughtful, sensitive and kind.

During a period in the early 1990s when her husband, then 64, was critically ill with blood poisoning, Cécile Mactaggart compiled Scrapbook for Sandy, a collection of his poems, art, photographs and original writing.

In it, she recalled her husband's well-known lust for life and many adventures. Remembering a skydiving outing, she wrote: "The white rigidity of his face just before his first leap later transformed into exhilarated abandon as he took his wife dancing the same night – to celebrate – because he was still alive." She also mentioned the time, when piloting Alberta's first hot-air balloon, "he and Max Ward saw that high tension wire looming closer and closer until, in that laconic voice he always reserves for extreme danger [he said]: 'Well Max, I guess we better jump.'"

And they did, onto the grass 10 metres below.

The examples of his poetry in the volume reveal his charm, gentle nature and creativity. For example, in 1984, he gave his wife a gift, a flat golden cut-out of a lion with holes in it, with the accompanying verse:

"The Lion is Golden

Like Time with you

This Lion is Rampant

Like my Love for you

This Lion is full of Holes

Like me"

Another poem, from 1993:

"Tonight I caught you

kissing my wife

you wicked moon"

Alastair Auld Mactaggart was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on March 11, 1928, to Sir John Mactaggart, 2nd Baronet of King's Park, Glasgow. The future Edmonton icon and his family came to Canada as evacuees during the Second World War. He was 11, old enough to have been shaped by his native country, young enough to adapt to a new one.

He attended private schools in Ontario and New England before going to Harvard, where he earned a degree in architecture in 1950 and completed a master's degree in business two years later.

It was at Harvard that Mr. Mactaggart first met a French student named Jean de La Bruyère. The two young men formed a friendship that would last a lifetime and produce a successful business partnership that would transform a city.

"They were complete opposites," says Marc de La Bruyère, Jean's son. (The elder Mr. de La Bruyère died in 1990.) "Sandy was the brake, my father was the accelerator. Sandy was very conservative, my father was rock 'n' roll. Sandy was strategic, my father was a deal maker. Sandy was a Scot, my father was a Frenchman."

When Mr. Mactaggart and Mr. de La Bruyère arrived in Edmonton in 1952, young and ambitious, looking to make their mark, they found a modest city of around 200,000 people. Within two years, they were in the land-development business, forging a company name – Maclab – by combining their own.

Their timing couldn't have been better. Edmonton was undergoing tremendous growth rates that would continue for two decades. Maclab rode that surge to great success, rising from its modest origins to become the largest privately held residential property holder in Alberta by the 1960s.

Together, Mr. Mactaggart and Mr. de La Bruyère built the suburban dream in Edmonton, creating the sprawling subdivisions on the edge of the city so in demand at the time. They soon branched out into apartment blocks and hotels, expanding their business beyond Edmonton into other parts of Western Canada and the territories.

Mr. Mactaggart's life was hardly all business, though. Never complacent, he constantly chased adventure, everything from scuba diving to auto racing and sailing. He loved flying airplanes and served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Naval Air Service Reserve. He built and piloted Alberta's first hot-air balloon.

In 1959, he married the author Cécile Erickson, and together they had three children, Mara, Fiona and Alastair. Mr. Mactaggart didn't abandon his sense of adventure as a family man – in the mid-1970s, he took a two-year sabbatical from work to sail the South Pacific with his family.

Throughout his life, Mr. Mactaggart also demonstrated a desire to give back to the community that had given him a comfortable life. He co-founded the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Boys and Girls Club and the Citadel Theatre.

The Citadel, named for the Salvation Army Citadel that Mr. Mactaggart purchased for its first home, was Edmonton's first professional theatre and became a regional hub for performing arts.

The oil bust and recession of the early 1980s hit the development industry hard, and Mr. Mactaggart's attention shifted to higher education, something he'd long been passionate about. He was a board member of the University of Alberta from 1983 to 1994, and served on the board of the American University of Beirut, and as a vice-president of the Harvard Alumni Association. In 1990, he was appointed as the 14th chancellor of the University of Alberta, followed by a six-month stint as interim chair of the board of governors, serving in both roles during a tumultuous period at the university as budget cuts and political battles threatened to overshadow academics.

While Mr. Mactaggart's service and fealty to his community were greatly appreciated, it was his generosity that led to his greatest legacy. Early on in their marriage, the Mactaggarts developed a fascination with Chinese culture and history, especially textiles and art. They started buying undervalued artifacts for shockingly low prices, and eventually amassed one of the world's most significant privately held foreign collections of Chinese art. In 2005, the Mactaggarts donated the collection to the University of Alberta, on the condition that provincial funding matching its value – $37-million – be used to open the university's China Institute.

"He was so passionate about that, about creating an education opportunity for people that would cross cultures and borders and boundaries," Mr. Mactaggart's daughter Fiona says.

This leveraging philosophy was the approach for much of the Mactaggarts' philanthropy. University of Alberta president David Turpin says that the cumulative total of their various donations to the university was more than $65-million – and by frequently using that generosity to elicit matching funds from government or elsewhere, the Mactaggarts brought more than $100-million into the institution.

"He was very generous, but he was generous in an extremely thoughtful way," Marc de La Bruyère says. "He was conscious about where his generosity would have the most impact on the people he was trying to help."

In 2004, Mr. Mactaggart donated 104 hectares of land to the U of A and City of Edmonton to become the Mactaggart Nature Sanctuary. The family's landmark estate home, Soaring, also became a gift to the university in 2010, when the Mactaggarts moved to the Bahamas for the benefit of Mr. Mactaggart's health.

For his countless contributions to public life, he was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1997 and a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence in 1998.

Mr. Mactaggart's life ended where it began, on his childhood island of Islay, Scotland, where he died on July 3, leaving Cécile, his wife of 57 years; his three children; and seven grandchildren.

It was his life in Edmonton that defined him, though – the city on which he left an incomparable mark after he spent a lifetime using his privilege to benefit his community.

"He was always conscious of trying to live up to that responsibility," Mr. de La Bruyère says. "He wanted to make sure he was able in the course of his lifetime to make Alberta a much better place."

That was always part of the lessons he tried to impart on his children, Fiona says.

"Try your best to leave this world a better place when you go than it was when you arrived," she says. "That was always important for him."

If Mr. Mactaggart is to be remembered primarily for his philanthropy and role as community builder, then perhaps that legacy of giving is itself his final gift – a model for others to follow, whether wealthy or not.

"One of the things that I would hope is that Sandy's generosity of time, of spirit and of resources will serve as an inspiration for others," Dr. Turpin says.

It's no surprise that Mr. Mactaggart himself, speaking in a video recorded for his Alberta Order of Excellence appointment, valued that precise sentiment.

"We remember the people who've really done something in the world," he said. "The people who really made a difference are the ones that did something to the value of the community, not just of value to themselves."

Interact with The Globe