Meet the donors

The University of Calgary Legacy Society celebrates individuals who have included UCalgary in their estate plans — supporting student awards and bursaries, innovative teaching and learning initiatives, life-changing research, and more — ensuring their passions and values will live on and inspire generations to come.

Ed Marquardt

Plagued by inexplicably poor health, Ed Marquardt travelled from his Bassano, Alta., home to see an optometrist in Brooks about his latest symptom — burst blood vessels in his eyes. Alarmed, the doctor himself drove Marquardt to Calgary for emergency assessment that fateful day in July 1994. “I was lucky that fellow took me in,” he says. “Things were touch and go.”

He received a diagnosis of hairy cell leukemia at Rockyview General Hospital and the chemotherapy that followed turned around his life. “It was like being born again,” says Marquardt. “It was unbelievable.”

To show his appreciation, Marquardt, owner of a concrete business, is making a legacy gift to UCalgary to support blood cancer research. “Research saved my life,” he says. “I’ve lived 30 years of quality life because of a group of dedicated researchers."

"I cannot think of any better way to feel good about my life — about who I am, about what I’ve done — than having smart, talented people (make use of my legacy gift).”

 

Lynn Meadows

A health scientist in Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, Dr. Lynn Meadows retired in 2010 to take care of her husband, Hans, who was living with dementia.

“I became very aware of the need for more resources for families,” says Meadows, BA’84, PhD’91, whose husband died in 2015. “The experiences raised my awareness of the need for research to better understand caregiver experiences when living in what I call ‘the dementia world,’ and raising public awareness of the impact on day-to-day life in that world.”

During retirement, Meadows began work with Pallium Canada — a non-profit organization — as a qualitative evaluator for palliative-care training courses delivered for physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals.

Understandably, Meadows wants her legacy gift to UCalgary to support research aimed at aging well.

“I would like a social scientist in Community Health Sciences to see some of that support and through that honour my husband’s life and legacy."

 

F.C. (Colin) Bate

When F.C. (Colin) Bate heard about the recently created Book Arts Laboratory — a makerspace operated by the Faculty of Arts’ Department of English in the Social Sciences building at the University of Calgary — he was impressed. “It is giving students experiential learning about how books come about,” Bate says.

For Bate, a bookbinding craftsman since 1953, there was suddenly an ideal destination for his extensive collection of tools, materials and industrial equipment. Some of the items are more than 100 years old, but everything is well-kept — and functional — in his Calgary studio.

So, he included UCalgary in his estate plans. “I’m 86 now and I wondered how I could responsibly pass it on,” he says. “I wasn’t particularly interested in (selling everything). I thought if I could gift it to the university, that would be great.”

Already, Bate’s bookbinding library — dozens of reference books and historical volumes — has been donated and relocated to campus. “The university seemed like the natural place for everything to go.”

 

Ross Bradford

Having earned a history degree at UCalgary, Ross Bradford, BA’76, remains passionate about that particular field of study.

So, it’s no surprise that Bradford would like to see his estate gift support Faculty of Arts students majoring in history. “Since that was my background, I’d like to leave a legacy in that area,” he says from his Edmonton home. “To understand where we come from, history is key to where we are now and where we might go in the future. History is quite important to give you that broad perspective.”

While Bradford did go on to receive a law degree and an MBA from the University of Alberta, where he’s taught since 1985, his time at UCalgary served as the foundation. “That allowed me to take the next step,” he says.

“Education in the arts can lead to career advancement and opportunity. That is why it is very worthy of support.”

Sue Snicer

After he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2012, Michael Snicer was referred to the Movement Disorders Clinic at the Foothills Medical Centre.

Doctors, nurses and assistants there helped to make a difference during a challenging time. And, when Michael’s wife, Sue, began to consider her estate plans, the clinic immediately came to mind: “I thought, ‘Who’s been the most valuable person to me since 2012?’” She answered that question by choosing to support the Movement Disorders Clinic.

Sue appreciated the care, professionalism and compassion imparted by Dr. Justyna Sarna, MD’05, PhD’05, an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the Cumming School of Medicine. “She is such a fantastic neurologist,” says Sue. “She helped in so many ways, even when Mike developed non-motor problems that needed additional specialist care.”

After Michael passed away in September 2023, Sarna sent a sympathy card. “We talked and grieved together,” says Sue. “She’s a very important person to me.”

 

Susan Chivers

Already in possession of a zoology degree from the University of Cambridge in England, Susan Chivers enrolled at UCalgary as a mature student in 1979 so she could teach in the city. “And I got far more from it in some ways than my first degree,” says Chivers, BEd’84. “Being with young people — I was 40 years old — was great. I just loved my second go-round at university.”

Not surprisingly, when determining her estate planning, she included UCalgary “because of those good experiences.”

A long-time donor, Chivers has supported the Library Endowment over the years, as well as the Library and Cultural Resources Impact Fund. The intended destination of her legacy gift is the Indigenous Engagement Fund. “Because we can learn from Indigenous culture and ways of doing things, especially their relationship with nature and the land,” says Chivers. “That’s an area that I am very interested in.”

Tristram Chivers

Joining UCalgary as a chemistry professor in 1969, Dr. Tristram Chivers, PhD, Susan’s husband, remains a presence on campus. “I still have an office,” says Chivers, now a professor emeritus. “I published three papers last year, so I continue to be research-active, but I no longer have labs or graduate students.”

But his appreciation of graduate students has never wavered. Through 20 years of donations — and through his estate plans — he supports the Dr. Tristram Chivers Distinguished Faculty Achievement Graduate Scholarship, which is open to full-time graduate students in the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science.

“As an experimental scientist, I have relied on contributions from talented graduate students — this is sort of a payback,” says Chivers. “The scholarship is limited to graduate students who have not received a major award."

"There are many who are doing excellent work in their research and teaching, but they just missed getting funding from a major award. I want to recognize those graduate students.”