Royal Roads University is expanding programming to Salt Spring Island after receiving the largest donation in the university’s history.
The gift, from the estate of the late Susan Bagley Bloom, includes two acreages on the island near Beddis Beach with waterfront gardens, an orchard of heritage fruit trees, an “architecturally significant” house and a foreshore lease.
Faculty members are “full of ideas about what we could do with an extraordinary place like this,” said Royal Roads president Philip Steenkamp, who described the property as “quite magical.”
The donation is valued at $9.93 million, which includes $5.27 million in funds for ongoing maintenance and improvement of the land, as well as programming and events.
Bloom, a granddaughter of U.S. tobacco tycoon R.J. Reynolds, was a longtime resident of Salt Spring. She was an environmental philanthropist and pioneer in land conservation and sustainability, Royal Roads said in a statement.
The university plans to hold workshops, seminars, arts and cultural events, and field trips on the property.
Field schools could start as early as the fall, Steenkamp said.
Royal Roads will work with the Salt Spring Island Farmland Trust and Salt Spring Island Conservancy to care for the lands. It will also work with the Hul’qumi’num and SENĆOŦEN peoples of Salt Spring Island to ensure their interests in the lands are recognized.
Trustees of the Bloom estate, Mark Horne and Jan Theunisz, said in a statement they are delighted Bloom has made a lasting contribution to “the rich fabric of life” on the island.
“We know that Susan would be thrilled about the prospect of people, with so many different skills and backgrounds, coming together on the property she loved and stewarded for almost 40 years, with an overarching focus on advancing the values of regenerative sustainability, including ecosystem integrity, which was the core driver of her philanthropy,” they said.
In honour of Bloom, the university has named the main residential building on the property — built in West Coast Modern style by Victoria architect John Di Castri — the “Bloom Castle by the Sea.” Bloom, who died in 2021, also donated the Clayoquot Island Preserve to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, having purchased the island site in 1990 to protect it from subdivision, the conservancy says.
— With files from The Canadian Press
