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All in the family: The 1941 marriage
of Jean MacMillan and Gordon Southam brought together
two substantial family fortunes and produced (from
left) Nancy, Stephanie, Lisa, Gordon (seated in
the foreground), Harvey, Carol, and (seated far
right) Martha Lou
Image courtesy of Martha Lou
Henley |
The Quiet Philanthropist —
Page 2
Louie was a painfully shy child; she had little interest
in reading (though she’s a voracious reader today)
and was perpetually terrified of being made to speak
in class. (Another birthday story: at 13, she got bingo
at a party but, afraid of calling out the word, did
not win the game.)
Henley never had children of her own on whom to lavish
such a fine life. Yet, as she grew older, she devoted
much of her time to caring for the children of others.
Through her twenties she served as a play therapist
at the Health Centre for Children. Later, she became
a teacher’s aide at Christopher Robin Preschool,
where she stayed on through the 1970s. None of this,
of course, was paid work (the only money Henley has
ever earned was a few dollars for babysitting in her
teens).
Wealth allows time for kind pursuits, but Henley’s
volunteerism had zeal, a heightened commitment. Most
say her childhood illness invested her with a kind of
unconscious mission. “She came from a very powerful
group,” says Gay Larsen. “Her mom, her dad—her
whole family, really. In my heart, I think her polio
was pivotal. It was the first time any of us saw that
we were all vulnerable. Polio did handicap her—such
a serious childhood illness was life-altering—but
in another way it completely freed her. She found the
best sense of herself, a unique place in a formidable
family.”
Larsen, like all Henley’s friends, is fiercely
protective, and when she hears herself she sits forward
in the manner of one who is ever vigilant. “But,
oh, don’t use the word handicapped. Louie would
kick me around the block. The point is: she saw different
kinds of people when she was sick. Worthiness to Lou
became something else. You were worthy because you did
things for other people.”
By her teens, it seems, Henley’s character was
fixed. On a trip to San Francisco in the spring of 1962,
her mother Jean wrote to her father H.R. that Louie
“told me last night she wants to help people who
are less fortunate than she is…The old maxim about
adversity either weakening or strengthening one is true.
Lou has had to make her own decisions and stick to them—or
else she would have been at everyone’s mercy and
turned out to be a weakling.”
Anyone given a humanistic education during the 1960s
could not help but absorb the notion that having money
is a kind of passive evil. Henley, who dipped into a
different arts major each year while attending the University
of British Columbia (she flitted from education to French,
to music, to psychology) would have been no different.
And yet so many in the same privileged position choose
not to “atone” for their wealth via the
saving grace of philanthropy.
“I don’t think I was taught to give it away,”
says Henley today. “Some of my siblings don’t.”
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Time given is
a symptom of her care’s intensity—the
opera’s visiting stars
will often have cookies personally
delivered to rehearsals.
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Carlson, her younger sister, also does; she joined the
B.C.’s Children’s Hospital board in 1987,
and currently works with the Foundation’s advisory
body. Through struggles with alcohol and the loss of
a daughter, she too has found giving to be a kind of
enlightened receiving. “Volunteering saved my
life,” she says over lunch on the West Side. “You
do get way more back. Yet people with far more money
than us do not give. Why is that?”
“If you have that kind of money,” Henley
adds, “sharing it has no downside. I can’t
believe educated people don’t figure it out. It’s
not that there’s an obligation. But giving money
away brings more happiness.” Later, she asks:
“Should there have been an obligation?”
It’s a genuine question. “Maybe that should
have played a role. But it never needed to.”
A record of Henley’s philanthropy serves as an
index of her passions, her friendships, and her life.
Music has always been her great love—so the city’s
opera and symphony receive both time and money in staggering
amounts. Over the past two decades, Henley has quietly
deposited $6 million into the pockets of others. Time
given is a symptom of her care’s intensity—the
opera’s visiting stars will often have cookies
personally delivered to rehearsals. Her giving goes
beyond some obligatory shuffling of funds.
Micki Partridge, who volunteered alongside Henley at
Vancouver Opera for years, says Henley’s attitude
is very different from that of the rest of the family.
“And why is Louie so different? Perhaps because
she had something taken away from her. And it was nothing
money could do anything about.”
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