By 1988, the businessman Christopher Ondaatje had made a great deal of money as a publisher and stockbroker on the Canadian stock exchange. I first met Ondaatje in September 1996, when I was director of the National Portrait Gallery. He did so with extraordinary generosity, providing the great bulk of the matching funding required for a building project that opened in May 2000 as the Ondaatje Wing. View image in fullscreen The entrance to the Ondaatje wing at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2015. Ondaatje is survived by Valda, his three children, David, Sarah and Jans, his brother, Michael, and sister Gillian (his sister Janet predeceased him), and 18 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.