Charles and Margaret Juravinski: “We think of ourselves as lucky people.”
On May 29, 2019, Charles and Margaret Juravinski, who were already well-known across the Greater Hamilton community for their transformative philanthropy, wrote an open letter to their fellow Hamiltonians. It began,
“We think of ourselves as lucky people.”
As lucky as the Juravinskis were, they made it their mission to share that luck with as many people as possible. By the time Charles died in 2022 at the age of 92 and Margaret passed away a year later at 91, they had dedicated what was effectively the entirety of their wealth to charitable causes in the city that had been their home for Margaret’s entire life and, for Charles, since he had arrived from Saskatchewan as a young man.
The reason for that 2019 letter would have stunned the young couple that married in 1956. Both Charles and Margaret had grown up in poverty, knowing too well the deprivations of the Great Depression and the Second World War. In contrast, their 2019 letter accompanied the announcement of the Juravinskis’ $100-million+ gift to the partnership of Hamilton Health Sciences, McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. That act of generosity founded the Juravinski Research Institute (JRI) and became the crowning achievement of a philanthropic legacy that had started to become possible when Charles quit his job in 1958 to open a construction business with his brother-in-law Bill McCann. Wilchar Construction developed residential housing and built a number of recognizable Hamilton venues before the partners closed the firm in 1971, planning to begin a long retirement.
Margaret and Charles soon discovered that early retirement clashed with their work ethic, so they channeled their energies into developing the Flamboro Downs harness racing facility. Opening in 1975, Flamboro Downs became Canada’s premier half-mile harness racing track before the Juravinskis sold the business in 2003. They started their second “retirement” by investing their new capital, but not simply for their own enrichment. “When you get this pile of money dumped on you,” Charles said in an interview years later,
“it was a no-brainer for us. Charity came into it immediately.”
The Juravinskis’ new philanthropic mission quickly accelerated the transformation of the Hamilton community through a number of landmark gifts, primarily to health care. Their generosity involved leadership contributions to Hamilton General Hospital’s heart investigation unit, the Wellwood Centre for cancer support, the long-term care wing at St. Peter’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital’s lung cancer treatment program. Charles and Margaret were also the named donors of the Juravinski Innovation Tower at St. Joseph’s Hospital. With every new act of generosity, community leaders in Hamilton wondered if the Juravinskis had reached the finale of their philanthropy, but after each gift, there was always another.
One of their earliest transformative gifts occurred in 2003 when they gave a multi-million-dollar contribution to Hamilton Health Sciences to help reinvent the Hamilton Regional Cancer Centre as Juravinski Cancer Centre. Then, in 2010, Charles and Margaret made the cornerstone investment that propelled the revitalization of what is now known as Juravinski Hospital. The Juravinskis also established a related legacy of giving beyond Hamilton’s hospitals, funding the Margaret & Charles Juravinski Education, Research and Development Centre, as well as the Margaret and Charles Juravinski Surgical Fellowship at McMaster University. They also gave to St. Joseph’s Villa to support the long-term care wing and to build Margaret’s Place Hospice.
Then, in 2019, Margaret and Charles made their keystone gift when they committed to creating an endowment of “at least” $100 million – one of Canada’s largest-ever legacy gifts – to establish the JRI. Through the institute, Margaret and Charles strengthened the partnership of three vital Hamilton-based institutions by establishing a permanent fund to drive innovation in fields including aging, cancer, lung health and mental health. Following that 2019 announcement, Margaret and Charles continued to support the JRI with gifts designed to leverage key moments and achieve the greatest possible benefit. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, they gave more than $3.3 million for research projects related to
COVID-19 and brain health research. Then, as the pandemic continued in 2021, they made a second $3 million gift to transform the health system.
As Charles said at the time,
“This has been an unprecedented year in so many ways. The dedication and commitment we have seen by the research community and clinical teams has motivated and inspired Margaret and me to make another gift. … We’d like this new gift to continue to inspire hope, collaboration and action.”
Since then, the Juravinskis gave additional gifts, bringing their in-life contributions to $16.5 million for the JRI.
Margaret and Charles Juravinski gave to enhance access to quality health care. They supported future generations by emphasizing education. They gave to fund research and innovation in health. Finally, the Juravinskis dedicated much of their generosity – and certainly the gift that founded the JRI – to stimulating collaboration, knowing their philanthropy could help build alliances that are greater than the sum of their parts. As Margaret and Charles wrote in their open letter, “We want to be sure our remaining resources are able to do as much good for as many people for as long as they can. This is why we have worked with Hamilton Health Sciences, McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.”
Looking back on their work as donors, the Juravinskis hoped their efforts would encourage others to give. They wrote,
“As a couple, our most important lesson has been this: the greatest pleasure in life and the most powerful force for good in the world is sharing. We were fortunate for the mentorship of successful people here in Hamilton who guided us to this realization, both by their example and by their specific encouragement. … It brings us great pleasure to think that when we are gone, our legacy to this community may be measured in the good health of those who come after us. … We have one last wish: that others will share their own resources, whether great or modest, by creating their own legacy gifts. We want everyone to realize the true joy of sharing, as we have known.”