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.

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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 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 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 of Religious Studies and University Research Professor, he was, in 2008, elected to the Royal Society ofC . 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 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 ’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 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.

REX MURPHY

Host of CBC’s Cross County Checkup and regular commentator on The National, Rex Murphy writes a column for the Globe and Mail and has published a selection of his commentaries in Points of View. He was the subject of a Convocation Oration at Memorial in 1997.

v Orations INTRODUCTION

The conferring of honorary degrees is a very public statement of a university’s values. Hence the care and, sometimes, the controversy that goes into the selection of candidates for the degree. The Convocation Oration — the rhetorical brief that makes the case for the person about to receive the Honorary Degree — is an exercise with over five hundred years of history in the English-speaking world. Cambridge instituted its post of Public Orator in 1551, Oxford in 1564 (Diggle ix-x) and other universities followed in their path. So the Oration has a long association with the university’s rituals of celebration.

This book is a collection of Convocation Orations by Memorial University’s orators, most of whom came to the stage under the tutelage of George Story, this university’s first Public Orator. It celebrates the work of those orators but also the lives and careers of the graduands of whom they speak. The selection in this book — from a total of over five hundred orations that have been delivered at our Convocation since 1960 — was determined by their display of the art of oratory and by a desire to suggest the range of people who have been its focus. Collections of Convocation Orations are themselves somewhat rare so this book appears to be (at least according to my research in the genre) the first to include the works of orators other than the Public Orator. That said it is also rare to find orations of so high a standard as these and it is their quality that was the inspiration for this book.

While convocation began in 1950, when Memorial became a degree-granting institution, it was another decade before the first honorary degree was given. With that honorary degree was established an institution that has distinguished our convocations ever since: the oration. At the opening of the new campus in October 1961, George Story and his deputy, Bryan Reardon, presented nineteen people for honorary degrees — a very considerable number for one Convocation. It has not been attempted since. Joseph R. Smallwood was in power at the time and had a tendency to grand display on the South American model and — I have little doubt — may have selected some of the candidates. For a period of time after that the University gave four to six degrees a year — a workload of two or three orations for each of the two University Orators. However, in the first decade George often took on the full load of five candidates. In the last fifteen years Memorial has generally given only one honorary degree a session. But there are now nine sessions in May and four in October. So the workload is spread out and, unless there is a special Convocation for an event or anniversary, University Orators will normally present only one candidate at a session of Convocation.

The post of Public Orator was established in 1960 with the appointment of George Story who held it until his death in 1994. A distinguished scholar who was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Molson Prize Winner and, posthumously, made Newfoundland Scholar of the Millenium by the readers of The Telegram, he was deeply involved in the community and the shaping of its culture. His Dictionary of Newfoundland English, his role as founding chair of the Newfoundland Arts Council and in a host of other organizations as well as his own background (one grandfather had been a sealing captain, the other a clergyman) gave him a depth of local knowledge and stature that made him an ideal figure for the post. To this was linked a stature he had within the university where he, unambitious for high office (for which, it is said, he was frequently nominated), was so trusted by colleagues and administrators that he became unofficial advisor to all. The hierarchy as determined by Senate is Public Orator, Deputy Public Orator (both appointed by Senate) and a number of University Orators appointed ad hoc by the Public Orator. Orators are selected on the basis of their speaking ability (quality of voice, stage presence), their writing ability (capacity to write with rhythm,

vi Orations INTRODUCTION I wit and warmth), and their broad range of learning (so that they can do justice to candidates from any discipline, any walk of life).

The Convocation Oration itself, though brief, is no simple matter to compose. To present a distinguished person to an audience restive after an hour or more of watching relatives and friends receive degrees; in front of one’s colleagues who have ceased to nod off and are now alert; to one side of the President and Chancellor who read these matters as dangerous delicacies, is sometimes a trial for a University Orator, though it may be, as my predecessor suggested in a slightly different context, akin to the Last Judgement — for both the Honorary Graduand as well as for the University Orator (Story v). The Oration has to serve a number of functions and reach these three quite different audiences. It has to provide information on the candidate. It has to be lively enough to seize the attention of a group of people who have watched a parade of graduating students for an hour. It has to be elevated enough to be in keeping with the dignity of the occasion. To the candidate and the candidate’s family or guests, it has to give pride and pleasure. To the graduates, it has to explain why the candidate is worthy of the degree. To the faculty, it has to be sufficiently demonstrative of grace and learning that the orator is asked to perform at the next convocation. In brief, an oration has to capture a career and a character in six minutes of prose that is elegant, learned and lively. But, for all that, the orations are as different not only as the orators but also as the candidates. And Memorial does have something of a reputation for the quality of its orations that combine, as George Story put it, “a certain liveliness” with the possibility of revealing “in a candidate grave flaws, such as a dislike of cats” (Story vi). Occasionally this revelation of flaws has had consequences as when one captain of industry was presented to Convocation as a latter-day Prometheus cleverly cheating the gods of their due and keeping the best for his own — an oration which, according to legend, cost the university a major donation.

University Orators have been more cautious since that time, although a little inter-linear observation will reveal that they too can quietly use a phrase to turn a blade. However, sometimes their phrases turn upon them: one orator was obliged to go on bended knee at a convocation dinner to an Honorary Graduate whom he had, completely inadvertently, offended. Those sharp moments aside, the University Orators always make their time on the Convocation stage a time of attention for the audience because of the way they work with words to celebrate not just the candidate but also language. Faculty members frequently say that they go to Convocation for their students and return for the orations. These orations for their quality stand as a tribute to George Story and say much about the standard he set and which has been Memorial’s pride ever since. It is to his memory that this book is dedicated.

SHANE O’DEA PUBLIC ORATOR MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND MAY 2009

WORKS CITED Diggle, James. Cambridge Orations 1982-1993. Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1994. Story, G.M. Selected University Orations. St. John’s: Harry Cuff 1984.

vii Orations viii Orations A SELECTION OrationsOF ORATIONS FROM MEMORIAL’S CONVOCATIONS

SHANE O’DEA

1 Orations ROMÉO ADRIEN LEBLANC

He is the very model of a modern Governor General, Because he’s post-industrial ‘n’ post-colonial, but pro-federal. He knows his social science and presents his facts historical, In speeches showing a decency that’s more than just rhetorical. He has vision for the future and takes every chance to fashion it: The idea of a nation that’s inclusive and compassionate, Where none of any station will fall forgotten through the cracks; He’s said to be as far left as the next MP for Halifax.

To you and those many guests here today who have administered fish, marketed or mapped it, counted or miscounted it, allocated, regulated, legislated, debated, caught, split, or salted fish, studied the sustainability of the stocks or sent off the Spanish, the career of His Excellency, The Right Honorable Roméo LeBlanc, is well known, especially his achievement as minister in establishing Canada's 200-mile limit 20 years ago. Back then, when most of this graduating class were preschoolers, we thought that the new economic zone would end our concerns over the future of stocks and fishing communities. Alas, we had dozens of mistakes yet to make. But the nation had been united behind the principle of protecting and managing the resource for , by Roméo LeBlanc, an Acadian from Atlantic Canada, a minister known and respected wherever people fished.

For centuries, both Acadians and Newfoundlanders have endured a climate and hardships that promote recreational forgetting in dark rum and dancing to the fiddle; both tell stories of ghosts and disasters, courage and survival, in tongues for which the rest of the country has yet to show any aptitude. Both l’Acadie and Newfoundland have been oppressed in their time by Rule Britannia; while Newfoundland nearly didn't get started because people were forbidden to settle between fishing seasons, Acadians were almost wiped off the map in le Grand Dérangement of 1755. Their homes and farms were destroyed, and they were deported to the Eastern seaboard of the or forced into hiding. The epic story of the Acadians’ return to their homeland, Pélagie-La-Charrette, celebrates the vibrant spirit which overcame that diaspora. Pélagie herself was a LeBlanc and the LeBlancs were famous for their skill in building seawalls, aboiteaux, to protect their flat French farmlands from high seas, a skill which their descendant modified to keep the sea inside the aboiteau and the Europeans out.

But all in the spirit of conciliation and exchange which marked his time in fisheries. His bilateral agreements with the Europowers made allies instead of enemies; his respectful style of leadership Linspired confidence and hard work; his facility with words unconfused the department; he put the

2 Orations ROMÉO ADRIEN LEBLANC 

interests of individuals and small enterprises in first place; he encouraged the formation of unions and brought the people doing the fishing into decision-making; he granted licences to co-operatives, for instance in Labrador, where they still flourish; and the story goes that when he had to write to breadwinners who had committed fishing violations, to tell them their gear would be confiscated, the letters would inexplicably vanish, because he couldn't bear to take away someone's livelihood.

Roméo LeBlanc confronts and challenges. He called his own government in to account for its Cadillac style. As Governor General he projects an eloquent and emphatic vision of a Canada where past and present injustices are frankly acknowledged, where people of diverse roots can share opportunities and accord each other respect.

We can all dream up portfolios that would benefit from the conscience and wisdom of Roméo LeBlanc: children and poverty, national harmony, remaking the fishery as economy and way of life. He has credentials for all of them. For, graduates of the Faculty of Education, take note: the school- teacher became teacher of teachers, journalist, overseas correspondent, prime minister's press secretary, member of Parliament, minister, senator, Speaker of Senate, and Governor General of Canada. And they tell you there's no future in teaching. The Acadian song knows better:

Je n’ai point cueilli; j’ai cherché des nids. (He was sent to pick apples; he built a cv.)

Pélagie LeBlanc on her journey back to Acadia, gathering about her her family and extended family, her people and others in need of relief, meets a courageous sea-captain. He too has rescued Acadians from the wars and deportations but is ferrying them south to Guadeloupe and Louisiana where they can forget their past. He does not believe a culture can be reclaimed and shaped by human conviction, but Pélagie challenges him: “Sometimes the same ship passes again in the same wake, and the gulls return to the same place.”

Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, a teacher and leader whose career has mediated between B.C. and C.B., between the bay and Bay Street, between an imperial Victorian institution and the multicultural Canada of 2000 and beyond, a man for whom “les goèlands reveniont au même endroit,” His Excellency the Right Honourable Roméo Adrien LeBlanc, PC, CC, CMM, CD, Governor General of Canada.

JEAN GUTHRIE UNIVERSITY ORATOR 30 MAY 1997

3 Orations ARTHUR MAXWELL HOUSE

In 16th century , Sir Thomas More ruled that orations were to be divided into six parts. So first Exordium, the introduction — but already I am in difficulty for I present to you a power in the governance of this university’s medical school since its foundation, to introduce whom would be lesé majesté and one cannot do that to the Queen’s representative, when following the rules.

Next Narratio, the recounting of those deeds of his which have made him worthy of an honorary degree. In the beginning, Mr. Chancellor, our visitor could have let his eye rest on the hills of Bonavista Bay, but his wider vision transcended those bluffs. Pre-med Memorial, MD Dalhousie and McGill's neurology program made him the first Newfoundland neurologist, bringing to this province the benison of a newly puissant specialty.

For 10 years he led the Division of Neurology; for 20, developed clinical neurophysiology, planned the functional organization of the Health Sciences Centre and co-ordinated continuing education for our Faculty of Medicine and for the medical association. Thus he became aware of the extent and nature of the needs of physicians for new medical knowledge and of the resources available to fulfill them.

Exposed both to the problem and to the means of its solution, he espied the potential role of new communication techniques in providing medical information with immediacy and economy, not only close to home but, using satellite technology, universally. He has used the science of communication for the communication of science.

Divisio — dissection — follows. In youth we stand in the antechamber of eternity, surrounded by a visible environment, but see only in part. We may choose to contemplate it or to look beyond, to a career transcending the proximate to attain the ultimate. From the epicentre of our student selves how many beckoning roads there are, leading in so many directions! A university degree denotes potential rather than capacity. We cannot partition Max House's career, only note steps in its evolution from primary care physician through specialist, administrator, authority on distance learning, Lieutenant-GovernorH and so Visitor to this university. Confirmatio is next. Newfoundland is a strange place. Why are the city's temperatures recorded for the world at an airport on top of an icy hill four miles away? How come that the only absolutely straight thoroughfare in this city is called Circular Road? Why do our common forms of address lead us to Honour the Lieutenant-Governor while we Worship the Mayor? But the day is past when only our eccentricities are notable. Now the doings of Newfoundlanders reflect the land from which they spring and are vital, evolutive, material and eclectic; and are so perceived. Look at the honours accorded Max House and see how they confirm the value of this Newfoundlander’s work.

