Michael DeGroote, a businessman and philanthropist known for his contributions to McMaster University, has died at the age of 89. Mr. DeGroote immigrated to Canada at the age of 14 and left school in the 9th grade to support his family. He would go on to buy Laidlaw Transport, beginning a prolific career consolidating many more businesses until Laidlaw became the continent’s largest school bus company and the third largest waste management company. The billionaire was known as a prolific philanthropist and was the first person to have his name on a business school in Canada and the first philanthropist to have a medical school named after him in Canada. Both facilities were at McMaster University, where he donated $105 million in 2003. At the time, it was the largest cash donation in Canadian history. “As an immigrant who made it to ninth grade before having to make his own way, Michael deeply appreciated the value of education,” said David Farrar, president of McMaster University. Mr. DeGroote began supporting McMaster with a $3 million donation in the 1980s. His donations to the Hamilton university over the years would grow to more than $175 million. Mr Farrar said Mr DeGroote’s business skills included balancing continuous expansion with prudent management. “Michael started with a truck and built one of the largest trucking companies in the country. He was an entrepreneur with an innate sense of how to manage risk.” Mr. DeGroote would go on to become one of Canada’s youngest billionaires, was an Officer of the Order of Canada and at one point owned the Hamilton Tiger-Cats football team. Paul O’Byrne, dean and vice-chancellor of McMaster’s School of Health Sciences, said Mr. DeGroote’s donations had a dramatic impact on the school and enabled it to create a new four-story research building and recruit more medical and nursing students. It also enabled McMaster to launch a new program on leadership in the medical world. “What really made him very special is that he was really very determined to do something really useful, particularly in the field of education,” said Dr. O’Byrne, who added that Mr. DeGroote’s inability to obtain a higher education was part of his his reason. determined to fund students and research. “I suspect that was part of it – despite the fact that he didn’t have a higher education, he did extremely well, but I think he recognized that that might be something he was disadvantaged by.” Dr O’Byrne said he met with Mr DeGroote several times. He praised her kindness, thoughtfulness and concern for people. “He always had a good word for everybody.” However, Mr. DeGroote’s storied career has not been without controversy. He and several associates paid $23 million in 1993 to the Ontario Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations of insider trading in Laidlaw Inc. stock, one of the largest settlements of its kind by the agency at the time. In 2011, Mr. DeGroote made an investment that he would later describe as embarrassing and regrettable. He partnered with three suspected businessmen – two of whom had criminal convictions for possession of illegal weapons – to acquire and rebrand a casino chain in the Dominican Republic. The business collapsed when Mr. DeGroote sued the men, accusing them of misappropriating some of the $112 million he lent them. As the partnership crumbled, the Montreal Mafia made inroads into the Dominican Republic, with some mobsters trying to take control of the casinos by force, a 2015 joint investigation by The Globe and Mail and the CBC the fifth estate were found. Mr. DeGroote said he was not complicit in any way in involving organized crime in the dispute. Ontario court records show Mr. DeGroote’s lawsuit is ongoing, with an upcoming hearing scheduled for Sept. 28. An obituary for Mr. DeGroote said he had several other business ventures after his planned retirement in 1990, which ended within months because he was “bored,” the obituary said. Major companies he acquired after his initial retirement included a US waste management company and AutoNation, a major US car retailer. Mr. DeGroote is survived by four children, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. “Nothing was better than the quality time he would have spent surrounded by family and special friends,” said his obituary, which also said a private funeral would be held in his hometown of Langton, Ont. “He will be remembered for his ingenuity, compassion, toughness and raw sense of humor.” With reports by Andrew Willis
