{"id":160,"date":"2019-06-07T13:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T20:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/?p=160"},"modified":"2019-07-16T14:03:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T21:03:16","slug":"ken-and-sheila-mcarthur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/ken-and-sheila-mcarthur\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken and Sheila McArthur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Giving Back to the Next Century:<\/h1>\n

Philanthropic Couple Supports a New Generation of Nurse Practitioners<\/h1>\n

Ken and Sheila McArthur<\/h3>\n

Shallow breathing, fever, fingertips that turn blue. Pneumonia can be frightening at any age, but Ken McArthur\u2019s lungs had turned infectious not once but twice\u2014before the age of six. \u201cWithout my mother\u2019s dedication,\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019m not sure I would be here today.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo by Martin Dee<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In his eighties now, Ken speaks reverently of his mother, Elizabeth McArthur. In 1917, she graduated from the Calgary General Hospital School of Nursing, before working in an Alberta county hospital. She was not only a highly skilled nurse, Ken says, but also \u201cthe strongest, most independent woman I have ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheila and Ken McArthur recently chose to honour her memory with a gift to UBC. As part of that generous one million dollar donation\u2014one half of which will be directed to the Sauder School of Business, Ken\u2019s alma mater, and the other to the UBC School of Nursing\u2014the couple has created the Elizabeth McArthur Memorial Bursary in Nursing. The remainder will support the Ken and Sheila McArthur Fund in Gerontological Research.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the gift falls on the Centenary, the 100th anniversary of the UBC School of Nursing. And, in another coincidence, the doors of the school opened in 1919, just two years after Elizabeth McArthur\u2019s graduation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt my age, you think back on your life, you reflect,\u201d Ken says. \u201cMy mother was a supportive person, and we wanted to acknowledge her, fundamentally, for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken\u2019s life began in Burnaby and Sheila\u2019s in nearby New Westminster. After graduating from Simon Fraser University, Sheila moved to Montreal, Quebec with her teaching degree in hand, but her lack of bilingual status kept her from the classroom; she quickly found rewarding work, though, at the Westmount Library in the children\u2019s department. Ken, meanwhile, followed his graduation from UBC with a career in finance, eventually assuming the role of Senior VP of Nesbitt Thomson Inc. and CEO of Shurway Capital Corp., his own private investment company.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned that it\u2019s much easier for business schools to attract donations than nursing schools,\u201d says Ken. \u201cAnd I am biased towards supporting things that are underfinanced. That seems to be one of my personality quirks.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Canada\u2019s aging population expected to double in the next 25 years\u2014a segment that, in just seven years, will comprise one-quarter of the population\u2014the expertise of Nurse practitioners (NP) is needed more than ever. The province has been, until recently, slow to bring NPs into the healthcare system. While Ontario has, according to the BC government, only 20 NPs for every 100,000 people, and the Prairie and Atlantic Provinces 16, BC has even fewer: only 8 per 100,000. Recognizing this shortage, the BC government has funded 200 new Masters of Nursing-Nurse Practitioner (MN-NP) positions, including 15 for UBC.<\/p>\n

While this is certainly promising for nursing grads, student costs\u2014escalating Vancouver rent, sky-high tuition rates\u2014have risen to $30,000 per year, which may dissuade even the keenest, most qualified students from leaving full-time jobs to earn their Master\u2019s degree. The Elizabeth McArthur Memorial Bursary in Nursing, however, will alleviate some of that financial queasiness by providing recipients of the endowed award with $12,000 per year in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout these bursaries, some of our most talented nurses would be unable to pursue the advanced education to become NPs,\u201d says Elizabeth Saewyc, Director of the UBC School of Nursing. \u201cAnd Canadians would miss out on extraordinary NPs who can provide expert primary health care for people of all ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dearth of NPs isn\u2019t the only issue related to Canada\u2019s aging population that concerns the McArthurs. Having made lifelong donations to researchers who study everything from Arthritis and brain health to Alzheimer\u2019s and juvenile diabetes (a condition that runs in the McArthur family), the couple has also devoted a portion of their recent UBC donation to gerontological research. And the gift is admirably open-ended: The Ken and Sheila McArthur Fund in Gerontological Research will support Masters and PhD students undertaking a range of gerontological nursing studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually hard to pick a disease (to fund), and so we thought of things whose end date we couldn\u2019t anticipate,\u201d Ken says. \u201cI\u2019ve learned that trying to predict the future isn\u2019t easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple divides their time between Florida and their home on Bowen Island, in Howe Sound. Eight years ago the couple fell for the latter locale, although it lacks a healthcare centre, unlike Galiano Island, an adjacent island near Victoria with a similar demographic. \u201cUnfortunately, 24-hour emergency services aren\u2019t available,\u201d says Sheila. \u201cSo if someone needs stitches or breaks an arm they must take the water taxi to Vancouver.\u201d And so the McArthurs are supporting the proposal\u2014and hopefully construction\u2014of a healthcare centre on Bowen Island. Having spent their lives in cities like Montreal and New York, they took healthcare for granted, the couple says, until they moved to a rural area.<\/p>\n

It was a rural area, actually, to which Elizabeth, Ken\u2019s mother, moved to pursue her nursing career over 100 years ago. After she married, though, she and Ken\u2019s father moved to the city of Vancouver and Elizabeth left nursing. \u201cIt was a long time ago, and my mother,\u201d Ken says, \u201cfollowed the traditional role of looking after her family. It was a very different world back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, Elizabeth McArthur would be surprised to have an endowment at a nursing school named after her. \u201cYes, she would be surprised,\u201d says her son, \u201cbut I think she would also be grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read a further article on the McArthurs at the Sauder School of Business site.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to Table of Contents Giving Back to the Next Century: Philanthropic Couple Supports a New Generation of Nurse Practitioners Ken and Sheila McArthur Shallow breathing, fever, fingertips that turn blue. Pneumonia can be frightening at any age, but Ken McArthur\u2019s lungs had turned infectious not once but twice\u2014before the age of six. \u201cWithout my mother\u2019s dedication,\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019m not sure I would be here today.\u201d   In his eighties now, Ken speaks reverently of his mother, Elizabeth McArthur. In 1917, she graduated from the Calgary General Hospital School…read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4350095],"tags":[4977,477365],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-spring-summer","tag-alumni","tag-donor","et-no-image","et-bg-layout-dark","et-white-bg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/touchpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}