Media Releases

TD Bank Group donates $1 million to University of Toronto Scarborough

October 1, 2013

TORONTO, ON — TD Bank Group announced a $1 mil­lion gift to Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Scar­bor­ough (UTSC) in sup­port of edu­ca­tion and research in the field of urban for­est con­ser­va­tion and biol­o­gy.

The dona­tion was announced this past Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 28 dur­ing TD Tree Days, TD’s flag­ship vol­un­teer pro­gram that will see 45,000 trees plant­ed this year. The gift will help sup­port under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents with research schol­ar­ships. It will also cre­ate the TD Lim­it­ed Term Pro­fes­sor­ship in Urban For­est Con­ser­va­tion and Biol­o­gy that is a lim­it­ed term pro­fes­sor­ship with research and teach­ing exper­tise in envi­ron­men­tal and/or bio­log­i­cal sci­ence.

“UTSC has par­tic­u­lar research strengths in bio­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence along with a pro­found com­mit­ment to hands-on, edu­ca­tion,” said Pro­fes­sor Fran­co Vac­cari­no, UTSC’s prin­ci­pal. “We’re grate­ful to TD for this gen­er­ous gift and excit­ed by the poten­tial to push the bound­aries of our under­stand­ing of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment with Canada’s first nation­al urban park as our lab.”

The research sup­port­ed by the gift will cap­i­tal­ize on UTSC’s prox­im­i­ty to the Rouge Park, a more than 40-square-kilo­me­tre eco­log­i­cal “buffer zone” in the midst of one of North America’s largest cities.

The gift also con­tributes to UTSC’s dri­ve to raise $35 mil­lion for key pri­or­i­ties, and is an inte­gral com­po­nent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s $2 bil­lion Bound­less cam­paign. To date, the Uni­ver­si­ty has sur­passed $1.3 billion—a his­toric high-water mark for fundrais­ing in Cana­da.

“On behalf of all my col­leagues at TD, we are thrilled to sup­port this cam­paign as it not only under­scores our ongo­ing com­mit­ment to urban forestry, it strad­dles all three of the our char­i­ta­ble giv­ing pri­or­i­ties in Cana­da — edu­ca­tion, the envi­ron­ment, and cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple,” said Alec Mor­ley, Senior Vice-Pres­i­dent, Greater Toron­to Area region, TD Cana­da Trust.

Vac­cari­no added that the Rouge’s par­tic­u­lar vari­ety of ecosys­tems, which include farms, forests, mead­ows and the city’s largest wet­lands, opens up a wealth of oppor­tu­ni­ties. “Stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to advance knowl­edge across areas rang­ing from ground­wa­ter and soil sci­ence to geo­chem­istry and geo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion sys­tems.”

Research and pro­gram­ming will also engage Parks Cana­da through an exist­ing mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing that names UTSC as the gov­ern­ment agency’s pri­ma­ry research and edu­ca­tion part­ner in the Rouge.

About Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Scar­bor­ough

UTSC offers under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents the aca­d­e­m­ic rigour for which the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is renowned. Com­bined with inno­v­a­tive expe­ri­en­tial edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, a focus on emerg­ing areas of schol­ar­ship and a wide range of pro­gram­ming span­ning the sci­ences, arts, man­age­ment, teacher edu­ca­tion, and U of T’s only co-op pror­grams, UTSC has every­thing need­ed to help stu­dents achieve their life goals. UTSC’s $35 mil­lion fundrais­ing cam­paign is an inte­gral com­po­nent of Bound­less: The Cam­paign for Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, which is rais­ing $2 bil­lion for a suite of ini­tia­tives direct­ed toward Prepar­ing Glob­al Cit­i­zens and Meet­ing Glob­al Chal­lenges. It is the largest fundrais­ing cam­paign in Cana­di­an his­to­ry.  For more infor­ma­tion on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Scar­bor­ough, vis­it:http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/home/.

About TD Bank Group Bank Group:

The Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank and its sub­sidiaries are col­lec­tive­ly known as TD Bank Group (TD). TD is the sixth largest bank in North Amer­i­ca by branch­es and serves approx­i­mate­ly 22 mil­lion cus­tomers in four key busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in a num­ber of loca­tions in finan­cial cen­tres around the globe: Cana­di­an Per­son­al and Com­mer­cial Bank­ing, includ­ing TD Cana­da Trust and TD Auto Finance Cana­da; Wealth and Insur­ance, includ­ing TD Wealth, TD Direct Invest­ing, an invest­ment in TD Amer­i­trade, and TD Insur­ance; U.S. Per­son­al and Com­mer­cial Bank­ing, includ­ing TD Bank, Amer­i­ca’s Most Con­ve­nient Bank, and TD Auto Finance U.S.; and Whole­sale Bank­ing, includ­ing TD Secu­ri­ties. TD also ranks among the world’s lead­ing online finan­cial ser­vices firms, with approx­i­mate­ly 8 mil­lion active online and mobile cus­tomers. TD had CDN$835 bil­lion in assets on July 31, 2013. The Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank trades under the sym­bol “TD” on the Toron­to and New York Stock Exchanges.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:   

TD Bank Group
Tash­lin Hirani
Cor­po­rate and Pub­lic Affairs
Tel: 416–982-3375
Tashlin.hirani@td.com

Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Scar­bor­ough
Don Camp­bell
Media Rela­tions Offi­cer
Tel: 416–208-2938
Dcampbell@utsc.utoronto.ca