IAN TELFER AND NANCY BURKE
IAN (BA 1968 VIC)
Ian Telfer and Nancy Burke’s transformational gift to U of T’s Faculty of Music will boost Toronto’s musical culture and support generations of students.
In 2022, Nancy Burke and Ian Telfer, a U of T political science and economics graduate, saw an opportunity to honour Jay Telfer, Ian’s late brother, by helping U of T to create a unique live music venue and arts hub at the Faculty of Music. Jay Telfer was a gifted musician, songwriter and screenwriter. Leader of the band A Passing Fancy and guitarist for the Toronto production of Hair.
Through a generous gift of $7 million to U of T’s Faculty of Music, Burke and Telfer are supporting the construction of the Jay Telfer Forum, which will offer music students not only a world-class performance stage, but a place to host conferences and events, creating a hub of artistic innovation nurturing the future leaders of Canada’s cultural economy. A portion of the gift established the Jay Telfer Forum Endowment Fund, which supports Thursdays at Noon, a free concert series open to the public that features a variety of performers, ensembles, distinguished guest visitors and more.
Ian Telfer’s interest in entrepreneurship was sparked by his career in the global mining industry. He served as CEO and chairman of Goldcorp from 2005 to 2019, was named Chairman of the World Gold Council in 2009 and elected to the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 2022. Nancy Burke, his spouse, is a philanthropist who serves as director of the Fernwood Foundation and honorary director of the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation Board in Vancouver.
At U of T, Telfer also helped to endow the Lassonde Institute Graduate Fellowship in Entrepreneurship and Engineering in 2005. He was instrumental in Goldcorp’s donation of $4 million in 2007 to create the Goldcorp Mining Innovation Suite at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering–a studio space that accommodates 124 students working in collaboration with industry partners.
Telfer and Burke have been honoured with a United Nations Innovation in Green Energy award (for supporting an eco-power project in West Africa), and lifetime achievement awards from the Gold Heart Gala and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Telfer’s leading gift to the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management in 2007 was, at the time, the largest single gift ever made to a business faculty in Canada.
Through their generosity, Ian Telfer and Nancy Burke created dynamic new spaces for music creation, music performance and engineering innovation in Toronto’s most renowned cultural and tech corridor.