My (very) late father was a real estate developer, and owned hotels and restaurants in Victoria in the 1960s and 1970s. One of his many regrets when he died was not having the name “Victor Wilson” prominently carved into the top of his various office buildings in huge letters, so that the pension funds and insurance companies that ended up buying them couldn’t easily remove his name without hiring an engineer, a crane operator and two men with jackhammers.

The $70 Million Lotto Max draw being held on the day I’m writing this has made me think about my father’s unfulfilled “naming wishes.” But I’ve also thought about my mother, whose favourite charity was the BC Lottery Corporation; a charity which she donated tens of thousands of dollars to during the last 10 years of her life and which formed the mainstay of her (unsuccessful) retirement plans.

So, in honour of my mother, I’m buying a ticket on the $70 Million Lotto Max draw. If I win, I’ll keep half for my family. And in honour of my father, I want to donate the other half to a law school. But only if they’ll name it after… me!

My magnanimousness will not be without conditions, though. You see, I’m very suspicious that university administrators, students and faculty members may attempt to surreptitiously circumvent my wishes in the future while still taking my money. So, strings are attached to this colossal endowment.

1. I don’t know if it should be called the “C Anthony Wilson School of Law” or the “C. Anthony (Tony) Wilson QC Law School” or the “Tony Wilson Law School.” Hell, for $35 million, I’m sure some university somewhere in the world would let me call it “Tony’s Law School and Pizza” if I insisted.
2. My name must be engraved in either steel or cement at the entrance to the law school in a font no less than 12 inches per letter. I would have considered neon lights, but they’re too easy to remove. And besides, neon is a bit over the top, even for me.
3. For branding purposes, the font for my name will be standardized wherever the law school name appears. I am partial to a font called “Douglas Adams Handwriting.”
4. All degrees issued by my law school, (including graduate degrees, diplomas, or other certificates of any kind) will have my name prominently embossed thereon. In other words, every piece of paper used at my law school for any purpose will have my name on it!!! No exceptions. No wiggle room. Otherwise, no deal!
5. All interest on my $35 million endowment will be used to give sizable grants to needy students. That’s because my $35 million munificence can’t be just about me. That would be wrong. I’m doing it for them. (Except for the naming bit. That’s all about me).
6. There will be a large lifelike bronze statue of me sailing my boat in the law school lobby reading “Waters on Trusts,” which is an obscure pun. If the law school decides in 50 years that they still don’t get the pun, or they think some of my previous BarTalk or Globe and Mail columns are politically incorrect (perhaps they learned that I enjoyed eating beef, read Jordan Peterson’s books or supported the HST), then removing the statue will trigger repayment of the remaining principal, with those funds being redirected in three equal parts to a worthy charity that supports beef consump-tion, another charity that sup-ports free speech, and for no reason at all, The Advocate.
7. In addition to the severe penalties arising from the removal of my statue, if a university breaches its agreement by taking my money, but changing the law school’s name, my name has to be so difficult to remove from the building that it will take a dozen engineers from the world’s largest construction companies six weeks to figure out how to do it without effectively demolishing the entire building. That’s what my dear old Dad would have wanted.

Maybe UVic might be interested. After all, I went to law school there. Or maybe, it will be in UK or Australia where many Canadians go for their law degrees. But I’m sure some law school, somewhere in the world, will be the happy beneficiary of my $35 million benevolence.