by Stephanie Slater, director, RRU Community Relations

Artist Robert Bateman and RRU president Allan Cahoon accept big cheque from Debora Linehan, regional vice-president of RBC. ________

Christmas came early for Royal Roads University with the announcement Dec. 10 of $1.4 million in donations to the Robert Bateman Centre at RRU.

The donations came from RBC -  the Royal Bank of Canada - which contributed $200,000, and two private individuals, who contributed $200,000 and $1 million respectively.

“It’s truly an honour to support this important and unique partnership between two leaders in sustainability: Robert Bateman and Royal Roads University,” says Debora Linehan, regional vice-president of RBC. “The Robert Bateman Centre project is a powerful synergy of art and science that will lead to new learning.”

For Linehan, coming back to RRU was a homecoming on several levels: she is an MBA graduate, a current member of the RRU board of governors and an incoming candidate in RRU’s inaugural Doctor of Social Sciences program.

Artist Robert Bateman reiterated that every time he comes to Royal Roads he also feels “like I’m coming home. This is such a beautiful repository of human and natural heritage. And beauty is one of the inspiring things that’s hardly ever talked about.”

The Bateman family has donated $11 million of art, archival material and a bequest to the Bateman Centre project with the intent that the collection and the centre will primarily serve as an international model for education, research and public dialogue on topics of environmental sustainability.

“I’m delighted to hear of these generous donations today that will help move this project forward,” says Bateman. “I am thrilled at the plan for my life's work to become an integral part of the Royal Roads picture – which includes a deep commitment to the environment and making this world a better place.”

Speaking at a reception at the university shortly after returning from a tour of the Antarctic (where he and wife Birgit were on a former Russian icebreaker that was trapped in the ice for three days), the artist presented Royal Roads with his latest painting created specially for the university: Raven’s Roost, valued at $90,000 U.S.

Colwood Mayor Dave Saunders (left) and Chair of Faculty Development at RRU Doug Hamilton had the honour of unveiling Raven's Roost, presented to the university by Robert Bateman. ____________

“It’s a big, black painting,” he quipped, acknowledging the challenges the work presented to the photographers present. The large painting depicts two ravens roosting in a night-time forest. It is dark yet dramatic – an illustration of one of Bateman’s favourite quotations from Hermann Hesse that “in order for art to be real art there should be a sense of mystery to it.”

At the event, university president Allan Cahoon put an end to any mystery about the location of the Bateman Centre by announcing that a new site has been selected for the centre. Rather than a two-storey building on a restored wetland in the southwest portion of the campus (between the Mews and Cedar buildings), a one-storey building is now planned near the entrance to the campus at the crest of the hill above and to the east of the Grant and Learning and Innovation Centre buildings.

The wetland restoration planned for the originally selected site will be carried out as a separate project. The changes reduce the total estimated cost of the project from $28 million to $18.2 million (for the building and support infrastructure).

“These changes not only reduce costs but reduce the need for road infrastructure,” says Cahoon. "That in turn will reduce the carbon impact of the tens of thousands of visitors who are expected to come to the centre each year.”

The Robert Bateman Centre is the current priority of the Royal Roads University Legacy Campaign, a multi-year fundraising campaign that is supporting academic, heritage and sustainability initiatives at the university. The campaign was launched last year with the goal of raising $100 million from the private and public sectors through philanthropic donations, strategic partnerships and funding from the provincial and federal governments.

So far, the campaign has raised $35.8 million. Of that amount, more than $6 million is dedicated to the capital costs for the Robert Bateman Centre. Cahoon said other major donations to the centre are being confirmed and will be announced early in 2010. Watch InRoads for further news!