St. Francis Xavier University Donor Impact Report 2023

Time, talent and treasure.

Building the future of StFX

Welcome to our first-ever digital Donor Impact Report!

Even though StFX is a university deeply rooted in tradition, we are committed to moving forward when the occasion demands it-and now is the time for us to plunge into the digital age. As you’ll read in our piece about the greening of StFX, we all play a role in reducing emissions and waste, and we pledge to use as little paper as possible in the coming years.

Shifting into a digital format also gives us the freedom to bring our stories to life in a way that’s just not possible in 2D. We hope you enjoy learning about the people who loaned their names and their legacies to Cameron and MacKinnon Halls, as we embark on a campaign to reinvent the way we think about residence living at university.

You’ll notice, too, that we’re more focused on the impact side of things, and less on the donor. We want you to understand – not just see – how much your support means to the students, faculty, and staff of StFX. Your contributions touch every facet of the university, from athletics to the new Institute for Innovation in Health, slated to begin construction next year.

We hope you’ll be as excited as we are to learn about just a few of the projects that our students are working on, from a lifejacket that could revolutionize the lobster fishing industry to a basketball program for marginalized youth in Windsor, Ontario.

fishing industry to a basketball program for marginalized youth in Windsor, Ontario.

It’s important for us to contemplate the diverse ways in which people give to the university and the role that donors of time and talent play in our students ‘ lives. Alex Dorward’ll has pledged to mentor young entrepreneurs, and the Sisters of Saint Martha continue to envelop students in warmth and kindness at StFX’s hidden gem, Wellspring.

Our past is our identity. Our future is bright. Thank you for being part of the StFX journey.

Wendy Langley ’92
Director of Development

A Place to
Call Home

Building an
on-campus community
in our residences

One of our greatest assets is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

Science & Heart:
The Most Perfect
Untion

StFX and Climate Action

Climate assets is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

A Path to a
Different Kind
of Healthcare

The Dahdaleh Institute
for Health Innovation

Healthcare assets is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

The Gift
of Hospitality

Wellspring the and
Sisters of Saint Martha

Wellspring is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

Wicked Problems
and the Students
Who Solve Them

The Ecosystem of
Social Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

Karen Gardiner:
A StFX Icon

Athletics is the experience we’re able to create through our strong on-campus residence environment. Here, we’ll explore the tremendous history of support over the last century that has, and will continue to make a lasting impact on the lives of our students.

Feature 1: Residence

A Place to Call Home

It’s 1945.
The Second World War has ended. You’ve come home from overseas and are taking advantage of the Veterans’ Rehabilitation training scheme.

The federal government will pay for your education, so you enroll at StFX. You look forward to the pastoral setting, only to quickly realize that there are many, many people who’ve ad the same idea. The university doesn’t have enough dormitory space to house you, or faculty members to teach you. Rooms that were meant for two have another bed squeezed in, and the basement of the university’s only dormitory – Mockler Hall – is converted into living quarters. A temporary military building is brought to campus; married students live there.
At StFX, this is a story with echoes of the past. In 1900, 100 students attended StFX. They lived and studied in Xavier Hall, alongside the faculty. By 1914, there were 218 students – and Xavier Hall could no longer house them all. Mockler Hall was built in 1915, to “provide clean, bright and airy rooms for the majority of the University students and professors.” The studentssuites were well-appointed, and included brick fireplaces – but the building’s main attraction was indoor plumbing.

By 1945, with the addition of the veterans, more than 500 students were clamoring for space in residence. StFX brought in New England architect Jens Larson, who’d also designed Morrison Hall, to create a 200-person residence out of local sandstone, in the Georgian Colonial style – Cameron Hall.

Feature 2: StFX & Climate Action
“One of the most important things we can do to address the climate change crisis is talk about it.”

Science & Heart: The Most Perfect Union

On a gorgeous autumn day, students loll on the low walls in front of the recently-built Mulroney Hall. Their conversation is briefly interrupted by the roar of a truck approaching on Martha Drive, delivering another load of furnace oil to the Central Heating Plant.
Amidst the bucolic idyll, the CHP is a relic from days gone by, when it was built on what was then the outskirts of campus. Now, it’s tucked snugly amidst Morrison, MacKinnon, and Mulroney Halls, and directly abutted by the Nasso Family Science Centre. From the CHP, fuel is converted into steam, which travels underground through a series of underground tunnels to deliver heat to campus buildings.
“The thing is,” notes Kevin Latimer, the university’s Energy Manager, ” is that by the time it gets to the Mount or Xavier Hall, we’ve already lost 31% of the fuel’s potential usefulness.” Dated boilers currently operate at only 85% efficiency, and scavenger loads – energy consumed in heating the plant’s oil tanks – combine with aging steam pipes to diffuse the fuel’s potential, before heat even arrives at its destination.

