John Cleghorn, BCom’62, LLD’04, knows the power of teamwork to achieve an apparently unreachable goal. While a student, he was a lineman for the McGill Redmen, playing with the 1960 team that won McGill its first championship football title in 22 years. “It was a terrific team,” he remembers.
Cleghorn later served as Chair of the McGill Twenty-First Century Fund Campaign, which raised $205 million – an unheard-of sum in the 1990s. Cleghorn was known to lead “the Dawn Patrol” (an early-morning meeting of the Campaign Cabinet), giving his cabinet members McGill sweat suits with the instructions: “Wear these proudly around town. We’re a team.”
Now a Governor emeritus of McGill, Cleghorn serves on Campaign McGill’s Campaign Executive Cabinet. During the panic of fall 2008, he was quick to point out to his team mates that the last campaign also ran into a serious economic downturn, not to mention the 1995 Quebec referendum. “Just like the last campaign, we decided we would stay the course.”
“It’s important to plan for the future,” Cleghorn advises. “But you must also know your history.”
A lifelong military history buff, Cleghorn has visited all the Canadian battlefields in Europe and Hong Kong. “Reading about it is one thing, but to actually see the ages of the young men on their tombstones is quite another.”
Over the years, Cleghorn and his wife Pattie (CertEd’62) have had a profound impact on McGill through multiple gifts to Athletics, student aid, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Desautels Faculty of Management. Their most recent gift is directed to the McGill Remembers Initiative, which commemorates alumni who died in the two great wars. “When I heard about this project, I simply couldn’t say no,” says Cleghorn.
Now retired as CEO of the Royal Bank, Cleghorn serves as Chair of Canadian Pacific Railway. He is also Chancellor emeritus of Wilfrid Laurier University, he holds honorary degrees from four universities including McGill, and he is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Cleghorn is pleased to see Campaign McGill’s historic momentum, despite the ups and downs of the stock markets. “There’s always going to be something. The important thing is to stick with it as a team,” he says, adding: “It’s a great feeling to be part of McGill’s history.”