C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation

Clarence Decatur Howe was born in Massachusetts in 1886 and attended MIT. Upon graduation, he took up a role as Professor of Civil Engineering at Dalhousie University, and moved to Halifax in 1907. In 1913, Howe was appointed Chief Engineer of the Board of Grain Commissioners in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) and became a Canadian citizen. In 1916, he formed the C.D. Howe Company, an engineering firm known for designing and building grain handling facilities. In 1935, Howe was elected Member of Parliament for Port Arthur, a position he would hold for over 22 years. Howe served under Prime Minister Mackenzie King and Prime Minister St. Laurent and held several major portfolios during his time in government. As Minister of Transport, he reorganized Canada National Railways, founded Trans Canada Airways (now Air Canada) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was Minister of Munitions and Supply during the Second World War. After the war, he was Minister of Reconstruction, as well as Minister of Trade and Commerce. His varied portfolios earned him the nickname the “Minister of Everything.” Howe died in 1960.

In 1961, a group of Howe’s business associates, colleagues and friends formed the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation, as a tribute to Howe’s legacy and to provide a lasting memorial. Based out of Montreal, the Foundation enlisted the talents of several prominent Canadian businessmen to fill out its board of directors and to lead the way on the Foundation’s fundraising efforts. Right away, the Foundation focused on funding undergraduate and graduate scholarships at Canadian universities. A C.D. Howe Award, given to outstanding Canadians was also proposed early on, but ultimately abandoned. In its first seven years of operation, the Foundation awarded 28 fellowships, worth over $197,000.

In 1971, the Foundation shifted its focus to support the research and writing of a biography of C.D. Howe, a task taken up by William Kilborn, and eventually completed with Robert Bothwell as co-author. The book, entitled C.D. Howe, a biography was published in 1979 by McClelland and Stewart.

Further changes to the Foundation came in 1973, when it merged with the Private Planning Association of Canada (PPAC), and organization focused on research and awareness of issues relating to public economic policy. The Foundation adopted the name of the C.D. Howe Research Institute, with a mandate to research and publish on current economic issues. In 1982, the C.D Howe Memorial Foundation was re-established, the functions of the Research Institute were transferred back to the PPAC, which then adopted the name the C.D. Howe Institute. The C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation supported the Howe Institute financially until 1989 (and then again from 2004 to 2008 in the form of grants for a fellowship programme).

The newly reformed C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation once again focused its efforts on educational programmes, establishing scholarships for undergraduate students from Thunder Bay, administered by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC). Further scholarship programs were endowed or funded, including National Engineering Scholarships, Dalhousie Engineering scholarships, and scholarships for exchanges between the University of Toronto and Universite Laval. The Foundation also continued to memorialize C.D. Howe, funding a television documentary film entitled “Minister of Everything,” which was released in 1990. In 2003, the Foundation also funded a biography of John Turner, a close personal associate of C.D. Howe and longtime member of the Foundation’s board of directors. The book, Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner, was written by Paul Litt was published by UBC Press in 2011.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation gave educational endowment grants to universities across the country – from Pearson College, UBC and UNBC, to the University of Manitoba, to the University of Toronto’s federated colleges, to Dalhousie University, to the University of Moncton, and to Memorial University in Newfoundland. These grants were given in response to proposals from the universities. The universities in turn were to ensure the prominence of the name C.D. Howe, and to try to solicit letters of thanks from recipients. The Foundation also gave expendable grants to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the Canadian War Museum, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Learning Partnership, Canada’s History Society, and UBC Press. In total, the Foundation gave over $11 million towards scholarships, fellowships, department chairs, research and publication, museum exhibits, and internships. After more than 50 years in operation, and with 25 endowments named after C.D. Howe at universities across the country, the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation was dissolved in 2013.