Kelowna’s Charles Fipke, who made a fortune discovering diamonds in the Northwest Territories, has donated $9.1 million to the University of British Columbia (UBC) for research into Alzheimer’s Disease, the university announced September 30.
The UBC alumnus’ gifts come in the form of:
- $5.5 million to help buy brain-imaging technology;
- $3 million to endow a professorship dedicated to Alzheimer’s research; and
- $600,000 to outfit the professor’s lab with cutting-edge equipment at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, which is a partnership between the UBC Faculty of Medicine and Vancouver Coastal Health.
Fipke was moved to make the gifts by the plight of his longtime friend, 82-year-old Bill Bennett, who was B.C. premier between 1975 and 1986 and now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
“I was stunned to learn about Bill Bennett’s illness – yet another great mind stricken by Alzheimer’s,” Fipke said. “I want to do anything I can to help UBC’s researchers find a cure.”
Bennett’s son Brad Bennett was on hand at a September 30 ceremony at UBC to honour Fipke’s philanthropy.
“Our family is incredibly grateful to Chuck Fipke for this generous donation to Alzheimer’s research and we are very moved by his reasons for doing it,” he said. “The end game has to be to find a cure for this. We still don’t know what causes this disease and there are far too many people afflicted with it and far too many families like ours suffering the horrible consequences.”
Fipke’s struck it rich when he discovered a high concentration of diamonds at Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories in 1991.
He then partnered with BHP Billiton to establish the Ekati Mine, which was the first commercial diamond mine in North America.
He is recognized for jump-starting the Canadian diamond industry, which in 2011 accounted for 18% of the world’s rough diamond production by value. Canada now ranks third behind Russia and Botswana.
Fipke has so far given or pledged more than $17 million to UBC.
@GlenKorstrom