4 Orations ARTHUR MAXWELL HOUSE H

Now Refutatio. It has been said that much of the lives of faculty members is spent in the state of resentful coma that in universities is known as “scholarly activity.” Max House has shown that scholarly activity includes the creation of a learning environment and the resourceful use of resources. From the springboard of a university degree, graduates may prosecute their subject or, in the phrase of Lord Moynihan, play truant to succeed in areas far distant. Galvani, Keats, David Livingstone, Somerset Maugham and Sun Yat Sen are remembered variously as scientists, explorers, politicians and writers, but each had also a medical degree. A more recent truant from medicine, Max House’s use of communication science places him in each one of these categories .

To conclude, the Peroratio — a summarization. Your orator, Mr. Chancellor, must not simply extol the honorary graduand but must draw conclusions relevant to this audience of new graduates, high in the honour of their families, properly proud of their academic achievements, eager to depart for the non-academic world. We show them an exemplar, but not one to be emulated only when they are ready. They must start now, for in the words of Sybil Bedford:

“You see, when one’s young, one doesn’t feel part of it, yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not for ever; everything is a rehearsal. To be repeated ad lib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.”

Mr. Chancellor, I present to you a Newfoundlander whose name is currency in the world of distance education; a truant from medicine whose understanding of the needs of physicians and of patients has assisted each through use of the techniques of tomorrow; one who has known always that the curtain was up; to receive at your hand the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Arthur Maxwell House.

WILLIAM PRYSE-PHILLIPS UNIVERSITY ORATOR 28 MAY 1999

5 Orations JEAN CHRÉTIEN

Another Prime Minister, in another time, said there were three categories in the Darwinian scheme of evolutionary biology that were in greater need of sanctuary than any other groups: rare birds, wildflowers and prime ministers.

Mr. Chancellor, for centuries, before Confederation, the islands, bays, headlands and barrens of Newfoundland have sheltered endangered species, providing abundant protection for the eagle and the great white heron, the purple Calypso orchid and the white grasses-of-Parnassus. And more recently, our current prime minister, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, has been spotted on the ski slopes of Corner Brook, beside the rivers in Labrador, on the snow banks of Fogo and even in a pool- room in Ladle Cove. There are no sightings, as yet, on the fairways of Gander, Hatchet Cove or the Salmonier river — courses known to be favourite haunts of the species. However, once he is released from these ceremonies, he will no doubt seek these natural habitats. Until then, he must accept the formal classification by the Senate that he now belongs to this large and distinct community of graduates from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Mr. Chancellor, you may think it presumptuous to offer this rare individual the protective cover of an honorary degree — after all, in an earlier mutation, as Minister of Northern Affairs, he created ten national parks, including Newfoundland’s unique Gros Morne National Park, where the human species lives in harmony with the creatures of the air and the flowers of the meadow and, throughout his remarkable career, Jean Chrétien has exhibited that pragmatic idealism, that liberal energy, that capacity for hard work, and loyalty necessary in the political environment where only the fittest survive in the sometimes random processes of selection in our complex, bilingual, constitutional democracy. Even amid therev ersions and transitions of political life, he has shown the adaptability and longevity that ensures the species does not become extinct. But most importantly, his will to endure has been sustained by his love of Canada, nourished by his parents and sustained by his incomparable soul-mate, Aline, and his children and grandchildren.

So, Mr. Chancellor, while we invite Jean Chrétien into the real world of the university, the world of the intellect, away from the confusedillusion s of the political world, we do so mindful that he needs no sanctuary. Clear-sightedly, he has stated that politics can be “frustrating, tough and mean,” but through it all he has held fastC to the liberal desires to create a civil sanctuary for a multinational society, with a repatriated Constitution and an enviable Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Also, he connects with the poet who tells us that the centre cannot hold, unless it attends to the outlying regions. In supportin g the passage of Bill C-29 to protect Newfoundland’s offshore fishing rights and in endorsing Newfoundland’s central role in offshore energy development, he shows his

6 Orations JEAN CHRÉTIEN C

understanding of the struggle for existence in predominantly rural communities. For it is here in the communities of “Tide and wind and crag/Sea-weed and sea-shell” that the story is told “of eternal pathways of fire” and “of dreams that survive the night.”

So, Mr. Chancellor, it is a privilege to welcome the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien into our society because he has advanced Canadian unity, not Canadian uniformity, and he has promoted the ideals of a civilized human community within this vast and beautiful, but morally indifferent Canadian landscape. And for those who doubt the evolutionary endurance or longevity of this species liberalis, they should consider Jean Chrétien’s progenitors: Sir who was Prime Minister for 15 years and his friend, another Liberal Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, who in his long career in politics was Prime Minister — four times.

Therefore, Mr. Chancellor, without much further ado, I present to you the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, , for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 24 MAY 2000

7 Orations EDWARD MOXON ROBERTS

It is a great honour to introduce to this Convocation, Edward Roberts, the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador. As former Chair of the Board of Regents, His Honour is no stranger to this stage, but he usually sat comfortably and safely in a large oak chair as he watched the parade of other Honorary degree recipients waiting nervously to hear what the University Orators — those licensed court fools in the medieval tradition — made of their lives and careers. Now, Vice-Chancellor, it is his turn to be called to the bar.

As I plead his case, I must begin by citing how you and this scholarly community have been enriched by His Honour’s encyclopaedic knowledge, his discernment, his gentlemanly grace and his wisdom, born of his upbringing by his beloved parents, Harry and Mary Katherine, his education in Newfoundland and , and his cherished family life with his wife, Eve, and his daughters Catherine, Caroline, Jessica and Alison, his granddaughter, Madeleine and, of course, Misha, the Vice- Regal dog.

But, on this occasion, Vice-Chancellor, you might wonder at the wisdom of a man who spent three decades in political life in the House on the Hill in the practice of a profession that Winston Churchill described as almost as exciting as military engagement, but much more dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, whilst in politics you can be killed over and over again. You might question the judgement of a man who has now allowed himself to be moved to that other House, the one on the ridge overlooking Cochrane Street. Are these the acts of a wise man?

In his defense, Vice-Chancellor, this distinguished man, with steadfastness and dignity withstood the assays of political life and left an unequalled legacy of strong, fair judgement in the exercise of power. As leader of the Liberal party, as Minister of Public Welfare, Minister of Health, Min ister of Justice, Attorney General and Government House Leader, His Honour was the only man to serve in the three Liberal governments since Confederation, the only man to contribute consistently to building the enduring political, economic and educational structures in our province. Even after defending his political ideals and actions in eight elections, and in representing the districts of White Bay North, the Strait of Belle Isle and Naskaupi, Edward Roberts still advocates that a career in politics is the highest and noblest calling for men and women of intelligence, courage and integrity. Are these Rthe actions and statements of a wise man? Indeed they are, Vice-Chancellor. If we were all as well-read as His Honour, we would recognize that his advocacy of spending one’s life in public service finds correspondence in the writings of the sixteenth century scholar, Erasmus, who in his seminal work, In Praise of Folly, tells us that wisdom cannot be attained except at the cost of sacrificing the comfortable life, that “infinite heart’s ease that only private men enjoy,” that worldly wisdom can be gained only through working always for the good of others in the full knowledge that the world will judge this a foolish pursuit.

8 Orations EDWARD MOXON ROBERTS R

So it should come as no surprise that this man, who has for forty years played a decisive role in the history of this province, who is, himself, an avid reader of history, should willingly, and with humility, accept the highly merited distinction of the title and office of Lieutenant Governor, despite knowing full well how we have treated some other governors. Who can forget the fate of Governor Pickmore whose bedroom filled with snow on cold winters’ nights and whose government refused to pay for extra fuel and insulation. Only after he died of pneumonia, did they have the decency to pay to preserve his body in a puncheon of rum, until he could be sent back to England. And who can forget that Governor LeMarchant was hanged in effigy, that Governor ended his career in front of a firing squad and that Governor Gordon Macdonald, though he managed to stay alive, was immortalized in an ode, in which the initial letters of each line spelled out an acrimonious acrostic, that cast aspersions on the legitimacy of his birth.

So, perhaps the title of the best-known song of His Honour’s favourite songstress, Patsy Cline, — you know the one “I’m crazy, crazy for loving you” — is not far off the mark. For it is in his love for his native land that this public man, who has a healthy scepticism about public displays of emotion, has set the example for future generations of the dignity and worth of public service, whether in government or the legal profession or in voluntary work in the community that he loves. Always a man of action, not of the empty gesture, his contribution to public life reached its apotheosis when, as Chairman of Memorial’s Board of Regents, his clear understanding of the autonomous nature of this unique institution in the development of independent, critical and creative minds, his commitment to extending Memorial’s built heritage and innovative programmes in St. John’s, Corner Brook, Bonne Bay and Harlow helped to make Memorial pre-eminent.

Now, as Her Majesty’s official representative, he embodies that sophisticated political concept of a commonwealth of peoples, with a shared history of political and social ideals. This is indeed, a wise and natural fulfilment for a man who has been part of all our histories. As Lieutenant Governor he is now beyond the spheres of politics and law, but you will be delighted to know, Vice-Chancellor, that, though we have lost a Chairman of the Board, we have gained a new student at Memorial. His Honour plans to continue his graduate work in history in the coming semester.

Therefore, I ask you to honour this man, who has always discerned the substance beneath the show, and, like the wise princes in Shakespeare’s history plays, has always respected the traditional structures of society while distrusting the seductive displays of “idol ceremonies,” by awarding him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by signing his Permit to Register Form, and by ordering for his enjoyment, not a puncheon of rum, but a few bottles of Baron Rothschild’s fine, red wine.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 30 MAY 2003

9 Orations JOHN CARNELL CROSBIE

When I look at the Honourable John Carnell Crosbie, PC, QC, BA, LLB, LLD, former federal minister of Justice, Transportation, International Trade, Fisheries and Oceans, Honorary Consul for Mexico, Officer of the , Chancellor of Memorial University, Lord of the One-Liner, and Imperial Scourge of the Politically-Correct — I am reminded of the words of Holy Mary, Mother of God, about to present that other J. C. to the world — “For behold, hencef orth, all generations of women shall call me blessed.” For according to university protocol, I have the power to keep silent one of Newfoundland's most vociferous men.

Today, Chancellor Crosbie has presented himself — severally — wearing the prescribed red and gold swaddling clothes of the honorary graduand of Memorial University, awaiting the testament and judgment of she who must be obeyed — the University Orator.

Mr. Vice-Chancellor, John Crosbie is no stranger to paradox, nor to protocol, though in his career as one of Canada's prominent public figures he has delighted the country by seeking to expose the one and subvert the other. In his most recent role as Chancellor of Memorial University, he has been introduced to even more bizarre and Byzantine systems than ever he knew in Ottawa, so he will not be surprised by the paradox that we honour him by making him keep quiet, at least for a while.

John Crosbie’s irreverent epithets have enriched the Canadian political lexicon and cut our democratic leaders down to size. Only he had the audacity to expose 's extravagant waste of public money by comparing him to an Egyptian demi-god, King Tut; only he had the nerve to call to account the arrogance and equivocation of two Canadian Prime Ministers, dubbing one the Emperor Napoleon and the other Mr. Slippery Heels. Guess which was which. Only he could single- handedly boost the sales of that south-of-the-b order drink, and ensure his appointment as Honorary Consul for Mexico, by concocting an explosive rhyming potion for Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps.

But Mr. Vice-Chancellor, while we honour, today, Newfoundland’s very own Touchstone in the forest of Ottawa for speaking wisely of what men and women do foolishly, and while John Crosbie was never last to be first, let me first voice praise for his mos t recent role on the public stage. ForO five years, he has used his ineluc table charm to wrestle large amounts of money from the tenacious grasp of all the major players in the worldwide business federation. Capitalizing on his nation-wide respect from the business community, and his reputation for a “No Holds Barred” approach, Chancellor Crosbie has pushed Memorial’s Opportunity Fund close to its target of 25 million dollars. Adopting the irrefutable logic of a Hulk Hogan, Chancellor Crosbie has announced that if you were fortunate enough to have been a student at Memorial, or had the misfortune not to, if you had visited Newfoundland, or had the misfortune not to, if you had flown over Newfoundland or had met someone who had, then you were obligated to make a contribution.

