The concept of establishing an independent foundation for Encounters With Canada was born out of necessity.  When the letter campaign of 2006 reversed the federal government’s decision to cease funding for Encounters With Canada, the Canadian Unity Council, the owner of the program at the time, realized an immediate windfall.  It now had a commitment from the Ministry of Heritage that the program would be saved and funded by the federal government.  Rather than the program ceasing to exist and thus having no value, the EWC program was now a very valuable asset to the CUC.  However, the program had to be sold. 

In case there were no acceptable purchasers, Michel Desjardins, the President of the CUC and Gary Bennett, the B. C. President of EWC, established the Encounters With Canada Foundation.  The Letters Patent and By-Laws were drawn up with the help of the Montreal law firm of CAIN LAMARRE CASGRAIN WELLS.  The cost of this process was paid for by the CUC.  The process was halted pending a determination of who the new owner of the program would be.  Because of Michel Desjardins’s upcoming role of determining who the eventual buyer may be, he withdrew as a director of the foundation to avoid any conflict of interest.  Two additional directors were named, a lawyer from Montreal and a businessman from Quebec City.

At a meeting in Ottawa in May of 2006, chaired by Gary Bennett and attended by Duane Daly, the Dominion Secretary of the Royal Canadian Legion, Michel Desjardins on behalf of the CUC, the Heritage Ministry Assistant Deputy Minister, Diane Fulford and her principal advisor Brian Gilhuly, Exchanges Canada representative Marie Bedard, and Linda Brunet, the Director General of the program, the various options were discussed.  Gary Bennett outlined a rationale for the Encounters With Canada Foundation becoming the new owner.  Duane Daly outlined an offer to the CUC for The Royal Canadian Legion to become the new owner.  In essence, both of these offers entailed the CUC transferring ownership of the program rights and the titles of the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Center and the Director General’s house to the new entity.  While the new owner would assume the obligations of the mortgages on the properties, neither offer provided any additional cash to the CUC.  From the Ministry’s perspective, it would have preferred The Royal Canadian Legion’s offer over that of the EWC Foundation because of The Legion’s long record of successful youth program management.  However, from the Canadian Unity Council’s perspective, both of these offers were unacceptable as they did not provide any additional cash for the CUC.  The meeting was a success because it finally brought all the parties to the table to discuss the issues and to set a course of action moving forward.  The Ministry determined that it must go and find a credible buyer that would be acceptable to the Canadian Unity Council.    

During that time in Ottawa, Linda Brunet and Gary Bennett met Bruce Kippen from Montreal.  Bruce came to Ottawa to discuss the program’s future.  Bruce was an honorary CUC Governor and one of the original governors who set up the council.  Bruce and Gary began to discuss putting together an offer that the CUC could find acceptable.  The offer included purchasing the intellectual rights to the EWC program, the title to the properties, and a significant and competitive amount of cash but was contingent upon the EWC Foundation signing an acceptable operating agreement with the Ministry.  Once formulated, this offered was communicated both to the board of the CUC and to the Ministry.  Parallel to these discussions, the Ministry had approached the Historica Foundation to see if it was interested in buying the program. The Ministry was already financing other Historica programs.  Historica put forth an offer with similar conditions.  The CUC and the Ministry decided to go with the Historica offer.  The Ministry stated that they preferred the Historica offer because of their track record of managing youth programs, their past relationship with the Ministry and because they had a significant endowment on hand.  However, the decision of whom to sell the program to was really the CUC’s and it chose the offer put forth by the Historica Foundation. 

It must be noted that during this whole period, despite the very real possibility that their jobs would disappear, the Encounters With Canada staff continued to work diligently to complete the 2006 spring program and to plan for the future. Not one of the forty-five staff members left to find employment elsewhere.  Without that dedication during this period of extreme uncertainty, the program would not exist today.  That dedication was derived from their appreciation of the EWC's mission, their respect for their leader, EWC Director General Linda Brunet, and the belief that the efforts of all of those Canadians in the greater EWC community working on their behalf would prevail.

Once the agreement with Historica had been reached, the Ministry requested that Historica invite Duane Daly, Bruce Kippen and Gary Bennett to sit on Historica’s Advisory Council.  All three accepted.  Once in that position, all three gained a greater insight into the operations of Historica, its decision making process, its finances and the accumulated effect on the future of the Encounters With Canada program.  Several issues raised concern amongst the three and these concerns led to the conclusion that the program would benefit from financial help going forward and that it would helpful to the EWC program to have an independent advocate. 

In addition to this situation, it was realized that in a short period of time, the CUC would be winding up it operations and would have to disburse its remaining funds.  Duane, Bruce and Gary decided to re-examine the concept of an independent foundation.

In the fall of 2007, Gary approached Katia Sebastiani of CAIN LAMARRE CASGRAIN WELLS in Montreal to see if she would be interested in working with Bruce and Duane on the Encounters With Canada Foundation project on a pro-bono basis.  Katia had done much of the work in establishing the original foundation.  She replied that she would and a collaborative effort was begun in re-examining the work that had already been completed.  There were essentially three options:

1. to resurrect the old Encounters With Canada Foundation and re-apply for incorporation,
2. to seek permission from the CUC board to use the established but never used Canadian Unity Council Foundation, or,
3. set up a new foundation.

For a variety of reasons, this third option was chosen.  In addition, the foundation had to be independent in order to:

1. receive the full support of The Royal Canadian Legion;
2. receive any of the final disbursement monies from the Canadian Unity Council;
3. honour any commitments made to its future donors without being in a conflict of interest situation;
4. freely lobby on behalf of the Encounters With Canada Program.

The Executive Committee of Bruce Kippen, Duane Daly and Gary Bennett met with Historica Foundation Board representatives in Ottawa to outline their intentions.  Subsequently, The Historica Foundation granted the Foundation the right to use the name 'Encounters With Canada Support Foundation / Fondation de soutien à Rencontres du Canada'.  The Foundation was incorporated with Industry Canada on May 14, 2009.  It received its charitable tax number on August 24, 2009.  It held its first full board meeting on September 10, 2009 at which it inducted Katia Sebastiani, Michael Cook, Brad White and Linda Brunet as new board members.