Joan C. Forrester

Joan Forrester was born Joan MacKenzie in 1943, the daughter of Murray H. MacKenzie and H. Claire Sauder and the niece of William L. Sauder, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Sauder Industries and Interfor, Chairman of the Board of Governors and later Chancellor (1996-2002) of the University of British Columbia, and a major financial sponsor of UBC's Sauder School of Business.

She grew up in Vancouver, where she graduated from McGee Secondary School in Kerrisdale and from the University of British Columbia with a degree in English and Psychology. Later she studied business administration in New York.

After her marriage in 1967, she moved to Ottawa, where she raised three children. There she served as a member of the fundraising committee of Ashbury College and worked and volunteered for nine years as a docent at the National Art Gallery of Canada. On her return to Vancouver in 1988, she started managing the Murray H. MacKenzie "Foundation, which had been established in 1970. Between 1995 and 2005, she also served as a director of the Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind, Saint John Ambulance, and the Canadian Mental Health Association.

From 1993 to 2008, she chaired the Joan C. Forrester Foundation (formerly the Murray H. MacKenzie Foundation), which made significant donations to such organizations as the Catholic Family Services, L'Arche, and the North Vancouver High School Education Foundation. She is now a director of our Foundation.