WAAC Luncheon Program ZOOM lecture with Jon Dellandrea

In early 1961 a prominent Canadian art collector from Western Canada sent five “Tom Thomson” sketches to the Canadian Curator at the National Gallery of Canada for authentication. The paintings were found to be fakes! Russell Harper, the curator alerted the Ontario Provincial Police about what he described as a “flood” of fake Canadian art.

Dr. Jon Dellandrea biography

For a long time Jon Dellandrea has been pursuing the trail of this story which led to the conviction of two Toronto art dealers and become known as the “Great Canadian Art Fraud Case of 1962-1964”. This is a chance to hear the untold story of the “flood” of Canadian fakes which are still out there, by the art detective himself !!!!

Dr. Jon S. Dellandrea was raised in Northern Ontario and attended high school in North Bay where he met his wife, Lyne Edwards.

He holds degrees from the University of Toronto and Oxford University as well as Honorary Degrees from the University of Toronto and Nipissing University.

After starting his career at the University of Toronto in 1979, he moved to Waterloo to lead the development efforts at the University of Waterloo, culminating in his appointment as Vice-President University Development in 1983.

From 1989 to 1994, Dr. Dellandrea served as President of the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation. He returned to the University of Toronto to serve as Vice-President and Chief Advancement Officer, a position he held for 11 years. He successfully led the single largest fundraising campaign in the history of Canadian universities. The campaign succeeded in raising in excess of $1.2 billion one year ahead of schedule. The initial goal had been to launch a fundraising campaign for $300 million to establish more endowed chairs and student aid; the target was achieved by the time the campaign was publicly announced and had to be re-set twice. The campaign itself was also extended.  The number of endowed chairs grew from 15 to 175, with an additional 80 joint hospital-University of Toronto chairs established during the campaign. As a result of the successful campaign, endowed student aid rose from $68.7 million in 1995 to $463 million in 2004.

From 2005 to 2008, Dr. Dellandrea was Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Development and External Affairs) at the University of Oxford where he launched a campaign for over $2.5 billion, making it the largest campaign to date in Europe.

As an educator, Dr. Dellandrea has taught at the University of Waterloo and held faculty appointments at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Management and Economics Division, as well as the Rotman School of Management. He is a senior fellow of Massey College.

An active community volunteer, Dr. Dellandrea was a member of the Board of Directors of the Council for Canadian Unity, the Board of Mount Sinai Hospital and former Board member of the Canadian Bureau for International Education, the Toronto Community Foundation and is a member of the Canadian Board of Right to Play and Board Chair, Art Canada Institute.

He has served as Counsel to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and as Counsel to Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

In 2001, he became the first Canadian to receive the Laureate Award of the Institute for Charitable Giving in the United States.

Dr. Dellandrea was also appointed as a member of The Order of Canada in 2006 for his contributions to higher education.

In December 2010, he was installed as the third Chancellor of Nipissing University.

In April 2012, Dr. Dellandrea was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Foundation.

$10 for members, $15 for guests

FREE registration until Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Register by emailing waac@womensartofcanada.ca or call the WAAC office 416-922-2060