Whence comes this passionate advocacy of the inestimable value of a university education? John Crosbie inherited it from the female line of his prodigious family. Mitchie Anne Crosbie told her

10 Orations JOHN CARNELL CROSBIE children that the hardest thing in life was to think. And that only a university education would enable them “to think of things as they are.” She expected her family to think for themselves, and not to leave the thinking to others.

For more than 30 years in public life, her Cgrandson has been that independent, critical analyst of events, issues and personalities. Speaking affectionately of his days as a university undergraduate, John Crosbie emphasized that for him university education was a liberating experience, because he studied in small classes taught by accessible faculty. At university, he learned the truth of the words of that earlier politician and chancellor, Sir Francis Bacon, nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. Having been awarded the university medal in political science at Queen’s University, and all the other available prizes as well as the Viscount Bennett fellowship, John Crosbie seemed ready for an academic career, but the attraction of power in the political arena led John Crosbie to transform himself from the shy scholar into the political performer. Only beneath the liberating protection of the comic mask, did he feel able to put into practice the scholarly principles that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, order preferable to chaos, and human sympathy preferable to ideology. In the process, his ideas as well as his words entered into the texture of Canadian political life — and having learned that in human nature there is always more the fool than the wise, he intermingled jest with earnest to expose the paradoxical nature of political power in the post-McLuhan age.

And, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, as he has said, he did indeed render the state some service and I am sure would want us to speak of him as he is and nothing extenuate. His “finest hours” were when he established conflict of interest legislation that began to release Newfoundland from the grip of venality and corruption, supported pro-choice legislation, advocated reforms in divorce law, introduced legislation to protect minority groups and women and children and, with great personal courage, bore the brunt of the anger and frustration of his compatriots devastated by the cod moratorium, while steadfastly and loyally working to get the best compensation possible.

Few here today would be so churlish as to disagree with Jane’s ironic understatement that John Crosbie was the best and prime minister Canada never had.

Mr. Vice-Chancellor, like most Canadians, John Crosbie was not born a Canadian, he became one in the full knowledge that it takes the mind, heart and soul to maintain the unity of a country that allows a thousand diversities. As Chancellor he has used his wit, his contacts and his love of Newfoundland to sustain an institution dedicated to educating the minds of its young people so that, paradoxically, they would not be “gulled, lulled and fooled” by politicians.

A passionate Newfoundlander and Canadian in his political career and as Chancellor of Memorial University, John Crosbie has provided the practical means for future generations of Newfoundlanders, to study at Memorial and use their educated minds to solve problems, and have the courage in the new millennium to speak their minds.

Mr. Vice-Chancellor, soon after the Europeans came to the island of Newfoundland, a head of state beheaded a çhancellor who refused to bend to authority. That chancellor tried to subvert authority by being silent. Fortunately for Newfoundland and Canada, our Chancellor Crosbie is no Sir Thomas More – Chancellor Crosbie has survived because he knows that “silence is the virtue of fools.” Only by speaking one’s mind – when that mind is educated, can it cleanse the “foul body of the infected world from folly,” intolerance, and corruption. Though this secular authority does not have the power to beatify John Crosbie as Sir Thomas More was canonized — neither will it behead him. Instead, we have already invested him with his motley — and now I ask you to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, which will, God help me, give him licence to speak.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 26 MAY 1997

11 Orations AUNG SAN SUU KYI

Imagine a country once the jewel of Asia, a golden land of pagodas, fertile forests and precious minerals, a country that established its independence from colonial rule, under the leadership of Aung San, the father of the courageous woman we honour today. Imagine a people who once had the highest literacy rates in the developing world and who voted overwhelmingly for a democratic government in 1990. But, in that same year, a group of military genera ls seized power and thousands of legitimately elected members of the National League for Democracy were imprisoned and tortured. Many were murdered or disappeared. The dream of a free and independent land exists only in the imagination of the freedom loving people of Burma.

Since 1990 this country of nearly 50 million people has known no democratic freedoms, no genuine peace, no freedom from fear. No longer a golden land, it is a place where mass poverty and illiteracy go hand in hand with the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, a place where the military junta, not a government elected by the people, spends 60 per cent of the country’s income on armaments to suppress its own people, not on any external threat, and where the excessive lifestyle of the generals is sustained by the malignant corruption of the heroin and sex trade. The United Nations has identified Burma as a nation where there is a “silent emergency” — silent, because all communications with the outside world are controlled by the military junta, and anyone who speaks out against injustice and oppression faces imprisonment, torture and death.

Yet there is one woman who has been steadfast in breaking the silence. Aung San Suu Kyi has not been silent and has suffered the consequences of seeking dialogue, not dictatorship, democracy not degradation.

She is a living testament of the power of the human spirit to shine light into the human heart of darkness.

Today, we honour her in the same week that 14 years ago, on May 27, 1990, the political party she headed, the National League for Democracy, won 82 per cent of the parliamentary seats contested in the first multi-party general election held since her father’s assassination in 1947. But that victory was short-lived. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Oxford educated young wife and mother, a scholarly woman from a distinguished family, her father being the founder of modern Burma and her mother the Kformer Burmese ambassador to India, had been caught up in the movement for democracy when she returned to Burma to nurse her dying mother. The military junta placed her under “house arrest” — that deceptive phrase used to hide the reality of her incarceration behind barricades of barbed wire, her constant surveillance and harassment by armed guards and her separation from her husband and her young sons and from the world outside her prison in Rangoon. Despite her brutal treatment, since 1990, Suu Kyi, has steadfastly been loyal to the principles of democracy and the people of Burma. Throughout the world she has become a symbol of heroic and peaceful resistance in the face of oppression. But in Burma, to mention her name, is to invite savage reprisals. Because she is denied

12 Orations AUNG SAN SUU KYI the right to travel and to return to Burma she is absent from our stage today, but this prisoner of conscience is present in the hearts and minds of all who believe governments exist to protect the people, not exploit and brutalize them.

It is a terrible paradox thatK the woman the world has honoured for her non-violent advocacy of democratic government in a civil society that respects pluralism and meritocracy, has been subjected to the worst physical and psychological violence imaginable. Her health has suffered from her hunger strikes to protect from torture the imprisoned Burmese children, students, workers, teachers, doctors and lawyers who want to live in a free society; she has walked on alone to face armed soldiers, ordered to kill her; she has been repeatedly denied access to her own children, Alexander and Kim; her husband, Michael Aris, was even refused the right to see her, when he was fatally ill. When he died, thousands of Burmese people mourned with her as she gave food and saffron robes to 53 Burmese monks, one for each year of her beloved husband’s life. Only by obeying the Buddhist principal of treating suffering with equanimity could she ignore the militia who were listing the names of those present at the time of her grief. Inspired by the teachings of Buddha, of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, and the loyalty of her family, Suu Kyi speaks only of love, not hate. She is a living testament of the power of the human spirit to shine light into the human heart of darkness.

The banality of the evil regime she lives under is nowhere more apparent than in the language the generals use to describe her identity and condition. Suu Kyi’s sacrifice and suffering in the name of freedom has won accolades from the world community: Norway awarded her the Thorolf Rafto Human Rights Prize; the European Parliament gave her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought; she has received the Nobel Peace Prize, honorary degrees and peace awards from every democratic country in the world. Her writings, Freedom from Fear, Letters from Burma and The Voice of Hope are read worldwide, yet the Burmese generals tell Western journalists that she is “just a housewife. Nothing more than that,” that she is in “protective custody” because “we feel we have to look after her and care for her.”

Now in 2004, Suu Kyi, bereft of her husband denied the quotidian comforts of her sons, is the living symbol of the plight of the Burmese people. She is a true celebrity, in our world of tabloid icons. Her heroic non-violent struggle for the greater good of others is a reminder of the fragile nature of the freedoms we take for granted.

In admitting Suu Kyi to our community, we join the rest of the world in calling for a restoration of her rights and freedoms, and those of her people. In Burma, as in Newfoundland, this is the season when the people celebrate the coming of spring. In Newfoundland, the yellow forsythia bushes promise new life and we prepare to exercise our independent rights and freedoms in choosing our next government. In Burma, the bright yellow flowers of the Padauk tree herald a time of enlightenment when false beliefs are cast away, but the Burmese people have no such rights and freedoms in the election of their government.

Suu Kyi has enlightened the world with her unquenchable spirit, with her courageous pacifism in the face of persecution, with her advocacy of reconciliation not repression, and with her unassailable defense of democratic freedoms for her people. She is the only hope they have.

Memorial University is proud and humbled to be in her company and we must continue to call for the restoration of her human rights and continue to support this most honourable member of our convocation. Mr. Chancellor, I ask you to confer on Aung San Suu Kyi, in absentia, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, in the hope that one day soon she will be safe and free.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 28 MAY 2004

13 Orations GRUNIA MOVSCHOVITCH FERMAN

To remember a war it is common to bring on stage men glorious in uniform, resplendent with medals. For the most part they will have gone into battle with expectation of victory and hope of glory. Not so the civilian. The civilian in war is generally driven from home and hearth and is certain of but one thing: that home and hearth will not be there when they return. And they never know if they will return. Indeed, they have little certainty that they will live to return.

That is the fate of the civilian in the path of war. But now, Mr. Chancellor, think further. Think of the civilian who is a target of war. That civilian has none of the status of the soldier, no military means of self-defence, and little likelihood of being protected by the state of which she is a citizen. Such was the situation of the European Jew. From 1935 onward, the Jews had a sense of something malignant metastasising on the European Plain. Many emigrated but soon even that door began to shut upon them.

Among those civilians was a young woman of the town of Novogrudek in eastern Poland, Grunia Movschovitch Ferman. She had been forced into service as a fitness instructor when the Russians overran Poland. When the Germans displaced the Russians in 1941, the Jews of Novogrudek discovered that discrimination had given way to extermination. In attempting to flee the ghetto, Grunia Movschovitch’s brother was shot, and her father and another brother were taken to the death camps. She briefly found shelter on a farm but, posing a danger to the farm family, she made her way to the Naliboki Forest where she served out the remainder of the war.

And that phrase “served out” is used intentionally, for Grunia Movschovitch had found refuge in one of the great family camps of the resistance leader, Tuvia Bielski. There she worked as a nurse and married Lewis Ferman, a fellow partisan who had lost his wife and daughter to the Nazis in the extermination of the ghetto of Lida. Lewis Ferman brought to the partisans his specialist knowledge as an electrician and was active in sabotaging the German supply lines as well as in rescuing people from the ghetto. So that while service in a regular force was not possible for such people, clearly Grunia and Lewis Ferman are veterans of the World War II we remember this year, which at this convocation we commemorate.

To live after such suffering is sometimes an impossible burden — and many did not live. But Fpeople like Grunia and Lewis Ferman not only lived, as partisans they fought the incredible sense of moral chaos created by the Nazis, as refugees they made a life in a new land, as citizens they gave to their new community and as parents they grew in hope again. Mr. Chancellor, the past is a door through which we all pass — behind it is a house of memories which can inform or deform. Before it is a world of possibilities: some lit with hope, others darkened by despair. For her part in bringing hope, for her service, I present to you for the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the nurse of the Naliboki Forest, Grunia Movschovitch Ferman.

SHANE O’DEA PUBLIC ORATOR 28 OCTOBER 1995

14 Orations

TSHAUKUISH (ELIZABETH) PENASHUE

We are honoured tonight to have as our guest Tshaukuish Penashue of the Innu Nation, who is recognized nationally and internationally for her visionary service to indigenous rights, to healthy communities, and to caring for the earth.

Tshaukuish, if in the 1960s the people of and this province had recognized Nitassinan as your homeland for centuries; had endorsed your aboriginal right to hunt and cut wood there; had enshrined the right of Innu children to be educated in Innu-aimun in an inclusive system that honoured their heritage while preparing them for today’s world; had permitted you to keep responsibility for justice, addressing delinquency as you always had through healing circles, rehabilitating offenders within communities with family support; had understood your life in Nutshimit, your relationship with the land, your commitment to protecting it; today you could enjoy control over your homeland, your institutions, and your way of life; the names of rivers and lakes could be those your people gave them; the resources of Nitassinan could be yours to develop or not, at a pace and in ways decided by you; and your society could have retained the old system of government in which women and men were equally responsible; and today, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, in addition to CFAR, happy acronym for our Centre for Aboriginal Research, this university could have established the NOCO Innuvation Centre, where students would question supremacist thinking, examine Innu governance, engage the ethics as well as the economics of industrial development, study Innu music, education and healing, and prepare themselves physically and spiritually for an Innu immersion course in Nitassinan.

