Thornhill philanthropist funds summer jobs in high-crime areas of Toronto
Yorkregion.com
June 30, 2016
By Simone Joseph
Thornhill philanthropist Allan Carswell knows how important a summer job can be in launching a young person’s career.
“Summer jobs had a huge impact on my early life, not only from their financial support, but mainly from the experiential learning environment that they provided,” said Carswell, who grew up in a working-class family near Toronto’s Greenwood Avenue and Queen Street East in the 1940s and ’50s.
“More recently, during the last few weeks I have vicariously been sharing a stressful, time-consuming, but eventually successful summer job-hunt with my 18-year-old granddaughter,” he said.
“So I wanted to do something for young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.”
So, he has offered up funds via his family foundation.
This money will match the funds of Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour MaryAnn Mihychuk in Toronto-area communities grappling with gun violence. The family foundation will provide $606,000 in additional positions for youth.
Carswell is a York University physics professor emeritus, whose research on laser terrain mapping systems helped guide the 2007 Phoenix space mission to Mars.
The 83-year-old philanthropist, who runs the Carswell Family Foundation, says he was spurred to action after reading a Toronto Star story about Ottawa’s plan to boost federal summer jobs by an additional $606,000 in Toronto communities grappling with gun violence.
It is part of an $18.7-million investment across the city to create 6,305 summer jobs this year, more than double the positions funded by the previous Conservative government. Students aged 15 to 30 who are returning to school in the fall are eligible.
Toronto MPs lobbied Ottawa to find extra money for troubled neighbourhoods in five Toronto ridings after a recent spike in gun deaths, including the fatal shooting in May of a pregnant woman while she sat in a car in Rexdale.
Carswell, a York professor for 30 years and founder of Optech Incorporated, a world leader in laser-imaging technology and related space instrumentation, now works full-time on his family foundation.
“I’m 83, but I feel 40,” said the Order of Canada recipient.
“I’m particularly interested in matching grants, because I think they encourage others to step up.”
