Bob Gaglardi
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/tru.ca
February 19, 2022 - 1:06 PM
Not everybody was happy to hear Thompson Rivers University's business school has a new name.
A councillor from Canim Lake Band, which is 200 kilometres north of Kamloops, doesn’t think Kamloops businessman Bob Gaglardi – “another old white guy” – was the best choice to promote reconciliation.
“In fact, it’s more colonialism and serve to further erase visibility of the Secwepemc people on whose land’s the university operates,” reads an open letter from Carl Archie to the university’s president Dr. Brett Fairbairn.
“Naming institutions after white guys also ignores the long and intentional history of genocide against Indigenous peoples throughout the country.”
The history of public education has left the Secwepemc people at a disadvantage over “inter-generationally wealthy families like the Gagalardi family,” he wrote.
When it was announced that the new school would be getting named after Gaglardi earlier this week as the Bob Gaglardi School of Business and Economics, it was also revealed that his family donated $10 million towards the business program and the construction of a new building. That was the largest single donation in the university's history.
READ MORE: TRU business program gets $10 million donation, largest ever given to university
Bob’s daughter Andrea said the donation is about continuing the Gagalardi legacy of contributing to the community.
“It was important to us as a family to give these funds to TRU in support of the growth and future enrolment at their business school, while also continuing a legacy of contributing to the community that our family has long valued,” she said in a TRU press release.
Fairbairn said in the release that “TRU strives to be a leader in diversity."
But the school has not shown enough leadership in diversity for Archie.
“How many white people saw this and justified it? Where were the discussions with the Secwepemc?” he asked.
READ MORE: New Kamloops hospital tower named after Gaglardi family following $15M donation
TRU wouldn’t even exist if it were not for the “ongoing theft” of the land where the school was built, he said, adding that it’s a slap in the face to the Secwepemc people.
Archie is disappointed that the discovery of 215 children’s bodies at the former Kamloops residential school – which made international headlines – didn’t make a stronger impression on policy makers at TRU.
The naming of TRU’s school of business was a serious misstep and is not in the spirit of reconciliation, he said.
According to Forbes, Bob Gaglardi is 81 years old and has a net worth of $2.9 billion.
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