A self-made business magnate places high importance on university education, even though he only ever achieved a Grade 11 education himself.

You’d think a self-made businessman who made it to the top with a Grade 11 education would scoff at the idea of post-secondary schooling.

“Are you kidding me?” says Stewart Allen, the soft-spoken baron of bottled water, who made his initial fortune at the helm of Nova Scotia-based Sparkling Spring Water Holdings, Ltd. “I can’t overstate the importance of a university education. As far as I’m concerned, I owe my success in large part to being in the right place at the right time. It comes to down to luck, great long-term partners and a knack for numbers.”

Allen admits to being horrified back in the mid-nineties when his kids and some of his siblings ’kids, as well as children of close family friends started saying out loud that they didn’t believe in the value of a university education. After all, they reasoned, look how well Dad/Uncle Stew had done for himself without one. “I realized that in not being educated myself, I was setting a bad example and that didn’t sit well with me,” says Allen. “I’ve always led by example in my business life, taking pride in working hard, being first in the office in the morning and last to leave at night.”

The Stewart E. Allen Bursary in Medicine covers the cost of undergraduate medical tuition and fees for qualified students.  “My aim is to help those bright young students for whom a medical education would be impossible without financial support,” says Allen.  “I’m motivated by my love of the Maritimes and my Maritime daughters who grew up here. It’s a win-win all around.”