The Central Heating Plant
is a top priority for Mr. Latimer, who spends his days collecting and analyzing mountains of data.

Feature 3: The Ecosystem of Social Entrepreneurship at StFX

Wicked Problems

And the Students Who Solve Them

Ben Collings-MacKay spent the summer after his first year at StFX on the wharves of eastern Prince Edward Island, diving underneath the hulls of lobster boats and cutting tangled ropes free from the propellers.

It’s one in a long line of jobs he’s had that other young people seem reluctant to do, but he liked the wharfside chats – and the cash. He noticed, though, that very few of the fishers wore lifejackets. Men (and some women) who are third- and fourth-generation fishers, he notes, “didn’t grow up wearing them,” despite being all too aware of the myriad dangers of a life on the sea. There’s tigma around wearing lifejackets, and in an ancient trade known for its superstitions, wearing a lifejacket can often be seen as inviting bad luck – as though you’re expecting something bad to happen.
What if, Ben thought, he could design a lifejacket that could be encompassed within the fishers existing oil gear, so integrated that it’d be almost undetectable? And what if he could include a GPS locator beacon within the device?
Those who make their living on the ocean sometimes die there, too, their bodies lost forever. Ben wondered if he could make something that would help keep fishers safe-and bring them home.
Feature 4: Wellspring and the Sisters of Saint Martha

The Gift of Hospitality

In 1894, the entirety of StFX was contained within Xavier Hall, and the students were taught by faculty-priests. The college was severely lacking in creature comforts, and so the Bishop of Antigonish appealed to the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic congregation in Halifax.
He proposed that the Sisters of Charity recruit young nuns from the Diocese of Antigonish, who could provide domestic services at StFX.
The first thirteen Sisters of the newly-formed auxiliary order – the Sisters of Saint Martha-arrived in Antigonish that summer and got to work. They did laundry, cleaned the student’s rooms as well as the priest’s offices and classrooms, and nursed sick young men in the infirmary. More than that, they made the college feel like a home.
From StFX, the Marthas expanded into nursing, and were instrumental in the establishment of many hospitals in northeastern Nova Scotia in the first half of the twentieth century.

Back on campus, with increased automation and a swelling student population, the Marthas role shifted. By 1994, the Sisters-who’d lived on campus for nearly one hundred years – moved to Bethany, behind the hospital the Marthas had founded in 1912.

Feature 5: Athletics

Karen Gardiner: A StFX Icon

At any given home game
at StFX, you can count on seeing more than a few familiar faces in the bleachers.

There’s Father Stan, decked out in blue and white, and Antigonishers of all ages who come to cheer on the X-Men and X-Women. And there’s Karen Gardiner 89 , a member of the StFX Board of Governors and Co-Chair of Women of X-cellence, which supports the X-Women.

Her office – she’s a partner at McInnes Cooper in Halifax – is decorated with StFX memorabilia: a football helmet. A signed Henoc Muamba jersey. A rugby ball signed by a national champion team of X-Women. A Coach K bobble hat. A piece of the old floor from the Oland Centre. 

Gardiner started playing
basketball in junior high in New Glasgow, and often hopped in the car with her father, Donald ’60, to take in a StFX game.

Feature 6: Healthcare

In the spring of 2023, the provincial government pledged $37.4m towards the to-be-constructed Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Hall, which will house the Victor and Mona Dahdaleh Institute for Innovation in Health.

A Path to a Different Kind of Healthcare

The Dahdalehs announced their $15m contribution to the project at an exciting event in Halifax in April. These funds will allow StFX to complete the Xaverian Commons project, joining with Mulroney Hall to transform upper campus into an academic hub for students and faculty.
The Dahdaleh Institute will coalesce the health-related work that is already being undertaken at StFX, and provide collaborative spaces in which researchers can work together.

$15M

from the Dahdaleh Foundation

These funds will allow StFX
to complete the Xaverian
Commons project, joining
with Mulroney Hall to transform upper campus into an academic hub for students and faculty.