She gave away millions. Liliane Stewart, philanthropist 1928-2014

Par Alan Hustak le 3 mai 2014

Liliane M. Stewart, the Montreal tobacco heiress who  endowed and supported several Montreal museums, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Château Ramezay  the Stewart Museum on Île Sainte-Hélène,  and as well as a number of hospitals died early Saturday, May 3.  She was 85. She was an intensely private, sometimes difficult woman, who carried on and expanded her husband’s philanthropic works.  Mrs. Stewart  refused to talk about herself or answer personal questions.  Once, when asked to furnish biographical material to a journalist she declined.  “Me, I am me,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.  I am a very private person.”

lilianestewart.jpgShe was in fact Liliane Spengler, one of two daughters in a Czech engineer’s family. Her mother was Italian.  She was born in Cairo, Sept. 2, 1928.  Her formative years were spent with her sister in Egypt where they were educated in French ‘it was paradise,” she confided, we had the best opera, the best French theatre. And the museums, they were filled with Egyptian history.”  Mrs. Stewart was fluent in six languages Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish, Checz and English.  In 1954 she married a New York import dealer Bob Rubin. She was 38 years old when their daughter, Roberta was born.   Her first husband was killed in a car accident shortly afterwards  and she went to work to support her family.  In 1967 she married David. M. Stewart, the Montreal  tobacco magnate who had five children of his own and had been one of her husband’s clients.  In 1973 Mr. Stewart sold the tobacco company for $70-million and created the Macdonald Stewart Foundation.  Liliane Stewart became the foundation’s vice-president. 

 “They were a perfect complement to each other,” said Bruce Bolton, executive director of the Macdonald Stewart Foundation, “He was the macro manager  She was the micro manager. She was the artist.  She was exposed to and appreciated quality.  He was the dreamer ” 

Initially, the Foundation bought the historic Forget mansion, a Victorian mansion on Sherbrooke St. in the city’s Square Mile. They  restored it and opened the Musée des Arts Decoratifs de Montréal in the Château Dufresne and then bought and restored the Manoir Jacques Cartier in St. Malo, France. It also supported the Château Ramezay Museum and made substantial contributions to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and other cultural, medical and educational institutions, especially Macdonald College where Mrs. Stewart was took an interest in youthful  endeavours.

After David M. Stewart died in 1984, Mrs. Stewart became Foundation president, sat on the boards of four museums, and under her direction donated more than $100-million to various societies, associations and museums. 

“Another page of Montreal’s history has been turned,” said Guy Ducharme,  the director of public affairs of the Macdonald Stewart Foundation.  “Few people have contributed as much to this city as she did. “She was one of those people who believed, like her late husband David, that if she didn’t do it herself, things wouldn’t ever get done. When she was challenged, she was always right. She was the artist who understood quality, and she was the one who made her husband the man of the world that he became Until recently she travelled extensively, making three or four trips each year to Europe.  During the 1980s Stewart was embroiled in a nasty public family feud when her step-daughter, Victoria, an employee of the Stewart Museum for several years, claimed that her father’s  trust was being mismanaged.  A decade later, Victoria Stewart was let go.  In 1999 Liliane Stewart donated her decorative arts collection, worth an estimated $15-million to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In recognition of the gift, one of the wings of the museum was renamed  the Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion in 2001.  

She was a marksman, and a keen supporter and Life Governor of the Dominion of Canada Rifle Association which was opposed to gun control.  “There are things you can do with a gun that are not deadly,” she explained.  Mrs. Stewart was appointed Honorary Colonel of the Queen’s York Rangers in 1984, and was honorary colonel of the Compagnie franche de la Marine and the Old 78th Fraser Highlanders.

She served on McGill University’s Board of Governors, and was awarded the French government’s highest cultural order when she was made an  Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 1988 and invested as Officier de l’Ordre national du Québec in 1989. She became a Canadian citizen in 2006 and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2007.

Her only daughter from her first marriage, Roberta, died in 1983.

The funeral will be held at Notre-Dame Basilica on the 13th of May at 11 o'clock

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