Orations II (PDF)
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George Morley Story, Public Orator 1960 –1994 il miglior fabbro ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Laura Winter and Andrea Budgell for editorial advice and assistance; Heidi Marshall and Lori-Ann Harris for research on the history of the orators; Elizabeth Hillman and Dr. Melvin Baker for directing me to the sources of information and, at times, for discovering the undiscoverable; Victoria Collins and her Marketing and Communications colleagues, especially Joyce McKinnon, Helen H ouston and Pat Adams for shepherding this book to completion; Maire O’Dea for reading all that is ever written — with a little patience. Photo of Ernest Marshall Howse from The United Church Observer. ISBN: 978-0-88901-399-5 Published by the Division of Marketing and Communications, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Chorus Art: 50% recycled content 15% post-consumer waste Acid free EC-free 116-269-05-09-500 CONTENTS FOREWORD Rex Murphy iv INTRODUCTION Shane O’Dea vi THE STATE ROMÉO LEBLANC C Jean Guthrie 2 MAX HOUSE William Pryse-Phillips 4 JEAN CHRÉTIEN Annette Staveley 6 EDWARD ROBERTS Annette Staveley 8 JOHN CROSBIE Annette Staveley 10 HUMAN RIGHTS AUNG SAN SUU KYI Annette Staveley 12 GRUNIA FERMAN Shane O’Dea 14 ELIZABETH PENASHUE Jean Guthrie 16 THE CHURCH ERNEST MARSHALL HOWSE P.J. Gardiner 18 THE UNIVERSITY EDWARD PHELAN B.P. Reardon 20 HERBERT THOMAS COUTTS John Hewson 22 DONALD CAMERON John A. Scott 24 LORD TAYLOR R.M. Mowbray 26 DAVID L. JOHNSTON Annette Staveley 28 JAMES DOWNEY David N. Bell 30 LESLIE HARRIS Shane O’Dea 32 THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES FRANCES HALPENNY R.M. Mowbray 34 ART SCAMMELL R.M. Mowbray 36 CHRISTOPHER PRATT John Hewson 38 MARY PRATT Annette Staveley 40 SANDRA GWYN Annette Staveley 42 MUSIC VERA LYNN R.M. Mowbray 44 THE SCIENCES AND MEDICINE SR ANN WARD William Pryse-Phillips 48 WILLIAM PRUITT E. Holly Pike 50 THE PRESS MICHAEL HARRINGTON William Pryse-Phillips 52 COMMERCE WILLIAM MULHOLLAND G.M. Story 54 NORMAN PETERS John A. Scott 56 WILBERT HOPPER David N. Bell 58 TIMOTHY T. THAHANE John A. Scott 60 CRAIG DOBBIN William Pryse-Phillips 62 COMMUNITY GRACE SPARKES David N. Bell 64 FR DESMOND MCGRATH R.M. Mowbray 66 JAMES IGLOLIORTE David N. Bell 68 SPORT TEAM GUSHUE Annette Staveley 70 APPENDICES: A. University Orators 1960 - 2008 72 B. Honorary Graduates and their Orators 1960-2008 73 i Orations ii Orations CONTRIBUTORS DAVID N. BELL attended Leeds (MA), Princeton, and Oxford (MA, DPhil) before coming to Memorial in 1970. Moving through the academic ranks to become Professor of Religious Studies and University Research Professor, he was, in 2008, elected to the Royal Society ofC Canada. He is presently Head of the Department of Religious Studies. PETER J. GARDINER (1929-78) MA Oxford, CA was Memorial’s first appointment in Commerce in 1957 and rose to the rank of Professor and Head of that department. In 1966 he left the university to become General Manager of Chester Dawe Limited and later served on Memorial’s Board of Regents. JEAN GUTHRIE MA Edinburgh, MA McMaster, a founder of Memorial’s Graduate Program in Teaching, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (2003), Atlantic Association of Universities Instructional Leadership Award (2004), she was also Associate Dean of Arts (1992-95) and Coordinator, Women's Studies (2005-06). JOHN HEWSON BA London, MA, D de l’U Laval, MDiv, Queen’s College, founded Memorial’s Linguistics Department (1968). Professor and Head for 16 years, he became successively University Research Professor, Henrietta Harvey Professor, Professor Emeritus. Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1997), he has published over a dozen books and some 180 scholarly papers and reviews. ROBERT MOWBRAY MA PhD Glasgow, Professor of Clinical Psychology, an RAF navigator and electronics technician during World War II, he taught psychiatry at the universities of Manchester, Glasgow and Melbourne before coming to Memorial. He is the author of numerous papers and textbooks, including Psychology in Relation to Medicine. SHANE O’DEA BA MA MUN, Professor of English, Canadian Professor of the Year (1988), 3M Teaching Fellow (2003), Order of Newfoundland and Labrador (2005) and a former chair of the Heritage Canada Foundation, has long been active in writing about and preserving Newfoundland’s architectural heritage. E. HOLLY PIKE BA (Hons) MUN, MA Dalhousie, PhD SUNY (Buffalo), has spent her academic career at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, where she teaches in the English Program. She was Vice-Principal (2004-08) and is presently Acting Principal of the College. Her current research area is the career of L.M. Montgomery. WILLIAM PRYSE-PHILLIPS MD FRCP London, FRCP (C), DPM was the first academic neurologist to join Memorial's Medical School (1972). He has authored three medical textbooks and initiated research on the province’s common neurological problems. His work on hereditary neuropathy was critical to the discovery of the gene for HSAN II . BRYAN P. REARDON MA Glasgow, BA Cambridge, D de l’U Nantes, Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of California (Irvine), taught at Memorial 1958-64, 1966-67, Trent 1967-74, University College North Wales 1974-78. He is internationally recognized as a scholar of late Greek literature and the ancient Greek novel. JOHN A. SCOTT BA MUN, BA MA Cambridge, PhD Edinburgh, taught philosophy at Memorial from 1966 -2008. He also served as Director of Studies, MPhil Humanities, and as Head of Philosophy. His research focuses on Plato and Aristotle and their relevance today. He has practised as a labour arbitrator since 1985. ANNETTE STAVELEY BA (Hons) Reading, MA PhD MUN, Professor of English specializing in Shakespeare, British literature, women’s writing and comedy, received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching (1994), the Glen Roy Blundon Award (2008) and awards for community service. Dr. Staveley has taught graduate and undergraduate courses, authored and edited many reports, reviews and presentations on university issues and literature. G. M. STORY (1927-94) CM, BA McGill, MA DPhil Oxford, FRHS, FSA, FRSC, Henrietta Harvey Professor of English, made a remarkable contribution to Memorial as teacher and scholar for forty years. Apart from his monumental work in lexicography, he was also a noted Renaissance scholar and a major contributor to the University of Toronto’s Erasmus Project. iii Orations FOREWORD The convocation oration is a challenging form. In a very limited number of words the successful oration has to provide an encapsulated biography of the honoree, superadded to which is a pearl- studded resume of the honoree’s accomplishments. The biography cum resume is the inescapable freight of every oration. So compressed a form leaves very little room for ornament or ‘development.’ Place and date of birth, early evidence of relevant precocity (honorees are almost by definition a precocious lot), schools attended, post-secondary careers, researches undertaken, novels written, high offices secured, projects overseen — these are strings of fact, nearly pure data to use the current lexicon. The convocation oration may not skimp on these significant markers but it bears a responsibility to diversify them, to link the chain of data with novelty of expression, telling anecdote, ingenious juxtaposition and bracing diction. The convocation oration has a further knot to unravel. It is, in essence, an encomium, but nothing wearies more quickly than lacquered praise — however deserved the praise, or finished the lacquer. The best convocation orations leverage the praise into detours of (well-judged) tart deflation of the person being honoured, offer within the homily a few scenes not quite of clerical life. Praising a person, and doing so seriously — elsewise why is the honoree there? — while simultaneously indulging in what we Newfoundlanders wisely know as “taking a few shots at him” is a neat balancing act. In the pieces you will find here, and in that other great store of the finest examples of this kind — the Selected University Orations of G. M. Story — it is this highly skillful interweave of praise and play, tribute and jibe, that will fascinate most readers. Professor Story was a master of the convocation oration as a triumph of mixed intent. I recall the wonderful opening of his address conferring an honorary degree on the notorious John C. Doyle: “What manner of man is John C. Doyle?” was its memorable spiked beginning, conjuring up the near mythic inquisition of Christ by Pilate — a train of associations (transcendent innocence the principal one) radically at variance with the circumstance of that day’s honoree. Story was a daring and subtle editorialist, his convocation orations demanding an almost Bletchly Park level of urgent decoding. There was another address of his, introducing the then Newfoundland Attorney General, the Hon. Leslie Curtis to the university, in which Story noted (with wicked superfluity) that he was “neither a prince, a bishop, or a saint.” I do not think it an injury to the University Orators included in this book to note that Story’s example and accomplishment benignly haunt all who have practised the art in Newfoundland subsequent to him. He took the form and gave it polish, cadence, subtlety, diction and a genuine current of high wit and erudition. I am mindful of Donne’s “build(ing) in sonnets pretty rooms” when I think of how much, in sentiment and expression, humour and genuine tribute, Dr. Story introduced into the taxing brevity of the convocation oration. iv Orations FOREWORD F What follows here are more splendid examples of this (I fear) neglected and possibly dying form. The Newfoundland convocation oration still calls from its practitioners more ‘performance’ than those of more staid or bridled jurisdictions; piety is never allowed to suffocate any occasion in Newfoundland, the disposition of honorary degrees being no exception. The orations that follow are also something of a select and terse diary of the recent history of the university itself and the province — the widening field from which honorees are chosen, the achievements celebrated, and the language in which both are noted, something of a very judiciously phrased index of our time.