John MacBain

McCall MacBain is a Rhodes Scholar and received an MBA from Harvard Business School (1984),[3] an MA in Law from Oxford University[3] and an Honours BA in Economics from McGill University (1980).[3] He holds honorary degrees from Dalhousie University,[4] the University of Ottawa,[5] Brock University,[6] McGill University[7] and Monash University.[8]

He served as president of the Students' Society of McGill University, as well as valedictorian. While at Oxford, he was co-captain of the university's ice hockey team.[9]

From 1987 to 2006, McCall MacBain was the founder, president and CEO of Trader Classified Media, the world's leading classified advertising company.[3] Starting with his purchase of three small publications in Montreal in 1987, when he was 29 years old, he developed the classified business to include 500 print titles and 57 internet sites in over 20 countries, including in Argentina, Australia, China, France, Hungary, Italy, Russia and Spain.[10]

After its IPO in 2000, Trader Classified Media was publicly traded on NASDAQ and the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange.[11] In 2006, McCall MacBain sold the company and set up the McCall MacBain Foundation.[1]

Prior to founding Trader Classified Media, he worked from 1984 to 1987 as director of marketing at Power Corporation.

Since its formation in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007, the McCall MacBain Foundation has made tens of millions of dollars of grants to fund projects relating to education and scholarships, health and climate change, and the environment. In addition to his role as a director and chair of the foundation, McCall MacBain is the Founding Chair of the European Climate Foundation,[12] Chair of the McGill University Principal's International Advisory Board, a member of the Advisory Board for the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy[13] and a Foundation Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.[14] Additionally, he is a director of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in Cape Town.[15]

McCall MacBain, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar (Quebec and Wadham, 1980), donated $120 million to the Rhodes Trust in order to help fund the scholarships and to aid in the expansion of the program to Brazil, China, Japan and Russia. He made that gift in September 2013, during the Rhodes 110th anniversary celebrations.[16][17] He was named Second Century Founder of the Rhodes Scholarships in honour of that significant gift.[18] McCall MacBain was honoured in 2014 as a Fellow of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors at Oxford University, at Rhodes House, where his portrait hangs and a room bears his name.[19] The McCall MacBain Graduate Centre at Wadham College, Oxford, was endowed by him.[20]

McCall MacBain has also donated more than $1.2 million to fund McCall MacBain Loran Scholars through the Loran Scholars Foundation.[21]

On June 30, 2016, McCall MacBain was named an Officer of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston for "his achievements as a business leader and for his contributions to academic institutions as a philanthropist." [22]

On February 13, 2019, John and Marcy McCall MacBain donated $200 million, the single-largest gift to McGill University for a graduate scholarship program.[23]

In 2019, he also seeded the Kupe Leadership Scholarship at the University of Auckland.[24][25]