Two Like Minds, A Shared Passion for Queen’s

“It was the law dance —” says Don.

“—and,” Cathie chimes in, “I said to my roommate, ‘You can wait up, this isn’t going to take long.’”

Don Carter, Law’66 (Arts’64), and his wife Catherine (Arts’65) are recalling their first date — on Friday, December 13, 1963.
As they talk, you notice how effortlessly they finish each other’s sentences, seamlessly stepping in to add a clarification, or to expand on something the other has said. Two like minds with the telepathy that comes from decades of marriage.
As they talk, you also realize how central Queen’s has been to their lives. Has been and remains. Cathie, in fact, didn’t get home from that first date with Don until 3 am (“Susan, my roommate, said, ‘What’s all this about coming in so late?’”). And, in 1966, after Don had graduated from Law and Cathie had just finished her first year of teaching elementary school in Etobicoke, they got married.

“And then we went off to Oxford for two years,” says Don, where he did graduate work in law, “And Cathie taught—”

“—that was wonderful,” she says. “They have such a different system. The more falling apart the school is, the better it is, and the more crotchety the headmistress; that’s a good sign, too.”

Don became a member of the Law Faculty at Queen’s in 1968. His work with colleague Bernie Adell helped Queen’s develop a reputation as a national leader in labour law. He served as dean of the Faculty from 1993 to 1998 and, along with Adell, was awarded the Bora Laskin Award in 2013 for his contributions to Canadian Labour Law. Apart from three years in Toronto in the 1970s when he was director of the Labour Relations Board, and a year’s sabbatical in Australia, they have always been here in Kingston, at Queen’s. After their two sons no longer needed her full-time attention, Cathie joined him at the university in 1982, when she went to work for the School of English as an ESL instructor.

Cathie left the School of English in 2001 to help with their first grandchild who arrived that year and although Don is officially retired, he still teaches one course at the law school, “collective agreement arbitration, which I do in the winter term, and still enjoy doing.”

An article in the Queen’s Financial Planner on donating Registered Retirement Income Funds (RRIFs) launched the Carters on their newest adventure with Queen’s — as benefactors. “Cathie and I both turned 72 this year. So it was a time when we were going to start to draw on our Registered Retirement Income Funds (RRIFs). It occurred to us that we weren’t going to live forever and there probably was going to be a residue, a significant residue. It just seemed to us that this would be a way we could make a gift to Queen’s as we had already provided for our family in our wills.”

In both their cases, after each other, Queen’s is the residual beneficiary of their RRIFs. “When both of us are gone,” Don says, “Queens will get whatever remains.” Further, because Queen’s is a named beneficiary of their RRIF, it will go directly to Queens. “It doesn’t,” Don says, “go through the estate and get held up there. It avoids the probate fees as well. And it’s really tax-efficient [the remainder counts as a charitable donation, is tax-free and provides a receipt to the estate]. We have RRIFs with two financial institutions, and it was relatively easy to set this up with the help of the Queen’s Gift Planning Office.”

Half their gift, he says, “is going to the Adell-Carter Fellowship, to honour the memory of my late colleague Bernie Adell.” The Adell-Carter Fellowship supports a range of fellowships at the school’s Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace.

“The other half will go to the Ban Righ Foundation, to honour the memory of our two mothers. Don’s mother was a graduate in Arts’29. “When I was in high school she told me there was only one university. So the choice was easy.” Cathie’s mother didn’t go to university but she was very insistent that Cathie have a university education, “and I told my parents I only wanted to go to Queen’s,” says Cathie.

A wise and beneficial choice for everyone involved.