The gift was greeted with joy and jubilation as it will fund 50 Canadian students and another 25 foreign students.
MacBain, a onetime Rhodes Scholar, said he was inspired to give because he himself had once benefited from scholarships.
MacBain made his money alongside then-wife Louise Blouin by purchasing Auto-Hebdo in 1987.
Auto-Hebdo was an unglamorous publication that ran grainy black and white classified ads for used cars.
The couple transformed the publication into Auto Trader, a much more profitable outlet with a considerably larger reach.
She owned 22 percent, which MacBain purchased for $200 million when they split up in 2000.
He sold the entire business in 2006.
MacBain, now 58, now has an estimated worth of $1.4 billion and manages his philanthropic endeavors full-time, handing over $118 million to the RhodestTrust in 2013. He was also named to the Order of Canada.
Blouin, for her part, took a different route with contrasting results.
She used her fortune to create a variety of other media enterprises.
For a year year she ran a prominent London-based auction house owned by her new boyfriend Simon de Pury.
All went well for a while as she partied with fellow jet-setters and supposedly dated Prince Andrew.
Blouin also launched a philanthropic undertaking but rather than reap admiration for her generosity, she became a target for endless negative attention as she purchased art publications and "ran them into the ground," according to one feature article in New York magazine.
An apparent failure to pay $250,000 in back wages to former employees of her various magazine offerings resulted in a publicity disaster for Blouin, who was described as "one of the richest women in the U.K."
Scorning journalists is a dangerous game, as she learned by a steady stream of negative press as they united against her in 2010. A similar thing happened to journalists she hired in India a couple of years later.
Blouin has been regularly targeted by negative press since, with descriptions of being "capricious and tyrannical."
“I’m amazed she can show her face,” said a woman sued Blouin for unpaid wages.
MacBain and Blouin both live in Geneva Switzerland, presumably so both can have access to their three children.