$100 million record gift to Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation crowns Miyo Yamashita’s extraordinary campaign to free the world from the fear of the disease
When Miyo Yamashita stepped to the microphone, she had news that no one who has led The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation had ever been able to share.
A $100 million gift, the largest in the foundation’s history and, by its account, the largest donation ever made toward cancer in Canada, had been entrusted to the cancer center she has spent the past five years championing.
Yamashita, the foundation’s president and chief executive, paused to wipe away tears.
“It’s the largest single advancement ever made in cancer research, education, and care anywhere in Canada,” she said.
The moment was the emotional peak of a night built around something even larger.
Yamashita was there to publicly launch Carry The Fire, a $2.5 billion campaign that the foundation calls the largest cancer fundraising effort in Canadian history.
The number that surprised many in the room was how far she and her team had already carried it.
By the night of the launch, the campaign had raised $1.61 billion, nearly two-thirds of its goal, before most Canadians had even heard its name.
For Yamashita, the evening was as much a homecoming as a milestone.
She began her career in Ontario’s public hospital system, working in data privacy and risk management, and spent time at University Health Network, Princess Margaret’s parent, in the early 2000s.
When she founded her own consulting firm, built on her doctoral research into how new communications technologies affect privacy, dignity, and fairness, The Princess Margaret became its very first client in 2004.
Deloitte Canada acquired that firm in 2010.
There, she rose to become managing partner for talent and workplace and the firm’s first chief transformation officer. She also became the first woman from a visible minority to serve on both Deloitte Canada’s executive leadership team and the firm’s global board.
She later served as global chief privacy officer at TD Bank Group, chief strategy officer at the Ottawa artificial intelligence company MindBridge, and director of strategy and operations at the University of Toronto’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
The Women’s Executive Network named her one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2017.
She holds a PhD in communications from McGill University.
She returned to The Princess Margaret as its chief executive in July 2021, saying she was delighted to “come home.”
The work was personal.
She has spoken of having seen many families, her own among them, ravaged by cancer.
She has also argued that after the pandemic, the next curve the world must flatten is cancer.
She has repeated this conviction with growing urgency.
She has described cancer as “the greatest health care crisis facing humanity over the next 20 years,” and warned that “we’ll be incredibly remorseful as a global human community if, 10 years from now, we look back and say we failed to lean in.”
The announcement night, in many ways, answered that warning.
The donor, who has asked not to be named, was moved by a personal connection to cancer and by the mission Yamashita has made the foundation’s rallying cry: a world free from the fear of cancer.
The entire gift will go to the cancer center’s highest-priority needs across research, education, and care, the most flexible kind of support an institution can receive. It lets doctors and scientists move quickly toward breakthroughs “when and where they are needed most.”
Yamashita called it “a huge vote of confidence” and said it “definitely inspires others to give.” Janice Fukakusa, a co-chair of the campaign cabinet and a former chair of the foundation’s board, said the gift reflects “the profound confidence our community has in this organization and the impact we can achieve together.”
That confidence has been building for some time. Under Yamashita, the foundation has attracted a series of landmark commitments. In November 2025, the homebuilder Peter Gilgan, through his foundation, gave $50 million to create the Peter Gilgan Center for Early Cancer Detection Research, described as the largest single gift to early cancer detection in North America.
The Silber family made a second major gift to establish the Silber Family Theranostics Center, which is due to open in 2027. Tuesday’s gift doubles the foundation’s previous record of $50 million, first set in 2013 by Emmanuelle Gattuso, Allan Slaight, and the Slaight family.
Yamashita describes the present as a rare scientific moment, and the campaign is designed to seize it. Around the world, advances in artificial intelligence, genomics, precision medicine, and cellular therapies are converging, and the foundation calls this period a “golden age” of cancer research.
“The Princess Margaret is not just participating in the global cancer ecosystem; it is shaping the model others will follow,” she said. “This is a moment of real opportunity, and we can meet this challenge. The Princess Margaret has the talent, the model, and, with the driving support of philanthropy, the momentum. Every breakthrough brings us closer to a future where fewer families fear the words no one ever wants to hear, ‘You have cancer.'”
Her background in technology and transformation is visible in the shape of Carry The Fire.
