Canadian investment manager, ethical business proponent and philanthropist Stephen Jarislowsky has died. He was 101.

Jarislowsky, who was born in Germany in 1925, founded Jarislowsky Fraser & Co. from scratch in 1955 and built the Montreal firm into what was at one point Canada’s largest pension fund manager.

After working in Kingston, Ont., Montreal and New York, he returned to Montreal to found his eponymous firm with $100 of his money and $50 from a partner.

He led Jarislowsky Fraser for more than six decades before stepping down in 2012, by which time the firm was managing around $40 billion in assets.

Scotiabank bought the firm in 2018 for $950 million.

His business success made him worth some $3.9 billion US, according to Forbes, a pool of wealth he used to donate many millions of dollars including to establish dozens of research chairs at Canadian universities.

He had received honorary degrees from 20 universities, his family said in a statement announcing his death.

Order of Canada

Among other honours he received was the Order of Canada. His citation at the time of his promotion to Companion of the Order reads in part: “Known for his generosity of spirit, he has been unwavering in his support of higher education, establishing university chairs and institutes in diverse academic areas, including medicine, management and the arts.”

It also noted his outspoken advocacy for strong corporate governance practices, as well as his continued defence of the rights and interests of shareholders.

In recent years, he introduced five endowed chairs intended to educate the next generation of government leaders. Jarislowsky said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other recent shifts toward totalitarianism raised concerning parallels of the political threats he saw in his childhood.

“People need to understand historical experiences in order to prevent repeating them,” Jarislowsky said in a 2022 statement, when he announced a $10 million gift to establish the chairs at five Canadian universities focused on training future politicians.

“Once democracy disappears in a country, it takes years to re-establish if it is even possible.”

The Jarislowsky Foundation, launched in 1991, funded almost 48 research chairs in areas of democracy, governance, the environment, health and Canadian art, donating about $10 million a year, said the University of Saskatchewan when the foundation established a new chair in regenerative agriculture.

Honorary degrees

Universities have marked his civic works and donations with at least a dozen honorary degrees and in other, more novel ways, including McMaster University planting 99 trees to mark his 99th birthday.

His own university studies included a degree in mechanical engineering at Cornell University, a master’s degree in Far Eastern studies from the University of Chicago and a master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School.

Along with research donations, Jarislowsky also served on numerous civic, charitable and corporate boards, and pushed for better leadership and accountability in business.

He co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance in 2002 to help empower shareholders to hold executives to account and restore confidence in capital markets. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations of Quebec.

He leaves behind his wife Gail and three children.