Softball-loving tycoon wins Chancellor’s award
Judy Stopa (Keith Beedie’s executive assistant), 604.909.8709, judy@beediegroup.ca
Keith Beedie, 604.435.3321; krb@beediegroup.ca (Mr. Beedie will be difficult to reach this week; suggest call Lisa Ogilvie first)
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
Note: Change of date - SFU Women's Softball doubleheader on new Beedie Field has been rescheduled. The new dates are March 6 and 7, 1 p.m. start both days.
Like Kevin Costner in the movie A Field of Dreams, the recipients of Simon Fraser University’s 2011 Chancellor’s Distinguished Service award are waiting with bated breath for fans to flood a ball field they’ve built.
The annual Chancellor’s award recognizes individuals who have made a distinguished contribution to the province in areas in which SFU has a major interest or direct association.
In March, Burnaby residents Keith and Betty Beedie plan to catch the SFU Women’s Softball team’s first home game on its own field of dreams built by the Beedies with their funding. The game will be the team’s first in the NCAA Division II Great North West Athletic Conference.
Weather permitting, the Beedies plan to throw the opening pitch of the first game of a double header that will christen the SFU softball team's new Beedie Field. The opening game is Sunday, March 6 followed by game two Monday, March 7. Both games start at 1pm.
The $1.3-million, NCAA-sized Beedie Field is one of many generous gifts that the Beedies have bestowed on individuals, groups, schools and facilities worldwide to help them realize their dreams. Burnaby Hospital, one of many Lower Mainland hospitals benefitting from the Beedies’ generosity, has a $5-million MRI facility thanks to the couple, which picked up half the cost.
In 2004, news of a tsunami that destroyed Sri Lankan hospitals and left people without basic medical care prompted the Beedies to build a family health clinic in Moratuwa.
A 30-year passion for coaching kids’ softball led Keith Beedie to sponsor many Burnaby athletes, create a $10,000 endowment fund in 1990 for SFU softball athletes and, more recently, build Beedie Field.
The softball lover admits to having an affair with baseball when he was dating a member of the world’s first female professional baseball league during World War II. The team’ s story inspired A League of Their Own, a 1992 movie close to Beedie’s heart.
“It has been my greatest joy to help promising, gifted SFU alumni like Melanie Matthews go on to represent Canada in women’s softball at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing,” says Beedie.
A self-made millionaire who has channeled $3.5 million of his fortune into worthy causes through the Keith and Betty Beedie Foundation formed in 1995, Keith Beedie is founder, chairman and CEO of the Beedie Group.
Now the largest landlord of industrial space in British Columbia with 129 industrial buildings across the province and more going up in Alberta, the Beedie Group started out modestly.
It grew out of a post-World War II furniture-construction company started in Vancouver by two high school graduates, 19-year-old Beedie, fresh off a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and a friend. Beedie spent the next 65-plus years fashioning a residential, industrial and now commercial building empire out of a mechanics diploma from Vancouver Tech.
“I’ve always wanted to use my wealth to help people less fortunate than me and give back to society,” says Beedie, whose wife Betty came up with the idea of donating through a foundation.
As a young family man unable to pursue his own university education, Beedie became passionate about helping Ryan, the youngest of his four children, get a bachelor of business degree from SFU and an MBA from UBC.
That passion motivated Beedie senior to create a $10,000 endowment fund in 1992 for SFU Business students. It also inspired him to mentor Ryan, now president of the Beedie Group, as a philanthropist in his own right.
In February, father and son donated $22 million to SFU’s business school, marking the university’s largest donation ever.
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