Royal Roads University gets island land, funding from late tobacco heiress

An aerial view of some of the property on Salt Spring Island that has been donated to Royal Roads University is seen in this photo from the school's announcement. (Royal Roads University)

Royal Roads University in British Columbia says it has received a donation of properties on Salt Spring Island and funding worth a total of almost $10 million, the biggest donation in its history.

It says the gift from a charitable trust was made possible by the generosity of the late Susan Bagley Bloom, a longtime resident of the island who was a granddaughter of U.S. tobacco tycoon R.J. Reynolds.

It says the gift includes two properties on the island in the Strait of Georgia with waterfront gardens, an orchard and an "architecturally significant" house on a foreshore near Beddis Beach.

There is also about $5.6 million in funding for maintenance, improvements and events.

Royal Roads president and vice-chancellor Philip Steenkamp says in a statement that the properties will be used as a "dynamic space" for artists, scholars and writers-in-residence.

The statement says Bloom was an "environmental philanthropist and pioneer in land conservation and regenerative sustainability."

It says that in honour of her generosity the primary building on the properties will be named "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.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 12, 2024.