In such a project, Tshaukuish would surely lead and teach as courageously as she does now. Even without the stability of an Innu-created community, facingdistress and confusion especially among the young, she pours herself into education in the bush so that young people rediscover the discipline and pride of survival by reciprocity with the land. No large classes, no PowerPoint delivering bullets, no multiple choice questions. To make camp; tend the fire; kill, clean and cook the caribou, above all sharing it with those who weren’t so lucky today, and respecting the remains: these are the tests.

And for adults, Innu and non-In nu, the graduate course, a strenuous 25-day trek in deep snow and forest. Course requirements: humility, fitness, reverence for the earth. Assignments: bring no junk, keep warm, eat up your porcupine, clean up behind you, and above all love thy neighbour because ifP you quarrel or whine, your teacher may walk on without you. If you survive, you pass. Not about nostalgia, this rigorous journey keeps Innu present on the land and supports the revitalization of Innu energies and values.

16 Orations TSHAUKUISH (ELIZABETH) PENASHUE P

For political witness always peaceful is her life. The first of her winter walks for the women of Sheshatshiu in the 1980s took them to the NATO bombing range at Minai-nipi and a vigil for a pure lake now spoiled by dead bombs. And at the prospect of low-level flying by NATO over Innu hunting grounds, she conquered fear and knocked on doors, inviting her people to join in opposing the violation. For occupying the runway at Goose Bay, Tshaukuish and her friends went three times to jail, but they won public recognition and travelled by invitation across Canada, telling this story of Innu resistance and agency. Tshaukuish has since organized a women’s centre in Sheshatshiu, and a yearly group expedition by canoe, in tandem with her husband Francis, on the Mishta Shipu, that great river we appropriated to provide hydro power, flooding without notice the land where the father of Tshaukuish trapped and hunted. Her canoe trip mourns the damage of that first development and protests the planning of a second.

Of Voisey’s Bay, Tshaukuish has said: “Emish is a beautiful place, with marshes, clean rivers, trees and mountains ... special places where the caribou, porcupine, beaver and geese like to live ... I know what a mess mining will make at Emish, how much dirt and ... pollution that will make my people sick.” That Inco has pledged to prove her wrong, and to restore the site, signals the power of her dignified advocacy for her people and her homeland.

We have still much to learn, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, from our neighbours. By the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, let us celebrate the integrity and mighty spirit of a woman who stands up to bullies, and who lives and teaches survival and renewal: Tshaukuish (Elizabeth) Penashue.

JEAN GUTHRIE UNIVERSITY ORATOR 21 OCTOBER 2005

17 Orations ERNEST MARSHALL HOWSE

Newfoundland lavishes its many bounties the world over; ores, newsprint and fish to furnaces, presses and market places. With human resources this generosity becomes almost reckless and there is a weighty catalogue of her native sons who have left her to enrich other societies. High on the list stands Ernest Marshall Howse.

He was born in Twillingate and educated at the Methodist College in St. John’s, Dalhousie, Pine Hill Divinity School, Union Seminary of and Edinburgh University, receiving there his . Formal education completed, his first pastorate was Beverly Hills where, in a different way, he too made believe. From California he moved to and from Winnipeg to his present ministry in Bloor Street, Toronto.

Many anecdotes are told of him, among them three which are perhaps apocryphal but, hopefully, are illuminating.

The first concerns his given names which were originally Ernest Marsh all Fraser. Deciding to avoid unnecessary encumbrances he dropped the Fraser. While this may have caused chagrin in the Presbyteries, it demonstrated an early capacity for self-examination and prudent economy, churchly virtues both.

Later, when leading a visiting Dalhousie team, he debated at MCLI in St. John’s and his opponent was our own President. The motion discussed has been forgotten and caution bids one suggest that the verdict was a draw. Whatever the verdict, however, we may be certain that his art was then, as now, heuristic, not eristic.

Finally, after leaving Edinburg, he came back to St. John’s and applied for an incumbency. The church elders, with a strange prescience, refused him and sent him away to seek larger challenges. In 1964 he returned again to be elected Moderator of the United Church of Canada.

For this task he is superbly equipped. He brings to the office abundant energies, a restless intellect, a refreshing outspoken ess and a noble vision of co-operation and unity, not only among the Christian Churches but embracing all the great religions of the world. With his abilities and dedication to the cause of mankind, he will most assuredly leave a lasting mark.

Mr. Chancellor, I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, The Right Reverend Ernest MarshallH Howse, Moderator of the United Church of Canada. P.J. GARDINER DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 15 MAY 1965

18 Orations

EDMUND JOSEPH PHELAN

Forty odd years ago two schoolboys faced each other at intervals throughout the year as captains of their teams on the football field; friends no doubt, but essentially at cross-purposes. Today, no longer schoolboys, they face each other again at intervals throughout the year across a boardroom table, once more captains of their teams. The boy who captained the old Methodist College team was Raymond Gushue; he is now President of this University. The captain of St. Bon’s was Edmund Joseph Phelan; and he is now Chairman of the Board of Regents of this University. The wheel is come full circle; but the cross-purposes, one hopes, are gone.

These buildings, Sir, this ceremony, and above all the graduands sitting below, are evidence enough that erstwhile rivalry has in sterner things become cooperation. Forty years ago this university did not exist at all; and in the last decade in particular its full-time enrolment has leapt from some hundreds to over 2000. During that decade Mr. Phelan has presided over its governing board; and he with all those who serve and have served on that board have just cause for satisfaction with their labours. I make bold to say, Sir, that Mr. Phelan has the reputation of being a cautious man; and caution is indeed an admirable quality; but very evidently something more is needed in enterprises of so great moment.

The qualities that Mr. Phelan has shown as Chairman are those which, in his professional life, have brought him quickly and steadily to a position of eminence as a senior practitioner of the law in Newfoundland. As Q.C., as Solicitor of St. John’s, as a Master of the Supreme Court for many years, as a Bencher of the Law Society, he has contributed much to the legal wellbeing of his society; and his services to the community were recognized some years ago by his church when he was made a Knight of St. Gregory. In honouring him today we add our tribute particularly to the Chairman of the Board of Regents, and through him to all the members of the Board who, have as he has, spent so much time and care and given so readily of their experience and abilities to serve the university. Memorial owes much to the professional men of St. John’s; if it cannot reward them in any way that would be recognizable by the Department of Internal Revenue, it is none the less sincere in its gratitude to them; and to none more than to the Chairman of its Board, whom, Sir, I now present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Edmund Joseph Phelan.

B.P. REARDON PDEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 16 MAY 1964

20 Orations

HERBERT THOMAS COUTTS

There is an old saying, current in British training colleges and Institutes of Education, to the effect that those who are completely incapable of doing anything else — teach. To this has been added the corollary, born of an equally desperate malice, that those who cannot teach, teach teachers. To these gems the sufferers in the system have, in recent years, added the ultimate insult: that those who cannot teach teachers administrate!

These unkind words are certainly not true of Dean Coutts. They are essentially a commentary upon our inheritance of the 19th century curse of mass production. A blessing in many ways, in the economic sense, mass production can only be a curse to education because it takes no account of individuality, and education is concerned primarily with the development of individuality. But the growth of popular education led to mass production methods in the schools, and mass production in the normal schools, in training colleges and eventually in the universities themselves. In mass- production education the learners sit in their serried and ordered ranks, while the teacher stands at the front and perorates between one bell and the next. And sometimes, one must admit, the peroration is punctuated by the snores of those students who claim that they cannot afford to cut class: they need to sleep.

How then, in this weary and wicked world, is one supposed to get an education? Well, the university, you know, is a medieval institution, and the tradition of the middle ages was that you tramped the roads until you found the master from whom you could learn, and you stayed with him until you had learned all that you could. And so it was the vagantes, the wandering scholars tramped the roads of Europe, stole grapes from roadside vineyards, begged from passers-by, played the fool, stayed up late at night, drank too much, got up late in the morning, as students are wont to do, but finally, sat at the feet of Alcuin the Yorkshireman, of Peter Abelard, of Thomas Aquinas. And although we tend, from our perspective in time, to look down upon medieval civilization, the fact alone that it left us as an inheritance the institution of the university should be sufficient for it to command our respect. For in the final analysis this fact is unutterably true, that we can only get an education by educating ourselves, and the university is, according to one definition, a place where the young educate themselves in spite of their . The tradition of the wanderingC scholars is an old and noble one; and we should be glad that it still persists. Newfoundlanders have long gone out across the globe in search of their education. And not a few in the discipline of pedagogy, of education, have travelled the long miles across this immense homeland of Canada to the Province of to a Faculty of education directed by a remarkable man whose destiny it has been to leave his imprint upon Canadian education.

22 Orations HERBERT THOMAS COUTTS C

A warm and human person, Dean Coutts always takes a personal interest in his students, in spite of the fact that graduate enrolment in the faculty of Education at Alberta runs into the hundreds, which makes it one of the largest on the continent. His Newfoundland students are encouraged to return to their native province, and it is not surprising to find them in a variety of positions within the educational establishment: as professors in the Faculty of Education, as principals in the schools, in executive positions in the Department of Education and the Newfoundland Teachers Association, in one instance, as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Education and Youth.

Dean Coutt’s interest in Newfoundland has not been restricted to his students. He himself has acted as consultant to the Royal Commission, visited Newfoundland, looked at the school situation, visited the outports in order to gain first-hand information on the conditions for which teachers would be needed and presented a report of great value on the subject of teacher education.

Newfoundland has a debt of gratitude to the most distinguished Canadian educator — Chancellor, I present to you for the Degree of Doctor Laws, honoris causa, Herbert Thomas Coutts.

JOHN HEWSON DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 25 MAY 1968

23 Orations DONALD ALEXANDER CAMERON

It has been you pleasant duty to bestow our University’s highest degree on a variety of distinguished persons, professional and lay. Presidents and primates have stood before you, Sir, and fisherman and judges, and even the occasional entertainer or politician. But today you add to this roster a farmer whose virtues are those that derive from the soils of Scotland Old and New; the virtues of courage, resourcefulness, and loyalty to family and friends.

Of course, Mr. Chancellor, these are the qualities that distinguish a proud clan like the Camerons. It was the Camerons’ loyalty to Scotland’s Bonnie Prince that cost them more than ever could be gained in wealth or power but earned them, instead, the respect of succeeding generations on both sides of the Atlantic. Donald Alexander Cameron is an exemplar of that clan, Mr. Chancellor; true heir to the gentle Lochiel who suffered his cullodens but whose back no enemy ever saw.

Born in Pictou Country in our in December of 1920 Donald Cameron grew accustomed through Atlantic Canada’s depression years to sustaining his family’s resources by working their Meadowville farm in the summer and in lumber camps and saw mills in the winter.

It was not until he was twenty-six that he began his academic career when he was awarded a scholarship to Mount Allison University, and, subsequently, a Beaverbrook Overseas Scholarship which took him to London University. There in 1952 he was awarded that University’s Diploma in English Educational Thought and Practice, a distinction which, for a loyal Scot, lies uneasy on his conscience I am told.

In 1953, Mr. Chancellor, Donald Cameron returned to Nova Scotia and, after a period of teaching in high schools there, left to accept, for a brief time, the post of Assistant Professor of Education at Mount Allison. Mount Allison became his home from that point. He became its Registra r and then Assistant to the President for Campus Development under the Chancellorship of Dr. Ralph Bell whose strong leadership he greatly admired. The joint vision of Dr. Ralph Bell and Donald Alexander Cameron has found bold expression today Mr. Chancellor in the Campus that is modern Mount Allison. Donald Cameron continues to serve as Registrar of Mount Allison, that University to which so many Newfoundlanders look with affection and respect. In countless cases Mr. Chancellor, that affection can be traced toC the wise and warm friendship which Donald Cameron has extended to so many of Mount Allison’s Newfoundland students.

But his academic and administrative career, brilliant though it is, is not a singular thing about Donald Cameron. It is his adherence to principle and to conviction that has marked the man as

24 Orations DONALD ALEXANDER CAMERON C

worthy of the honour you do him today, Mr. Chancellor. Colleagues attest that when dispassionate, clear reasoning or plain common sense is needed it is to Donald Cameron that they turn. In his gently witty but determined manner he has always been able to prick pretension and lance many of those less than lovely intellectual boils that occur now and then in our universities. Sir, Donald Cameron has demonstrated the courage to live by his principles in the face of numerous challenges both professional and personal. His family is his strength and his strength is our special reason, today, Mr. Chancellor, for honouring our friend and colleague from Mount Allison.

Mr. Chancellor I respectfully present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Donald Alexander Cameron.

JOHN A. SCOTT UNIVERSITY ORATOR 28 OCTOBER 1978

25 Orations The Right Honourable STEPHEN JAMES LAKE BARON TAYLOR OF HARLOW

T. S. Eliot is his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats devotes one poem to the naming of cats and one to the addressing of cats. These niceties for cats are insignificant when compared to the naming and addressing of peers of the realm. In fact, there are fussy folk in Britain who make fussy livings by dealing with protocol, with style and with modes of saluting lords.

We welcome Stephen Taylor back to our Convoc ation with a mixture of irreverence for his title and deep respect for the man. He reappears on this platform and processes in scarlet where formerly he processed in a silk gown embroidered (not as heavily as yours, Sir) with gold braid.

We are to honour him first as the fourth President of our University. In this role he displayed the contrasting facets of his personality – a contemplative man in his study, but a swashbuckler striding though the corridors. President Taylor broug ht the ceremonial, prestige and dignity of the House of Lords to the high office of the University, but tickled the housewives in the local shopping malls when he boomed his greetings to them, wearing his bayman’s hat.

As a ‘come from away’, with the Englishman’s ability to radiate self-confidence, he could produce some perplexity in people outside and inside the University. His period in office coincided with the increased numbers of students and teachers. He was interested in the recently established Medical School, as expected for someone who is a physician by trade, but his commitments were to the University as a whole. He courageously undertook a series of lectures intended to civilize the Engineering students but there is no evidence to suggest that he ever succeed in this Quixotic task. He did succeed in setting up Oxen Pond Botanical Gardens as a University facility contributing to the pleasures of our citizens and visitors to St. John’s.

In the Faculty of Arts he took the initiative in securing the vast collection of British Maritime records which came to form the nucleus of Memorial’s Maritime History Archive. Of special interest to our graduates in Education, he instigated the arrangements of our campus in Harlow where, as Dr. Stephen Taylor, he had worked in Industrial Medicine, and chose Harlow as the geographic suffix for his life peerage.

During his tenure as President of our burgeoning University he was able to give an identity to the University and to articulate to the politicians and to the public that Memorial was not a local provincial institution, but could aim to be a centre of excellence at national and international levels — aims which have not been realized by the ‘livyer’ Presidents Morgan and Harris who succeeded him. Mr. Chancellor, when I joined Faculty, morale was high. Lord Taylor was President and

26 Orations The Right Honourable STEPHEN JAMES LAKE BARON TAYLOR OF HARLOW 

Dr. Morgan was Vice-President. With the Lord in charge and Moses as his right-hand man, nothing could go wrong!

But we are parochial if we simply emphasize his Presidency with us as the basis for our recognition. He made his Canadian debut in 1962 when he erupted into Saskatchewan to sort out a conflict between doctors and the provincial government. The Saskatchewan agreement which settled the strike became a basic document for the Canadian system of . State medicine was not a new concept for the noble lord for in 1939 he had written a “Plan for British Hospitals” which set out ideas later to be incorporated in the postwar British National Health Service.

He has always been a writer — initially as an Assistant Editor of The Lancet, as a Drafter of Labour Party policy, as a Medical Correspondent for a newspaper, in his books on good general practice and in the areas of social and industrial medicine, first aid in industry, the effects of rehousing on health, mental health and the environment. His best writing comes as an essayist when he can expose his own vigorous thinking. In the last six years or so he has been working on an autobiographical volume which may reveal some of the issues, turbulent and otherwise, he charted while at our helm. In this work he advocates scientific method as rational basis for contemplating human nature.

Sir, the Baron who is to rejoin us in Convocation was created a life peer in 1958 by a Labour government in Britain so that he could serve as spokesman on health in the Upper Chamber. However he recently demonstrated that he learned something of Newfoundland politics for he crossed the floor of the House to offer his allegiance to the redoubtable Mrs.Thatcher. Not quite all the way for he became a cross bencher — left-wing with a touch of right-wing.

Mr. Chancellor, before you stands a physician, humanist, former member of parliament, observer and critic of the contemporary scene, politician, writer, controversialist, sometime President of our University, an international figure. With personal respect and affection I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Stephen James Lake, Baron Taylor, of whom we can now pronounce in poet Eliot’s play on words “his ineffable, effable, effanineffable deep and inscrutable singular name”, the Right Honourable, the Lord Taylor of Harlow.

R. M. MOWBRAY UNIVERSITY ORATOR 31 MAY 1986

27 Orations DAVID L. JOHNSTON

Mr. Chancellor, and all to whom these presents shall come — Greetings.

(i) Whereas I have conducted what constitutes a reasonable investigation, (ii) Whereas I have obeyed all standards of reasonableness by a prudent woman, (iii) Whereas this list is not intended to be inclusive or exhaustive of the information required in this particular situation,

In presenting to you one David L. Johnston I intend to make full, true and plain disclosure of the material facts in the life of the aforementioned.

Mr. Chancellor, it should be noticed in the part herein mentioned above that I have been influenced, for good or ill, by my scrutiny of Dr. Johnston’s academic specializations, namely Securities Regulation, Corporation and Labour Law.

Also should be noted evidence of indebtedness issued by prestigious universities — Toronto, Western Ontario and McGill which profited from Dr. Johnston’s industry and initiative in matters academic , administrative and athletic. His record shows that Dr. Johnston is no rookie in the art of power-play, board-checking and puck-handling in university boardrooms, or hockey rinks.

Mr. Chancellor, these phrases introduce yet another material fact about Dr. Johnston’s life — his athletic prowess. As a student, he was a star scholar at Cambridge, Harvard and Queen’s, winning outstanding awards and fellowships, yet he prized equally the honour of playing on the All-American hockey team.

The foregoing notwithstanding, Dr. Johnston values his private life as well as his public responsibilities, teaching his family, as well as his students the values of ethical responsibility, confident and constructive criticism and commitment to civic and national life. Taking as his touchstone, St. Exupery’s words

Because I am different, I do not diminishJ you, I enrich you,

he fosters, at McGill the theme of diversity in unity as well as the private impulses of imagination, determination and passion called for in that very public SSHRC report on Law and Learning.

Nonetheless, Mr. Chancellor, you might wonder at the wisdom of a man so versed in the terminology of the law courts and the hockey arena at taking the position of President of the

28 Orations DAVID L. JOHNSTON J

Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. For, as this present company knows from experience, in the University Leagues the attacking zones are less well-defined, the penalties major and there is a lot of interference.

You might argue, Mr. Chancellor, that Dr. Johnston’s experience in securities legislation should have warned him that as President of AUCC,

(i) herein no security, (ii) herein is no prospectus outlining the obligations of the principle agent (iii) herein are no statutory rights of rescission, (iv) no exclusions for Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, (v) no comfort letters,

Pursuant to the subsections mentioned above, I maintain, in his defense,

(i) that Dr. Johnston has given unconscionable consideration to ensure the morale of the stockholders, and (ii) the incentive plans he has devised have fulfilled investor expectations.

This assembly has profited from Dr. Johnston’s legal mastery of the material world, as well as his insights into the paradoxes of our vigorous, yet fragile Northern inheritance. Indeed, Dr. Johnston has followed the injunctions of another McGill lawyer who said,

There is an argument that will prevail In this calm stretch of current…. Come, flaunt the brief prerogative of life

Dip your small, civilized foot in this cold water And ripple, for a moment, the smooth surface of time.

In testimony, whereof, Mr. Chancellor, I pronounce that ’s insight, learning and judgment will bring great dividends to the company of scholars at Memorial University and beg you, Your Honour, to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 30 SEPTEMBER 1986

29 Orations JAMES DOWNEY

Our distinguished guest, a specialist in the study of English literature, will appreciate more than most the delight that any scholar must feel on discovering a hitherto unknown manuscript by a hitherto unknown author. He will easily understand, therefore, my own excitement when, recently, whilst browsing in the bowels of a certain library, I came across a curious item of eighteenth-century ephemera which had remained hidden and undisturbed for some two hundred years. It was entitled Farmer May’s Almanac and comprised a series of prophetic verses which purported to reveal to the enquiring eye much of what would happen in the future. Of the identity of the author we know only what little he tells us in the preface to his work: that he had recently been chosen to head an important but impoverished organization called the Memorable Union of New Farm Hands (it appears to have been some sort of primitive but well-meaning bargaining unit) and was so overcome by his unexpected elevation that he felt his hands filled with power and his mouth with prophecy. Much of what he says is understandably agricultural — he speaks of pruning, of cutting back, of retrenching, of digging deep — and his concerns seem less with the great and glorious than with humble everyday things like Kitchens and Bakers and Warrens and Wells.

There is, however, a series of four verses near the beginning of his Almanac in which Farmer May foretells the birth and achievements of someone whose characteristics are so like those of our guest here today as to convince us utterly of the author’s inspiration. Permit me to read you the first of them and you will understand my amazement:

There’ll be a young scholar from Trinity With ambitions that reach to infinity; The job that he’ll chase Is a president's place: It’s the nearest thing to divinity.

And who do we have standing before us today but James Downey, born in Trinity Bay, educated at Memorial and at London University, who rose through the ranks to become the fourteenth President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick! What accuracy, what precision on the part of Farmer May. But lest you dismiss the matter simply as mere coincidence, let me read you Dthe second verse of this prognostication: He will study the language of Blake Of Butler and those in his wake; For English is grand When you’re in Newfoundland Though French might be best for Meech Lake.

30 Orations JAMES DOWNEY D

And is it not remarkable that James Downey went on to become a specialist in eighteenth-century literature? That he is the author of an acclaimed study of The Eighteenth Century Pulpit? That he has written on Butler, and Johnson, and Sterne? And is it not even more remarkable that just last year he stepped down as President of UNB to devote his time to a special committee set up to advise the Premier of New Brunswick on constitutional matters, constitutional matters which must of necessity involve the problems of English and French and cultural identity? This is not coincidence; this is true vision. What, then, is the third of Farmer May’s prophetic verses?

He’ll defend the essential humanities Against all the preposterous vanities Of math. and of psych., Of chem. and the like, And all scientific inanities.

Will it now surprise you, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, will it now surprise you to learn that James Downey has spoken on the idea of the humanities and their place in education, has written extensively on the nature of universities, has discussed the problems of university autonomy, has lectured on the difficulties of university funding, and has served as President of the Canadian Bureau of International Education and as a member of the Executive of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada? No, sir, it will not surprise you, for we are confident now of the true inspiration of Farmer May and look to him as a sure guide to a secure future. But what of the fourth and final verse of the series? What does our author tell us of the later course of his subject’s career? I shall tell you:

It will be clear for all to see: He will climb to the top of the tree; And then, to reward him, They'll no doubt award him A Doctor of Letters degree.

And it is at this point that I myself, a humble transcriber of another's inspiration, can add my own contribution to the fulfilment of these remarkable prophecies. For it is my privilege now to call upon the appropriate authorities to recognize the achievements of this distinguished and humane scholar, to reward him justly for his considerable accomplishments, and therefore, in accordance with the obvious inspiration and amazing accuracy of Farmer May’s Almanac, I present to you, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa: James Downey.

DAVID N. BELL UNIVERSITY ORATOR 2 FEBRUARY 1991

31 Orations LESLIE HARRIS

We all know the attributes of God: that she is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing but, as Samuel Butler once observed, “God cannot alter the past.” Butler’s observation does not stop with that negativity. He goes on to make the distinction that if God’s power is limited in this way, the power of historians is not. In Butlers’s view, because “historians can be useful to [God]... He tolerates their existence.” This is a salutary warning to all who would judge time’s judges and in this candidate you shall see its significance, and you shall see a man who altered the course of the waters.

Appropriately then, Leslie Harris was born on the waters of Placentia Bay in a place that is now little more than a mark on a map: St. Joseph’s, a community washed away in the great wave of resettlement. Starting out as a teacher in 1945, Les Harris served from Harbour Buffett to Port Hope Simpson and then as principal of Brinton School (now itself to be resettled ). Following a Memorial MA, and a London PhD, he directed the Asian studies program at a number of colleges in .

In 1963 he returned to Memorial and began what can only be seen as a meteoric rise through administrative ranks; confirmation upon confirmation of his abilities. Head of History in 1965, he became Dean of Arts and Science in 1967, Vice-President in 1971 and President in 1981. In the period of his time as President, a time which followed the great boom in university development, he ensured that what had been begun was brought to fruition and, in particular, that the research side of the university was greatly strengthened. Rightly proud of his role in the development of the Music School, his cultivated mind is also apparent in the quality of Memorial’s landscape in which trees and gardens now characterize a place that was for so long a brick desert. Mr. Chancellor, Leslie Harris took over the university at a time when its institution al and physical attributes had been established. He was the one who saw that this university matured in an intellectual and aesthetic manner.

Among these aesthetic transformations was an improvement in the quality of wine served at the university, from Donini into something from le Domaine de la Romanée Conti. When Leslie Harris did drink water, he found it did not always agree with him. This was evident at one convocation when, having taken a sip, he touched the microphon e, got a strong shock and, to the horror of all, muttered the name of Our Lord and Saviour. But he was able to convert that water into wine, to turn that profanity into a parable. He told his audience that he had once before uttered those words when, as a small child, he smashed his thumb with a hammer. The difficulty was that, in the next room was Hhis mother and, with his mother an important guest, the Bishop. The kindly Bishop, recognizing Mrs. Harris’s embarassment, said, “Madam, you should not be so exercised. He has only uttered an ejaculatory prayer.”

32 Orations LESLIE HARRIS H

But, Mr. Chancellor, that is typical of Les Harris: the capacity to turn the awkward into the enlightening or, more importantly to make good of the bad. This is a product of his particular facility with language, a facility most potently revealed in his magisterial report on the Northern Cod. There this fisher’s son stepped back into his role as outport teacher, first listening to and learning from his pupils — fisher, fish merchant, scientist — and then proceeded to teach them this nation’s most important and most painful lesson: that they were on the verge of making the once-bounteous Banks a place of poverty. This judgement, based on his broader perspective, far broader than any former assessment, delivered on the eve of doom and in superb prose, convinced the industry, the people and the politicians, and altered our history. It altered history not as fiction (as Butler’s historians would have done) but as fact and that is a claim few judges, let alone historians can make. Mr. Chancellor, as we move into our fiftieth year as a university, it is fitting that we recognize what we have wrought, that we honour the first of our graduates to become our President, one who made us think of our future in order that we might have one. To that end I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Leslie Harris.

SHANE O’DEA PUBLIC ORATOR 26 MAY 1999

33 Orations FRANCESS GEORGINA HALPENNY

Mr. Chancellor: On a previous occasion, I explained the principle of the business take-over to you. Today, in presenting Francess Georgina Halpenny, I shall enlighten you on supermarkets.

In a supermarket, you will find that corn flakes, corn flour, corn oil, corn meal, and corn plasters are not on the same shelf. There is a classification system for displaying these items, but it is of another kind. You will also find that you are left to your own devices in seeking what you want. The management’s policy is to leave the customer alone and it’s only at the meat counter that you get the personal touch, from the smiling butcher. There is a planned scenario for this, computer generated, and not immediately apparent to the customer.

Libraries are the same. The floor plan and the shelving are set out on some clandestine scheme — an acranum — which has to be penetrated by the customer; the scurrying student looking for the book that has the answers for tomorrow’s exam, the Professor groping for the bon mot for tomorrow’s lecture or the scholar-researcher performing his “ant-like offices on the fabric of learning.” Again, the policy is to leave the reader alone. There are also self-service gadgets nowadays which, on the press of a button, will flash the complete index before your eyes — get three classics in a row and you win the jackpot! It is only at the inquiry desk that you get the personal touch.

Behind this library scheme, Sir, there is a scenario, a lore, a collection of principles, of tenets, or doctrines which can be professed. Francess Halpenny is a Professor and has been a Dean of Library Science. Thus with our own spanking new library, we have the right occasion to honour her.

If, in this conceit, the library is the distribution outlet for books, the publisher is the producer. Dr. Halpenny, as the associate Director of Toronto University Press, has produced books by restraining the excesses of academic authors. The late doughty Professor F. MacGregor Dawson met his match in Francess Halpenny and elected to publish his important political biography of Mackenzie King with this press because this was the only way he could get the services of Francess Halpenny. HShe has displayed editorial skills, for example, as a general editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, a significant service to Canadian culture and scholarship, and as amemb er of the editorial committee for the publication of the collected works of that cheerless writer, John Stuart Mill. Again, with our spanking new President, himself a scholar and committed reader of Mill, we have the right occasion to honour her.

34 Orations FRANCESS GEORGINA HALPENNY H

She also comments on her craft by writing trenchant journal articles such as “The Ethics of Editing.” She serves her library — publishing — editing professions by participating in, and by chairing bodies aimed to foster Canadian identity in books and book production.

Mr. Chancellor, you are at present being upstaged by Francess Halpenny the actress, who has played many roles in productions at the Hart House Theatre and Dramatic Club. She was acclaimed for her performance in the play “In Good King Charles’ Golden Days” — no mean feat, for George Bernard Shaw could never write parts for women. Most recently, she was innovative enough to prepare and to present on stage dramatic readings from the writings of Emily Carr.

Sir, to revert to the supermarket, here is a special; a bargain you cannot resist. For one honourary degree, you can admit to our academic community, a distinguished Canadian honoured by her country, a senior academic and administrator, a publisher, an editor, a librarian, a one-time meteorologist who came to Newfoundland to look at the weather, a commentator, a scholar and a friend to scholars, an author, a historian, an actress, and a strip-tease artiste (I forgot to tell you that in one dramatic role, she had to undress on stage — tastefully and not too revealingly).

Feeling a bit of a cad for having mentioned this matter, impressed and awed by what she has achieved, Mr. Chancellor, I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Francess Georgina Halpenny.

R.M. MOWBRAY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 20 FEBRUARY 1982

35 Orations ARTHUR REGINALD SCAMMELL

Oh, this is the place where the graduates gather, In all sorts of colours of hood, cap and gown. Some are even so swanky as to sport a silk hanky, To honour Art Scammell for his Squid Jigging Ground.

Arthur Reginald Scammell composed “The Squid Jiggin’ Ground” when he was fifteen years of age and gave Newfoundlanders a folksong which keeps alive a colourful part of the Province’s fishing tradition. Many a Toronto tavern, Boston bistro or Placentia pub has rattled to the gusto of this lusty work song. The Canadian Brass recently gave it a bit of a polish and took it to China on their cultural tour.

This is but one of the songs, poems and sketches that Mr. Scammell has written about his Newfoundland. As a bard he has sung the lays of the outport, the boisterous fun, the hardships, the tragedy of a rugged way of life. He can write from experience for he was born in Change Islands and grew up in Notre Dame Bay. Thus he is convincing in his stories when he makes us chuckle at the tale of Luke Bolton’s “Outdoor Motor”, when he stirs us with the aspirations of the young boy to become a fisherman in “Sea Fever”, when he touches us with a matriarch’s independence, devotion and sacrifice in “Mail Day for Amelia”.

Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Scammell is a schoolteacher by profession and we can exploit his presence here today to inspire those of our new graduates who are entering this field, for he not only professes — he practices hisart as a writer.

After leaving Memorial College he taught for seven years in Newfoundland. He then left the province by degrees — a bachelor’s from McGill and a master’s from Vermont and stayed away as a teacher in for almost 30 years until he retired as Head of the English Department of Mount Royal High School. In 1970 he returned to the province.

His experiences of the city have sharpened his insights into Newfoundland. He sees strengths in the small community as a place to grow up in, something that the resettlement policy must have overlooked. He knows of the hard relentless struggle of outport life but he stresses the underlying true social and spiritual values in contrast to the plastic, electronic morality that emerges from the rush and bustle city life. If we have to accept that these days have passed, we should be grateful that Art Scammell has acted as their chronicler to keep them alive for us.

36 Orations ARTHUR REGINALD SCAMMELL

God bless our soft bonnets, the orator’s singing, If Don Cook plays loudly, perhaps he’ll be drowned. As the singing gets worse, Art Scammell must curse, That he ever wrote “The Squid Jiggin’ Ground”. Mr. Chancellor, make ready. It’s time to admit him Art Scammell is worthy. His merits abound. And honours Doctorial, bestowed by Memorial, Would put a Doctor of Laws on the Squid Jigging Ground.

Mr. Chancellor, here is a bard, a poet and writer, a teacher, a livyer, whose devotion to Newfoundland has been tempered by living away for a while.

I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Arthur Reginald Scammell.

R. M. MOWBRAY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 28 MAY 1977

37 Orations CHRISTOPHER PRATT

We live in a curious age: an age of transcendence, a new Age of Exploration, of passing out from the known into the unknown beyond. On the macroscopic scale we have seen man escape from the bonds of earth to pass out into the beyond of the universe. On the microscopic scale we have seen man pass beneath the surface of indivisible unity to penetrate the mysteries of the atom. And where primitive man extended the use of his limits by the invention and production of tools, the man of today extends his mental powers with television and radio, with computers and satellites, electronic machines that are themselves a transcendence of the simple electric age of solenoids and relays.

It is not surprising that the sensitivity of twentieth century man has searched to express itself in the realm of the beyond. We find painters experimenting with surrealism and cubism, musicians with atonality and the twelve tone scale, dramatists with the theatre of the absurd and writers extending and enlarging the conception of human experience beyond the bounds of the conscious and reasonable into the unknown and unexplored regions of the subconscious and the irrational.

A major danger in such enterprises is the possible lack of self-discipline with its concomitant loss of direction and disorientation. And in an age that sometimes finds it more important to be turned on than to talk sense, it is a pleasure to celebrate and appla ud the work of Christopher Pratt, which shows a rugged practicality and common sense illuminated by a particularly fine twentieth century sensitivity and insight.

His paintings show a neoclassical discipline of line and of design. His interiors have a glow, a sense of light, that reminds one of the great Dutch masters. But when you look again, searching for the curious something that is different, you become aware that the light is unreal, and that the figures have that wax like repose of subjects under deep hypnosis. The scenes are from real life, but they are bathed in the illumination of the world of dreams, the stark, interior, personal world, that often gives a reverse image of reality. They are conscious statements of the subconscious, powerfully rational expressions of the irrational.

The depth and excitement of his work stems from this combination of contrasting elements that condition and complement one another. The deep sensuousness of the semi-nudes is refined and made beautiful by their innocence and aloofness. The lynx is motionless, but wound tense like a spring, andP its wild eyes contrast with the long restful lines of the landscape. Its hunched and nightmarish form seems to be a natural extension of the delicate tracery of the nearby bushes. And the expanse of snow in the foreground — a sheet of white that occupies the whole lower half of the painting — simply aggravates the argument of landscape, lynx and bushes. It is the stamp of great art, since it is done so simply that the sensitive viewer is aware of the tension and excitement of the painting, without knowing how or why they are aroused.

38 Orations CHRISTOPHER PRATT P

Long years ago, when Pheidias carved the Parthenon frieze, he left the same kind of message; that the beauty, the passion and sensuality of life are refined, as in a crucible, by simplicity, and discipline of expression. The great Greek sculptor carved flowing movement into the marble, but he left the faces expressionless and imposed upon his work a severity of design that indicates a never-ending struggle to refine the rapture and the melody of the movement. And all that is truly classical, instead of a mere cold copy of classical models, has this excitement, this tension, that comes from the struggle to make the sensuous significant, and by so doing to express that endless human struggle to make the quantity of living into a quality of life. And the hidden excitement that is to be found in the work of Christopher Pratt indicates the success of the struggle, and marks his work with the stamp of greatness.

It is not surprising, therefore, that his work was winning prizes while he was still a student, and that soon thereafter he was made an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, whose membership is restricted to less than a hundred, an honour accorded to only two other Newfoundlanders before him: Maurice Cullen in 1889, and Robert Pilot in 1929.

Honours are not new to the Pratt family, however. When young Christopher, just turned twenty, won the Arts and Letters award for poetry for two years in succession, there must have been those who wondered whether he was destined to follow in the footsteps of his father’s famous uncle, E. J. Pratt, whom many consider to be the only major poet that English Canada has ever produced.

Someday the comparison may be made of the work of these two men in their quite different media. It will not be difficult to trace the common elements which lie partly in what is loosely called the nonconformist tradition, but what in a larger sense is a part of the well-spring from which the English-speaking peoples draw their deepest resources; honesty, justice and appropriateness; a delicate and careful sensitivity; and a deep wonder and reverence for the superb and supreme mysteries of life. I cannot put it better than in the words of Pratt the Elder, who said of the English

“They had shambled out of caves To write the clauses of the Charters, To paint the Channel mists, To stand hushed before the Canterbury tapers”

Mr. Chancellor, I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Christopher Pratt.

JOHN HEWSON DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 25 MAY 1972

39 Orations MARY WEST PRATT

Do not be deceived by the woman standing patiently before you. She only appears to be the epitome of modesty, composure and reticence.

Look, Mr. Chancellor, at the painting of Mary West Pratt and you will see the passion, pride and assertiveness of this remarkable artist.

Consider her art and you will see a mind that, in the words of John Keble, “hallows all it finds,” a mind that discerns, unequivocally, enduring beauty in life’s miscellaneous objects.

Mary West Pratt, as a child had her work exhibited at the Luxemburg Museum in Paris, as a young woman studied art at the Universities of New Brunswick and Mount Allison, and came into her own in the matrix of Newfoundland society in the 1960s.

Resolutely uninfluenced by the fads and fantasies of that iconoclastic era, she painted images reminiscent of Biblical times — apples, fish, salt and bread — but she gave them a vernacular idiom, setting them against tin-foil, plastic wrap, and card board, replace the lace and linen of Chardin and Rembrandt with contemporary textures, making us see “new every morning” the light and beauty in the commonplace.

During the solipsistic 1970s, without compromise and without sentimentality, Mary rejoiced in the good things in life. Her paintings celebrate the rituals of home and community, not of self — the family breakfast table, the children’s lunch-boxes, the table set for supper, the gardens of Fredericton, the food , flowers and sunlight of St. Mary’s Bay.

The new mercies of each returning day that are found, as Keble said, in “the trivial round, the common task,” if you have the soul and spirit of the artist.

Never one to take herself, on her art, too seriously Mary said that she just painted what she saw around her. But others took her work seriously.

The Canada Council Art Bank bought her whimsical painting of a child, the National Gallery of Ottawa, CanadaP House in London wanted her paintings. So, too, did galleries from St. John’s to . Throughout the 1970s her work toured the country in solo and group exhibitions.

40 Orations MARY WEST PRATT P

Her direct, sensual and sometimes disturbing images restored “to life and power and thought” a lost sense of wonder and awe, a lost need for ceremony. Her vision, “filled the hungry with good things.”

In the 1980s, a secular decade, notorious for its worship of the transient and disposable in objects and relationships, Mary’s paintings present metonymic icons that articulate the sacred moments of creation — she paints a small hand-crafted boat in the morning light, a new-born infant confronting life, a girl in a wedding-dress in her parent’s garden, a fire contained in a barrel, but able to melt the snow.

For in the beginning for Mary was not the word but the image. Captivated by the slanting light that fell across a red bed-cover and heavy pink blanket, she painted all one morning to record the “unexpected presence before the sun moved too much.”

She took the objects she found in her daily course and through the prism of her imagination awakened us to the fugitive harmonies that life offers in its temporary conjunctions of light, texture, color and form.

Like votive gifts, her paintings bring us closer to the implicit truths underlying life’s surface accidentals. For this we thank her, and seek to honour her, today, in this festival.

For Mary has called painting a celebration “a great big carnival.” She once said that we don’t have enough carnivals in our culture, that we’re too Puritan. Well, never let it be said that we, in Newfoundland, are Puritans. Mary, this is the best we can do. We’ve put on our fancy dress and we’ve made you put on yours. We’ve donned our headdresses and make-up and masks. We’ve walked in procession and we’ve had the fanfares and the hoopla.

Now please accept the prize you’ve won at the fair.

Mr. Chancellor, as grand concert master of these revels, I ask you to confer on Mary West Pratt the supreme prize — the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 30 MAY 1986

41 Orations SANDRA GWYN

Sandra Gwyn’s prize-winning book The Private Capital calls to mind that other prize-winning book Possession by A.S. Byatt.

Both books rely on voices resonating from the intimate letters, diaries and poems scattered in the dusty archives in Britain and in Canada.

Both books show the writers’ grasp of the labyrinthine, inter-relationships between the real, the text and the reference so cherished by post-modern scholars in Britain and in Canada

Both writers use their imaginations to give a “local habitation and a name” to the different landscapes of the past in Britain and Canada.

But, Mr. Chancellor, the opportunity to win a Governor-General’s award for such inventiveness is available — only in Canada. And where in Canada, did Sandra get this linguistic inventiveness, this affinity for the cultural landscape of the past and present? Where else but in Newfoundland and Labrador, where for generations the constant tension between the potency and precariousness of existence has created an enduring and “admirable” society.

Born is St. John’s, Sandra inherited her love of painting, theatre and literature from her mother, Ruth Harley and her grandmother, Mary Taylor. This inheritance was nurtured by her early schooling at Marian Furlong’s little school, Winterton, and at Mercy Convent. An interest in journalism and politics, an arena she would later call “the theatre of cruelty”, came from her grea t-uncle, P.T. McGrath. Sandra drew on this rich tradition in her essays and articles in Canada’s foremost literary magazine, Saturday Night. Though she later used the voices of others in her book, The Private Capital, in her articles she used her own voice — singular, compassionate, incisive, and a little irreverent.

Mr. Vice Chancellor,

Listen to her audacious turn of phrase, when like a later-day Max Beerbohm, she caught the line and shape of a gallery of political characters: She viewed election defeats through the prism of T.S. Eliot’s poetry. She recorded the “Sense and Sensibility” of Canada’s first female Supreme Court judge.

42 Orations SANDRA GWYN

She put the lives of the people of Labrador in the context of E.M. Forster and Giles Vigneault.

Most of all, during the 1970s and 1980s, Sandra kept in the forefront of national consciousness the political and creative life of the women and men in this province. Her article “The Media go to the Seal Hunt” exposed the methods of the media manipulators — “the sex, lies and videotape” that destroyed a well-managed, economically viable Newfoundland industry. In her essay “The Newfoundland Renaissance”, she publicized across Canada the wealth of artistic talent in this province. The list of names in “The Newfoundland Renaissance” reads now like an entry in the Who’s Who of our cultural establishment, but in the 1970s, the artists — Blackwood, Squires, the Pratts; the writers — Guy, French, Horwood, Cook; the actors in Codco; the musicians in Figgy Duff, and the Symphony Orchestra; the scholars in this university’s English and Folklore Departments were not, as they are now, names known across Canada. Sandra likened this profusion of talent to the “wild harebells found every August bursting out of the sheer granite cliffs”. That such expression of our creative life is now year-round and perennial is in no small measure due to Sandra’s loyal and prophetic voice.

Therefore, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of Sandra Gwyn’s singular talent and distinct voice, I ask you to dispel the fiction that a prophet is never honored in her own country and confer her with the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 26 OCTOBER 1991

43 Orations VERA LYNN

Hector Berloiz, the French romantic composer, on one occasion decided that he would play the tympani himself at the first performance of his newest work in Paris. The audience was glittering and contained no less a personage than Paganini, and everything seemed set for a successful concert. During the performance, at a period when he had no drums to bang or cymbals to clash, Berlioz was looking at the audience, when he espied Miss Henrietta Smithson, an Irish actress who was in Paris to play Shakespearean parts. Berlioz had shortly before returned to Paris from abroad because he had become enamoured of Henrietta Smithson. This night, when he saw her in his audience he was so overcome with passion that he began to beat a series of rolls and thumps on the base drum with no reference to what he had written or what his fellow musicians were playing. The orchestra and the audience were confused and the performance was ruined until Berloiz was forcibly restrained from his uncomposed banging and replaced by a more stable performer.

Sir, this piece of unauthenticated musicological trivia is offered as precedent for the plight in which your Public Orator find himself today. Some elucidation is obviously in order.

At convocation, the Orator, in presenting the case to you for the award of an honorary degree, strives for eloquence sufficient to convince the graduand of the warmth or our welcome and of the interest which we have in his or her work, career and achievement. Whether the Orator succeeds in this or simply produces an embarrassing encomium he must speak for the body academic and never for, or of himself. He must maintain a detachment, an urbanity, and like the drummer in an orchestra he may set a pace or drive things along but he must never be obtrusive.

Mr. Chancellor, I have been in love with Vera Lynn since 1942. Just as Hector Berlioz placed the performance of his opus in jeopardy by his unbridled drumming to Hennrietta Smithson, I too find that I must throw caution to the winds and give expression to the adolescent who lurks beneath this academic finery, and, who as a raw recruit to the Royal Air Force, sat with some thousand other airmen and airwomen to hear Vera Lynn perform. I was convinced then and remain convinced now that she sang for me alone.

“If I only had wings” she sang and followed it with the not too inspired line “what a difference it would make to things” . But in this she captured the mood and aspirations of the airman under training. “Yours in the Grey of December, here or on far distant shores” was a love letter which each serviceman could, by make believe, take for his own. “I’ll be seeing you” reassured us that we would get back to “all the old familiar places”. For her listeners in the Commonwealth she symbolized Britain

44 Orations VERA LYNN 

in “The White Cliffs of Dover” and her conviction that Johnnie would go to sleep in his own little bed again brought hope that things would be sane once more. Mind you, it wasn’t all steadfast and stiff upper lip stuff. She was good at a party for she could belt our “Roll Out The Barrel” and her “Hands, Knees and Boomps-a-Daisy” could get grannie on her feet and waggling her bottom.

In those wartime days soldiers, sailors, airmen and merchant seamen found themselves in strange surroundings, uncertain of a future, in a state of mind which was, I remember, termed as being “bewitched, bothered and bewildered”. Dame Vera was one of many performers whose wartime service was directed to maintaining morale among the troops, in the factories and at home.

This is how each member of 166 Field Regiment will remember her – the girl who in her songs could link him with his home and family. But it is wrong to stress only her appeal to the males. Her popularity was as high with servicewomen, with wives, with mothers, with sweethearts. She was described as having a sisterly quality which made her welcome in any family. She never projected herself as a sex symbol. She was the nice girl from next door. Mind you, Sir, I knew plenty of girls from next door but none of them could sing like Vera Lynn. Perhaps the most characteristic feature was her ability to communicate sincerity of feeling without becoming banal or maudlin.

Richard Hoggart in his Uses of Literacy essays an analysis. He says “No doubt Vera Lynn has a sound idea of the elements she must stress to acquire her characteristic effect — the simplified but forceful emotional pattern, the complicated alternations of emphasis, the extraordinary control of vowel-sounds which allows them to carry the feeling required”. But he cannot attribute her sincerity simply to technique alone. He admits that in addition her performance demands that she experience this feeling as she sings.

As her admirers or fans we tend to do Dame Vera an injustice in assuming that she somehow just emerged to sing for us during World War 11. She had made her name as a band singer with Ambrose after many years of struggle from childhood virtually. She was accomplished enough as a professional to go on to become an independent artiste — in variety theatre and in films. But it was her long series of radio broadcasts, entitled “Sincerely Yours”, which set the seal on her popularity and earned her the accolade of “The Forces Sweetheart”. At some risk to her health she continued to undertake strenuous tours to make personal appearances to entertain the troops. In 1944 she travelled to Burma to sing for the soldiers of South East Asia Command who were engaged in jungle fighting.

45 Orations VERA LYNN 

We do Dame Vera further injustice in assuming that her career was for the duration of hostilities only. Since those days she has gone on to master the medium of television in Britain and has also toured extensively in Europe, Australasia, South Africa and in the United States. We have seen her recently on our television screens in Canada.

