“I was in shock,” Mailman says today. “At the amount of money. At the prestige of Queen’s. At the Sobey name.”

Donald Sobey did agree to make a generous contribution to his alma mater, but it was not for the usual name-on-thedoor building project. Instead, he donated $3 million worth of Empire stock to endow the D&R (Donald and Robert) Sobey scholarship.

He also decided he would handle this gift personally rather than through the Sobey Foundation. The family Foundation, whose purpose is to “provide funding for important initiatives that have a positive and long-lasting impact in health, in education or for communities,” continues to make generous contributions to Atlantic Canada’s universities and community colleges (more than $9 million to 17 regional post-secondary institutions since 2001). But Donald, who is also a director of the Foundation, saw this particular gift as personal, a commitment by him and his son to their alma mater—and to Atlantic Canada’s best and brightest young business wannabes.

“I had such a great experience attending Queen’s and loved the idea of helping young people directly,” Donald says. When students get an opportunity to travel and study outside their home region, he adds, “they graduate with perhaps a better experience of Canada.”

Though the Sobeys hope some of the scholarship winners will eventually find their way back to Atlantic Canada, “there are no strings attached,” notes Rob, now the president and CEO of Lawton’s Drugs. “Ultimately, we want these high achievers to make their mark nationally and internationally as Atlantic Canadians.”

“I also believe that Atlantic Canadians have a very unique quality,” Donald suggests, “and I think Queen’s School of Business and the rest of the country can benefit from that.”

The scholarship program certainly benefited from Donald Sobey’s personal attention to its financial success. “I insisted on running it,” he says of the endowment fund. He was worried some university fund manager might someday sell off the shares, or that they’d get lost in a sea of other university endowment money, never to be identifiable again. Under Donald’s stewardship, the fund has grown to more than $14 million, enabling Queen’s to increase the number of scholarship recipients to six a year and up the total amount each student is eligible to receive to $68,000.

But that wasn’t the only way in which the scholarship became personal for Donald and Rob Sobey.

Charlotte MacDonald calls the D&R Sobey Scholarship the “defining point of my experience to date.” Not so much winning it, but living it. “There may be other scholarships worth as much financially,” she allows, “but none of them provides the personal connections that this one does.”

When MacDonald graduated from Sacred Heart School in Halifax in 2009, “there were 32 girls in my graduating class.” None went to Queen’s. Whatever fears she might have had about being plunged into a campus filled with more than 20,000 students, however, quickly disappeared, not only in the excitement of being in a new environment but also—and perhaps equally importantly—with the reality that she got to meet a few of her fellow D&R winners before the end of frosh week. “I felt at home right away.”

Later in the semester, she says, “Don and Rob”—that’s how most students refer to them—invited her and her fellow scholarship winners to the lobster dinner they host each fall at Queen’s for all the two dozen recipients currently on campus. There, she not only got to meet her benefactors and the other scholarship winners, but many of her professors as well. “The lobster,” jokes Donald, “has made it a must-attend event on the Queen’s fall social schedule.”

More significantly, says Rob Sobey, the dinner makes the students feel welcome. When he “followed dad’s journey” to Queen’s in the mid-1980s, “three of my closest friends from high school came with me. It really eased the transition for me to have that support, and that’s what we hope to recreate with the scholarships.”

“I like to meet the students, and they like to meet us,” Donald says. During the annual dinner, he and Rob mingle with the students. He’s free with folksy, practical advice. “Treat university as though it were a job,” he tells them, “eight hours in class, eight hours for sleeping and eight hours to enjoy the overall experience. A month or so before exams,” he adds with a twinkle, “I recommend cutting the enjoyment part down to four hours.”