BERMUDA resident Michael DeGroote has donated $105 million to a university ? the largest single cash gift in Canadian history.

The retired trucking and waste management tycoon gave the vast sum to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where the medical school was renamed in his honour.

Mr. DeGroote, a Canadian, hit the local headlines ten years ago when he became embroiled in a lengthy legal battle with American heiress Marion MacMillan over the ownership of the eight-acre Perot's Island in Southampton.

Mr. DeGroote won his fight which began after Ms MacMillan backed out of an agreement made in 1990 to sell the property to him for $8.5 million.

Ms MacMillan appealed the decision, causing Mr. DeGroote to abandon his claim, saying he was "fed up and frustrated with the system".

The 70-year-old Mr. DeGroote is listed by magazine as Canada's wealthiest person in the services sector, with a net worth of $1.24 billion.

His donation will be divided between a $64-million endowment fund supporting education, health care and medical research and a $41-million capital fund, to finance the construction and outfitting of laboratories and hospital units.

McMaster University's business school is already named after Mr. DeGroote and now is the first time that a Canadian medical school has been named after a benefactor.

Mr. DeGroote's story is one of rags to riches. He emigrated from Canada to Belgium at the age of 14 with his family and dropped out of school after the ninth grade to work as a tobacco picker.

In 1959, he bought Laidlaw Transport, a small Ontario haulage firm. In 1988, he sold the company, by then the third-largest waste management company in North America, to Canadian Pacific.

Mr. DeGroote, who appeared at a special ceremony at McMaster University this week, had a stroke two-and-a-half years ago and suffers from a condition called thalamic pain, resulting from damage to the brain's pain centre.

The only specific request Mr. DeGroote made of McMaster was that it establish a centre to research his condition.