The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 55

Site Selection
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5. Sandra Valeriote, Fields Institute
6. Bill Shadwick’s espresso machine
The Site Selection Committee road trip, 1992.
To put this in an historical context, Canada already had a
similar, flourishing institute, namely the Centre de Recherches
Mathématiques (CRM) of the Université de Montréal, founded
in 1968. Later, some geographical balance evolved when the
Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) was
founded in 1996, based at the University of British Columbia.
Serving on the Site Selection Committee was a happy
and productive experience. A strong camaraderie developed,
and I felt that we worked well together. As I recall, the
University of Toronto simply blew away the competition by
making a very generous and elaborate proposal. In fact, it