Let me take you back to Tula’s origin in 2001.
At that point, I’d been working all day, every day, for a decade, building up my medical imaging company from three people in a tiny office in Waterloo, Ontario, to 400 employees in offices around the world.
Over the years, I’d received many offers to sell the company but I didn't consider any of them. After all, it was my life’s work. Then, in the middle of 2001, I decided it was the right time to sell.
That led to two months of frenetic activity as we sorted out the details. Then, finally, the sale was done. I went from having 400 employees and no spare cash one day to zero employees and a windfall of millions of dollars the next.
Christina and I knew we wanted to put the money to work in the public interest, but we’d been too busy to make concrete plans. We were advised to create a charitable foundation coupled to the sale, which we did. Then, we needed a name for the foundation.
We wanted something symbolic that didn’t tie us to any specific course of action. We chose the name “Tula” for that reason—and because it was short, musical, and easy to pronounce. And it was the name of one of our dogs.
So, Tula became our life’s work.
My first day at Tula was September 11, 2001, which was, of course, the same day as the terror attacks in the United States. We heard the news that morning en route to the Canadian Forces base at Trenton in eastern Ontario. My father had asked that Tula’s first donation be to the group restoring the type of plane he’d flown in World War II.
The visit went ahead as planned, but it was strange to be there that day, talking to aircraft enthusiasts and a few wartime pilots. We told them about our plans for Tula. One of the pilots, Jeff, had some suggestions. (A pilot always has a plan—I knew that from growing up.)
“I see your problem,” Jeff said. “Just make sure you spend all that money. You’re going to feel like an idiot if you die with money in the bank.”
Jeff had a plan for his own life: “I’ll write my last check to the undertaker, and it’ll bounce.”
Christina and I drove back from Trenton, thinking how much our world had changed that day. And we did need to figure out how to “spend all that money” as wisely and well as we could over the rest of our lives. It felt like we were embarking on a long flight with Tula as our plane. We'd go to many exciting places and accomplish great things, and we had plenty of fuel onboard.
Today, almost 23 years later, we’re very proud of the work that’s been done. We’ve put a great deal of our money to work and still have more in the tank.
So where are we today, and what’s the context of this $92-million donation?
Well, at the start of our flight, it was all about Eric and Christina and what we would accomplish in our lives, and perhaps a bit of the same mentality as our pilot friend Jeff with his last-check-to-the-undertaker plan.
But today, Tula is about much, much more than just us; it includes our 200 dedicated employees in Canada and Guatemala and all the projects and great partnerships we’ve built over the years. We would dearly love to see this organization sustained well into the future.
We’re showing our support by tossing all the remaining fuel from our 2001 windfall—$92-million—onto the Tula plane. That will keep Tula in the air for a while and give time for planning, but that fuel won’t last forever.
Although Christina and I have no more fuel to give, we will do everything we can to help Tula flourish and mobilize support from other sources.
