Transforming Lakehead Orillia
“Seeing the impact of Lakehead University in Simcoe County has been wonderful,” Will McGarvey says.
One of Lakehead Orillia’s biggest cheerleaders, Will was an original member of the Orillia University Committee and the Mayor’s Task Force—groups that lobbied for a university in the city.
“It began with a bunch of my friends called the Poker Club,” Will says. “We’re terrible poker players, but the main reason we get together is to talk about the community and politics. One night in 2003, the idea of bringing a university to Orillia was raised, and that was the genesis of Lakehead Orillia—everything just lined up.”
When the campus opened in 2006, in large part because of their activism, Will helped guide Lakehead Orillia through its first year by chairing its Community Advisory Committee and then by joining the President’s Advisory Council on Economic Development (PACED), which he’s been chairing for the past 11 years.
“When the campus launched, you could feel things shift,” Will says. “Our young people became excited about going to university, especially since many of them are the first in their family to have that opportunity.”
He has made it a priority to foster Lakehead Orillia’s success despite juggling the demands of being a small-business owner and a practicing visual artist. Will has also made generous financial contributions to the university, including its Humanities 101 community outreach program for people facing barriers to postsecondary education. “I spent 10 years in Toronto after not quite finishing all the credits for a high school diploma and worked several entry-level jobs before deciding that I wanted to continue my education,” Will says. “It took three years to gain admission as a mature student but, six years and two degrees later, I was on a life-changing path.”
“I’m first and foremost an oil painter, but I also love working with photography and sculpture,” Will says. At the grand opening of Lakehead’s 500 University Avenue campus, Will presented Lakehead with a landscape painting of the site the campus now occupies.
“I support Lakehead because it’s transforming Simcoe County,” Will says, “The university now contributes $328 million to the City of Orillia’s economy annually. “And I’ve always been an active community citizen,” he adds. “I was influenced by my dad, the radio broadcaster Pete McGarvey.”
His father worked for the Orillia radio station CFOR for much of Will’s early childhood, giving his son an idyllic small-town life.
“In the summers, our parents put us out in the morning and told us to be back by dinnertime. We spent long days building soapbox derby cars, swimming in the lakes, and playing pick-up games of scrub baseball.”
Will moved back to Orillia in 1982 where he and his wife Lucy started The Shadowbox—a popular picture-framing store that also sells arts, crafts, and antiques. They operated the store together for 16 years until Will had the opportunity to get involved in a computer-training business.
“I’m a founder and the creative vice-president of Shadowbox Learning Services,” Will says. “We specialize in technical and media-rich eLearning focused primarily on the aviation and aerospace sector.”
The company, which is now run by his son and fellow Lakehead supporter, Stefan, recently donated to the Orillia campus to help it move forward with proposed development plans.
“We want to see the university enter its next phase of growth,” Will says. “We have around 2,300 students this year, and that’s really stretching the limits of the campus. We need to expand programs and construct new facilities to continue giving students the best university experience possible.”
“Having higher levels of education helps a community grow in so many ways,” Will explains. “It’s crucial for every country to have a highly educated society.”
