Ex-Winnipegger gives $10M to high schools

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This article was published 22/03/2018 (2226 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Student comments on poverty from Winnipeg School Division on Vimeo.

A private $10-million donation to three Winnipeg high schools aims to give hundreds of underprivileged students a leg up toward graduation and advancing to college and university.

The bulk of the funds will be paid out over four years in the form of scholarships and bursaries for Indigenous and gifted students, mostly at St. John’s High School. Smaller portions are also designated for Daniel McIntyre and Sisler high schools.

St. John’s is located in the heart of one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods, and the financial gift overwhelmed educators Friday.

“It is over the moon. I’ve been an educator for 40 years and I’ve never encountered anything like this. We are creating a reality for hope, for the success of our students and this is unheard of,” St. John’s principal Doug Taylor said.

Toronto philanthropist Walter Schroeder made the commitment earlier this week during a visit to Winnipeg, where he and his wife grew up in poverty as children of immigrants following the Second World War.

Now retired, Schroeder made a fortune through a global credit-rating agency he founded 40 years ago, with a $1,000 stake in a Toronto storefront.

DBRS is Canada’s only independent agency of its kind, and by the time Schroeder sold it for an estimated $500 million in 2014, it had grown to be the fourth largest in the world, compared to larger rivals such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings.

Schroeder is well-known for philanthropic efforts, which include a $20-million donation to the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute in 2017.

His memories of Winnipeg inspired him to look for a way to give back to his hometown, and to see high school students graduate and go on to the post-secondary level.

This winter, a heartbreaking video made by a Grade 11 student at St. John’s was brought to the attention of the philanthropist. Within two months, he put the multimillion-dollar donation in place. The five-minute video was created by Freedom Smith-Myran, 17, as part of a class assignment.

In it, Freedom opened up about her life, describing the struggle to stay in school against a backdrop of crime and gang life in her neighbourhood.

“I was speaking about what it’s like to grow up in poverty and to see gang life in the people I knew, and how it took a toll on education for me and other students,” the First Nations student said in an interview at her school, adding she briefly dropped out because of it.

Like about half the students at her school, Freedom comes from a single-parent home where the median income is less than $40,000 a year.

Nearly 10 per cent are foster children.

That her video would play an instrumental role in the single-largest private donation in her school’s history is still sinking in, she said.

“I was surprised because, like, it was an English assignment. I didn’t expect it to get this big,” Freedom said.

The student and the philanthropist met this week for the first time, when Schroeder flew to Winnipeg to finalize details of the donation.

“Walter told me he sees the same kind of talent, the intelligence, the creativity, in Freedom that he’s seen in people from universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and he was telling her all these accolades,” Taylor said, beaming.

Freedom ducked her head, and said she’d never heard such praise before. “It was kinda of weird. I’m glad he wants to help kids like me do better in life.”

Schroeder grew up in Winnipeg, attending Dufferin Elementary School and Daniel McIntyre, where he met his future wife, Maria, when they were teenagers.

It was his wife’s struggle to get a high school education that inspired the philanthropist, the St. John’s principal said.

Her family escaped the former East Germany in 1948, chased by police dogs and dodging bullets as they fled.

In Winnipeg, Maria and her sisters were so poor they took turns working and going to school.

The year she was to drop out and go to work, the high school principal at Daniel McIntyre paid a visit to the family home. Telling her father Maria was one of the school’s most promising students, he convinced the family to allow her to stay in school.

“We’re lucky (Schroeder) was looking back to his roots in Winnipeg, and that’s why he’s giving back now,” Taylor said.

Schroeder has already made a down payment on the donation, giving $215,000 to the three schools for bursaries to “in-need” students from Grades 9 to 12.

“The details of Mr. Schroeder’s $10-million pledge are yet to be completed but, once received, will represent the largest donation ever given to the Winnipeg School Division ­Children’s Heritage Fund, and a huge boost for inner-city and North End schools,” the Winnipeg School Division said in a statement.

“Mr. Schroeder’s compassion and philanthropy is being directed where it can make a real difference in our students’ lives.”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca