40 BCBusiness february 2016
by the time tech entrepreneur
Eric Peterson dies, he plans to be pen-
niless. This is no small feat, because in
2001 Peterson sold his privately owned
medical imaging company, Mitra, to
Agfa-Gevaert (a multinational maker of
imaging products) for roughly $300 mil-
lion. Granted, a decent-sized chunk went
to his business partners and another slice
was distributed among the 400 sta' of
his Waterloo, Ontario-based company.
But that still left him and his British-born
wife, Christina Munck, a sizeable fortune
to play with.
Peterson, a fourth-generation British
Columbian who drives a Nissan Xterra
SUV and wears Levis, is not someone
attached to the trappings of wealth.
Even his largest personal indulgence—an
architectural gem of a private residence
on Quadra that he shares with Munck,
designed by Patkau Architects—isn't
about having a starchitect-designed
space to call home; rather, it's about the
excellence that the architects achieved in
the award-winning design or the impec-
cable craftsmanship of the local build-
ers. "The last thing I want in the world
is to have money sitting in the bank—and
worst of all, money sitting in the bank
when I die," he says from his 29th-¢oor
Yaletown pied-à-terre. Indeed, for the
66-year-old philanthropic donor turned
doer, sitting still is something of a foreign
concept. With the long-armed physique
of a pitcher, Peterson is a man of nonstop
action. When excited, his hooded eyes
will widen into round-eyed boyish glee,
but his comportment can easily become
brusque, and it's not uncommon for him
to abruptly walk away from conversa-
tions or end phone calls. It's nothing
personal, say colleagues: he's just moved
on to the next thing. As one former
employee puts it: "He has the capacity to
pilot a hundred ships at once."
Right now, that savant-like capacity
is directed toward the many initiatives
bankrolled by the couple's private non-
prot Tula Foundation, launched after
the sale of Mitra. Tula currently has assets
of approximately $160 million, much of
which is in the form of a cash endow-
ment. (Peterson rarely refers to money
as money. It's a "resource." Similarly, his
monetary donations are "investments.")
And what makes the philanthropy so
noteworthy is how under-the-radar it is.
Unlike benefactors such as Peter Wall,
Jimmy Pattison or Jack Diamond, none of
Tula's many endeavours bear the couple's
name. Indeed, outside of those individu-
als directly a'ected by their work, few
even know who Peterson or Munck are.
"When people think of a family foun-
dation, it conjures up a certain image, and
we pretty much defy that image," says
Peterson. "We see the Tula Foundation
as a mechanism for wealth mobilization
and redistribution. The goal is to put the
money to work." Initially, the couple
"When people think of a family foundation it conjures
up a certain image, and we pretty much defy that
image," says Peterson. "We see the Tula Foundation
as a mechanism for wealth mobilization and
redistribution. The goal is to put the money to work"
