After hiring Sting for his wife’s birthday, philanthropist donates $25 million to York U
November 1, 2011
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
Monday night, Sting kissed Pierre Lassonde’s wife.
Tuesday morning, the mining mogul gave York University a cool $25 million to bring its dream of an engineering school to life.
Now both York and the philanthropist’s wife are walking on the moon.
York is putting its message of thanks not in a bottle, but in the very name of the new Lassonde School of Engineering, slated to open in 2020 with a focus that stretches beyond the mechanics of engineering to embrace what the donor calls “new renaissance engineers who are more sensitive to the human impact of what they design.”
As for the human impact of Sting on Lassonde’s wife, Janelle, “she says she’s never washing her face now,” laughed Lassonde, who hired her favourite megastar to perform at her 45th birthday bash Monday night.
“It was the party of a lifetime. Sting is a great human being — he’s also interested in our philanthropy work — and he played for an hour and a half and everyone was dancing. My wife even sang into the microphone,” said the chairman of Franco Nevada
Lassonde’s donation to York sparked gifts from the university and Queen’s Park that raised the full $100 million needed for the new school.
As an entrepreneur, he said he likes the idea of helping launch a “start-up” — the engineering school — and philanthropy is something he has chatted about before with Sting.
Talk about fields of gold.