The campaign takes its name from a brand she introduced in 2025, meant to replace the dread that has long surrounded a cancer diagnosis with a message of hope. It is organized around three priorities.
The first, which the foundation calls Stage 0, aims to catch cancer at its earliest stages, before it becomes life-threatening, building on the centre’s liquid biopsy research and the new Gilgan centre.
The second, Beyond Chemotherapy, focuses on precision medicine, immunotherapy, theranostics, genomics and AI-enabled care, toward what Yamashita has called “kinder, gentler, more effective cancer treatments” that can replace toxic chemotherapy.
The third, Boundless Cancer Care, focuses on survivorship, rehabilitation, mental health, and holistic support for patients and the people who love them.
Yamashita has long insisted that progress must reach everyone. She has pointed to patients whose first language is neither English nor French and to those who cannot take time off work for appointments or afford hospital parking. “The really exciting thing is that it’s all within our grasp with the right level of investment and support in philanthropy,” she has said.
The institution she serves gives that ambition real weight. Princess Margaret began as the Ontario Cancer Institute, created by the provincial government in 1952, and was officially opened in 1958 by Princess Margaret, whose name it has carried ever since.
Its scientists are credited with identifying stem cells, the basis of bone marrow transplantation, and cloning the T-cell receptor, which helped make cancer immunotherapy possible. In 2025, the center saw more than 21,000 new patients and recorded more than 306,000 clinic and virtual visits. It drew $314 million in external research funding, and Newsweek has ranked it among the ten best cancer hospitals in the world and first in Canada.
Yamashita often notes that one of the most diverse patient populations anywhere allows its researchers to learn more about cancer, across more than 200 cancer types, than many of the world’s other leading centres.
She has called the next leap in treatment a potential gift from Canada to the world.
The foundation she leads is the country’s largest cancer charity, sustained by major donors, community events such as its annual Walk and Ride, and a lottery program it describes as world-leading.
The leaders beside her at the announcement shared her optimism.
Dr. Kevin Smith, president and chief executive of University Health Network, called Princess Margaret “one of the places where the future of cancer care is being created.”
Dr. Keith Stewart, the center’s director, pointed to new drug approvals, advances in surgical robotics and radiation therapy, and AI tools already helping with scheduling, radiation planning, and drug discovery.
“Really, people should be very hopeful about where we are,” he said.
Yamashita is equally clear about the stakes.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada, and she notes that the World Health Organization projects a 77 percent rise in new cancer cases worldwide by 2050, with millennials expected to see the sharpest increase.
Princess Margaret alone sees about 21,000 new patients every year.
“Definitely $2.5 billion is an ambitious goal, and we are grateful for every dollar,” she said. “But we also know how important it is to change the course of history in cancer and what that money will mean for cancer patients and their loved ones. It will save more lives. It will change the quality of care.”
The patients who spoke on Tuesday made that promise personal. Beth Johnston was diagnosed three years ago with aggressive acute lymphoblastic leukemia when her two children were small.
“I couldn’t help but think that I wasn’t going to see my children grow up,” she said.
She began chemotherapy within hours of her diagnosis. When the cancer returned, her team moved her onto an immunotherapy that “acted basically like a silver bullet,” which qualified her for the stem cell transplant that saved her life.
Eighteen months later, she is doing well, though she still relies on physiotherapy and mental health support. She hopes the campaign will help the hospital treat survivorship as seriously as treatment itself.
“That amount of money is going to make so many people be able to say that they’re a survivor,” she said.
Annie Raimondo, whose doctors tell her she is stable but not cancer-free “yet,” called the gift a gift to everyone fighting cancer and to those not yet diagnosed.
“It gives me hope that there are cures for cancer,” she said, “and that there are generous donors who are willing to fund that research.”
As the evening closed, Yamashita returned to the simplest measure of what she is trying to build.
The money raised through Carry The Fire, she said, will give patients “many ordinary tomorrows,” more birthdays, more school runs, more quiet evenings at home.
Five years after coming home to The Princess Margaret, she has brought Canada’s largest cancer campaign closer to its goal.
Now, with a record gift in hand, she has invited the rest of the country to help carry the fire the rest of the way.