Fortifying a Foundation in Cancer Care for Future Generations

You can’t drive far in downtown Vancouver without passing a monument to Jim Mutrie. His 40-year professional legacy as a structural engineer lives on in the high-rise building projects he worked on — Living Shangri-La, Shaw Tower, Waterfront Centre and Granville Square, to name just a few.

But beyond bricks and mortar — or concrete structures, to which he made lasting contributions by helping to shape national building codes — Jim was an extraordinary engineer because he truly cared about the people that would one day live in the buildings.

This same deep sense of social responsibility and desire to build a better, safer world for others, is why Jim’s wife Sandy is honouring their commitment to give back by allotting a portion of their assets, through a planned gift in her will, to the BC Cancer Foundation.

“We don’t have any children and so it was something we discussed when Jim was first diagnosed,” says Sandy of Jim’s Stage 4 bladder cancer that was discovered via a blood test in 2010.

Due to his advanced cancer, Jim was given six months to live. “He had surgery, radiation, chemotherapy — the whole gamut,” says Sandy. “But I really do feel it was the clinical trials he was on that gave him the extra time with me. I’m very thankful for that.”

Jim approached cancer the same way he sought solutions at work — such as how to assess how buildings will tolerate large interstory drifts due to an earthquake, a challenge he is credited with providing a solution for decades before it became common practice.

“He was very good at taking a problem and just figuring it out. He kept an open mind,” says Sandy. “When hit with bladder cancer he treated it the same way. He did an incredible amount of research. Information kept him on an even keel. It really grounded Jim and was how he worked through his cancer for nine years when he was only initially given a very short period of time.”

Jim and his oncologist, Dr. Kim Chi — who was the Chair of the Genitourinary Disease Site Committee for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group — regularly put their heads together.

“Dr. Chi would present all the information he could on the different trials available. Jim took it all in, and then just went for it,” says Sandy. He participated in four trials in total, the last one in immunotherapy, which harnesses the power of the immune system to attack and destroy cancer cells.

“A young fellow came up to me and said, ‘You don’t know me, but I was a student at UBC, and I stayed in engineering because of your husband. I was planning on dropping out, but I went and listened to a talk Jim gave, and I decided to stick with it. He got me through engineering.’”

While the buildings he designed and the young engineers he mentored are a lasting legacy to Jim’s career, philanthropy is how he and Sandy planned to pay it forward personally.

“In the end, Jim said, ‘I have been gifted with an extension of life due to BC Cancer. I think that is where our money would best be served — to help other people facing cancer, because we know what a hard journey it is.’”