In May 2023, a diverse group of researchers, policymakers, civil society leaders and members of the public gathered at U of T’s St. George campus for Urban Ecologies: Imagining the Environmentally Just City. Exploring various dimensions of humanity’s impact on urban environments, the two-day event brought together perspectives from a remarkable range of disciplines, including environmental humanities and Indigenous and decolonial studies. After a series of expert talks and panel discussions, participants set out on guided “field trips” to discover firsthand Toronto’s urban ecologies and intertwined environmental, cultural and colonial histories.
Urban Ecologies was just the latest version of what has become a milestone annual event for the School of the Environment: the Beatrice and Arthur Minden Symposium on the Environment, launched in 2015 through a donation from the Beatrice and Arthur Minden Foundation, which also funds a graduate research fellowship at the school.
The foundation was established by Beatrice Minden to honour her late husband, Arthur, a prominent Toronto lawyer and philanthropist. After emigrating to Canada in 1912 at the age of two – from Zhitomir, then part of the Russian Empire – Arthur became the first member of his family to attend university, earning a BA from U of T and a law degree from Osgoode Hall. Then, as his legal practice flourished, he devoted his trademark energy to a wide variety of charitable activities, notably as co-founder (in 1954) of the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada, and as an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish and arts communities.
Following Arthur’s death in 1966, Beatrice carried on his philanthropic work through support for everything from university scholarships in Israel to cultural events and hospitals in Toronto.
After Beatrice died in 2009, stewardship of the foundation passed on to her four children: George, Robert, Jo-Ann and Cynthia. And after taking a few years to consider where their giving could have the most meaningful impact, the siblings settled on the School of the Environment – founded in 2012 to leverage the full scope of environmentally focused teaching and research across U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science.
“We wanted to find a home for the foundation – a way to honour our parents, their spirit and their legacy,” Cynthia recalls. “We were all excited about the new School of the Environment and felt this was a great fit: the city in which our parents spent their lives, the university that so inspired our father, and the potential to develop cutting-edge solutions to some of the most pressing problems humanity is facing.” Over the past dozen years, the impact of the foundation’s gift has steadily grown as the annual Symposium on the Environment has attracted participants from around the world.
It has been gratifying, Cynthia explains, to give back to the university attended by Arthur and three of his children. “My parents had a passion for education,” she recalls, “and my father had a tremendous appreciation for how U of T altered the course of his life in such a profound and significant way. He was always grateful for that opportunity.
At the same time, the siblings share a deep concern for the future of the planet. “Environmental studies are something that we all support,” says Cynthia, an active contributor to many sustainability initiatives. “It was important to us to direct the foundation’s capital where it would have the greatest impact. We’ve found that at U of T. We love the idea of supporting new and ongoing research and teaching on the environment, especially given the alarming issue of climate change. And I’m sure my parents would feel that it’s an important cause as well.”
The investment fund that generates ongoing financial support for the Beatrice and Arthur Minden Symposium on the Environment is among more than 6,900 individual funds within the Endowment portfolio managed by UTAM. A total of $572 million was allocated to academic programs in the year ending April 30, 2023 – about 18% of the total endowment funds held by the university during that period.*
*The “Endowment portfolio” managed by UTAM – also called the Long-Term Capital Appreciation Pool – comprises the university’s endowment funds plus other investment assets. As of April 30, 2023, U of T’s fiscal year-end, the total value of the Endowment portfolio was $3.9 billion, including $3.3 billion of endowment funds plus $0.6 billion of other long-term assets. (At UTAM’s year-end – December 31, 2023 – the Endowment portfolio was valued at $4.2 billion.)