Bluma Appel

Who was Bluma Appel?

Bluma Appel, OC OOnt was a Canadian philanthropist and patron of the arts.

She was born the daughter of Russian émigrés who left Czarist Russia around 1905. Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, she was the founder of CANFAR, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research.

Bluma married the Montreal chartered accountant Bram Appel on July 11, 1940. It was Bram's subsequent success in business which afforded Bluma the opportunity to engage in serious philanthropic activity: in 1946 he co-founded Pall Corporation.

In 1979, she ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for the Canadian House of Commons in the riding of Nepean—Carleton. She lost to Walter Baker.

She was a major supporter of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, which named one of its theatres in her honour in March 1983 after she made a donation to help renovate the 876-seat theatre where the Canadian Stage Company performs. She was also a significant force behind Opera Atelier. In June 2005, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts gave Ms. Appel an honorary Dora Mavor Moore Award "for her exceptional and lifelong dedication" to the performing arts in Canada. She is memorialized at The Canadian Stage Company's Bluma Appel Theatre in perpetuity.