Her current performances retain the magic of thirty years ago but she does not rest on her laurels by repeating only the old favorites. She has shown an intelligent ability to adapt to the rapid changes in Pop music. Many of her contemporaries lost their initial success when the bizarre rock ‘n roll craze emerged and the words of a song were simply shouted repetitions of nonsense phrases. As this phase passed and was replaced by the minstrelsy of the early Beatles and by a revival of the folk-song, lyrics re-emerged and words were sung to be heard again. This melody structure changed but Vera Lynn was professional enough to cope with these changes. She has appeared at some seven Royal Command performances — evidence of her persisting popularity. She has achieved the commercial success demanded of a million copies sold of her record “Auf Wiedersehn”. To use a criterion beloved of University Promotions Committees, she has been highly evaluated by her peers in a special Ivor Novello award presented recently as a tribute to her singing career by the Songwriters’ Guild and the Performing Rights Society of London. Enough, Sir, to indicate that we are justified in honouring someone who had reached stardom in what must surely be one of the most competitive professional fields.

Mr. Chancellor, there are further grounds to be offered to you in that Dame Vera had contributed to social and community service over and above the simple fulfillment of public engagements expected of an entertainer. She was recognized by the Variety Club of Great Britain because of her active support of the Club’s work for sick and needy children. In 1969 she received the O.B.E. in Royal recognition of her community service and last year she was listed in the Queen’s Birthday Honours as a Dame of the British Empire — again for her community service. One small incident to illustrate her involvement and concern. In June 1973 Dame Vera joined hundreds of protestors in her village to demonstrate against the heavy trucks which used the narrow streets as a short cut to Brighton. Her picture appears carrying a placard saying “They Shall Not Pass”, suggestive of a militant crusade. However, the newspaper reports that the protest was well-mannered and civilized. An apology was offered to one of the offending truck-drivers who had been prevented from moving for the whole afternoon. He replied “Never mind, dearie, it’s all on overtime”.

46 Orations VERA LYNN 

Mr. Chancellor, all power to the Newfoundlanders of 166 Field Regiment who brought her to this province and all power to our University for exploiting the Gunners’ inspiration and admitting Dame Vera to our academic community. Her professional eminence and her record of public service give us every right to offer her our honorary degree, but our hearts and our memories of Vera Lynn, the Forces Sweetheart, make us privileged that she accept it.

“We’ve met again Through we didn’t know where Didn’t know when But you said we’d meet again Some sunny day You’ve kept smiling through Just as you said you would do And I’m glad we’ve met again This splendid day.”

Mr. Chancellor, once more I have lost my orator’s decorum and behaved like Berlioz. Unrepentant and with a great deal of gratitude and affection, I present you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Vera Lynn.

R.M. MOWBRAY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 11 OCTOBER 1976

47 Orations SISTER DR. ANN WARD

The soul of any true Profession is the Practice part. How easy it is to profess, but not to perform; and how especially easy when the surround might be a congregation of friends among the green hills of Rosemount by Dublin Bay and the study, that evolving system of human understanding which we know as Medicine. But how hard it is when performance is fuelled only by an inner profession, when the supports of colleagues and systems and investigational tools and expensive therapies are excluded from the equation of practice. Then the Professional works alone, drawing upon wisdom where the knowledge within is tentative, upon empathy where sympathy is not enough, upon art where the luxury of science is not available.

It is a paradox that the profession of Medicine is the most valued where it is easiest to practice, as in the over-endowed hospitals of the Western World; but where such endeavors are hardest to undertake, there they are the most needed. Before you, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, stands Sister Dr. Ann Ward, who, if she found it hard to nurture ideas in dusty soil, did not allow that to dissuade her from supplying needs rather than receiving popular values. Men and women are, at their best, creatures who find their greatness in conforming to projects that lie beyond the attainment of material well- being. Among the threatened, impoverished people of Southern Nigeria, Sister Dr. Ward has brought care to the women ravaged by obstetrical complications, and has also provided such insights and innovations as have led to her recognition internationally as outstanding in her field, as an examiner for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as an ultimate authority on the management of disfigurements more repulsing than leprosy; yet she remains able to translate Papal Encyclicals into action through the creation of an appropriate system for augmenting family values in Nigerian society.

Sister Dr. Ward is of the Congregation of the Medical Missionaries of Mary; Mary the Virgin Mother of the Divine Christ. But it is remarkable how the life of our Honourary Graduand has reflected so much of the lives of other blessed women of that name. The life, speaks of dedication; while the example of Mary Magdalene, to whom first the risen Christ appeared, reminds us of the visionary force of Faith. We may remember also Mary Magdalen Postel of Barfleur, an organizer, teacher and effectually a priest, who epitomized the crucial activities of missionary life; and the writings of the Carmelite nun Mary-Magdalen dei Pazzi (whose festival we celebrate today) which bore the imprint of the natural beautyW of the surroundings of her life. The existence of Mary of Egypt, the hermit of the trans-Jordanian wilderness, recalls to us the solitudes of the smoke-dry bush, silent from the Bight of Benin. But solitude is a geographical irrelevance to the faithful who have work to do; such was Mother Mary Martin, the founder of the Congregation, whose body was frail but whose vision and energy, supported by the Knights of Malta, propelled the caring labour which provides everlasting benefit to the people of 14 countries.

48 Orations SISTER DR. ANN WARD W

From these examples, the conclusion that I draw is that the practice of an exemplary life can be independent of its setting. We notice with respect, as the medical world had already noticed, Sister Dr. Ward’s able endeavors, her capacity for bringing the ultimate in knowledge to those unfrequented harbours that a busy life forgets. Public speaking and public writing are the outward and visible signs of successful research; but the dogged daily dedication of oneself and one’s talents to benefit the unheard people of the Third World represents a gift, its cost uncounted, which proceeds from the toil that seeks no rest and exemplifies that labour that asks for no reward, save perhaps that of knowing that the Object of Veneration of the Medical Missionaries of Mary would have done the same.

This morning, Mr. Vice Chancellor, more than two hundred graduates of this University begin their 40-year journeys to supply the evident needs of their society. May they recall this lesson from their Graduation day; that the greatest spiritual and professional good must spring from the person, not from the place. When tempted by the ephemeral, may that truth support them all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and their work is done; so that someday another Orator might introduce each of you, Mr. Vice Chancellor, as a model of altruism and of accomplishment, as I now present to you such an one — whose work is not yet done — to receive at your hand the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Sister Dr. Ann Ward.

WILLIAM PRYSE-PHILLIPS UNIVERSITY ORATOR 29 MAY 1993

49 Orations DR. W. O. PRUITT

Biological taxonomy categorizes organisms according to similarities in basic structures and behaviours. Thus, the caribou, Rangifer tarandus, of the kingdom Animalia, phylum chordata, subphylum vertebrata, class mammalia, order artiodactyla, family cervidae, subfamily odocoileinae, can be distinguished from other related species. The system, however, is far from perfect, and over time, as knowledge increases, species may be reclassified. For instance, can we assume that mammalogist is a species of the genus zoologist, family biologist, order academic? Or should the species designation be based on behaviours such as environmental protectionism, making the species name protectionist and the genus zoologist? Should classification be based on whether or not the zoologist teaches or conducts field research, or on external markings, such as awards and honours received?

Let us consider the individual William Obadiah Pruitt, zoologist and professor. His natural habitat includes both the boreal forest and the university classroom. In fact, he appears to be perfectly adapted to both habitats by his curiosity and communicativeness, and exhibits similar behaviours in both, living symbiotically with students and colleagues. His range is vast, covering most of the northern half of North America.

To classify him as a zoologist, we note that after completing his undergraduate education in his native state of Maryland, Bill Pruitt began his migration northward by completing his MA and PhD at the University of Michigan. Instead of adapting to that balmy region, he sought a more boreal range, roaming to the University of Alaska, where he found a niche, but only a temporary one. While there, he was faced with the possibility of environmental change on a catastrophic scale, when the government proposed building an artificial harbour using atomic weapons. Although he accepted that all environments change over time, Bill Pruitt recognized that change generated by nuclear power would be destructive not just immediately, but for generations to come. So he, with a group of other scientists, abandoned the protective coloration of the university professor, and successfully fought the proposal, an action that cost him his job and forced him to migrate again. In this defense of the habitat, we see environmentalist behaviour supersed ing that of the zoologist, a change for which the University of Alaska was not prepared. The natural enemies who drove him from Alaska pursued him until he reached the relative isolation of Memorial University in 1965. There he lived in a mutualistic relationship with his students, many of whom to this day remember his lessons about the adaptations of mammals and the importance of preserving a variety of habitats; the peculiar adaptation that allowed himP to draw bilatera lly symmetrical structures on the blackboard using both hands at once; and the adventure of field trips in all weather conditions. The environmentalist aspects of Bill Pruitt’s behaviour were nowhere clearer than in his role in the establishment of Gros Morne National Park.

50 Orations DR. W.O. PRUITT P

In the initial boundary studies, he tried to establish a zone that would protect the ranges of as many species as possible, not just provide temporary range for humans seeking a “natural” experience.

Seeking fresh intellectual forage, Bill Pruitt expanded his range by moving to the University of Manitoba in 1969, adding builder and user of tools to his characteristics by almost single-handedly creating the Taiga Biological Station, the research site that established him as perhaps the foremost Canadian expert on the boreal forest. There he earned the Seton Medal, the Northern Science, Stefansson, and Manning Awards, and an Award of Merit for his film Techniques in Boreal Ecology, the honours that distinguish him from other zoologists.

One attempt has already been made to classify William Pruitt. In 1993, the University of Alaska reclaimed him as one of their own by awarding him an honorary degree, and the legislature of that hitherto inhospitable region gave him a formal apology. However, the data above, rather than making easier the classification of Bill Pruitt, suggest that precise classification is impossible. Rather than regarding him as an individual of a known species, we must regard him as sui generis, and for that reason, I present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, William Obadiah Pruitt.

E. HOLLY PIKE UNIVERSITY ORATOR 11 MAY 2001

51 Orations MICHAEL FRANCIS HARRINGTON

Whether as members of this university, as Newfoundlanders, as writers or as teachers, today we greet one of our own, Memorial’s first-born. Taking highest honours in his year in both English and French, Michael Harrington was the first undergraduate to obtain his degree after a course of study taken entirely within this university. Forty years on, we offer him another degree after a course of study taken almost entirely outside it.

His education in the English language served him well, but this he employed as a vehicle wherewith to transport ideas, not as a primary subject of contemplation. Poetry is that art whereby a phrase is dropped into a mind, to crystallize as a wider perception. Michael Harrington’s prose was often poetic, but his poetry was never prosaic. Sometimes his phrase was a jeweled epigram, sometimes a truth unverbalised, sometimes a glimpse into the heart. As a young man, he wrote sonnets, those structured condensations of awareness, on war and shipwrecks, rust, dark water, the birds of false dawning, and the lost divinity of man with”….humor dead and loveliness decayed.

Like all good poets, he looked into the ordinary and espied its significance. Like all men of feeling, he bore the cross of empathy through a life lived during melancholy times and in a country or a province accustomed to forced cheerfulness, but his verses grieved not for what was, but for that which mig ht have been:

“The War has put its blinkers on our sight And single-tracked our vision and our purpose…”

The poetry was in the pity, the pity called urgently from the deeps of the poetry. But despite the telling line, Michael Harrington was not then, and never has been, blinkered. Rather his gaze has been untrammeled, as it were from the top of a mast, from which point, as the long-serving Barrelman, he scunned Newfoundland and its horizons to warn sometimes, to comment often, to report always. HThe gift of first sight is to be exercised as a duty by Monarchs and by commoners of moderate disposition. Since Democracy is a government of bullies, tempered by editors, one way in which that duty be fulfilled is by being an editor. So it is that this graduand assumed the task of commenting upon the state of Newfoundland from the disinterested position of the editorial desk of The Evening Telegram.

The opinions which he set down with greatest zeal have concerned this Newfoundland, and derived much from his understanding of times gone by. The only perspective of the future is that gained by careful study of the past; he has fondly found out the chronicle of Newfoundland’s

52 Orations MICHAEL FRANCIS HARRINGTON H

development and has made this just not available but also absorbing, even to those who normally spurn history. Anyone can instruct those who are perfervid for knowledge, but to ignite the apathetic requires a noble enthusiasm delivered with the common touch.

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders, but he was never in the latter class, however hard it may have been to maintain the daily output required of a professional. I think that he got up early in the morning to learn the little mysteries of the night; perhaps some of them were on the ticker-tape, but most he observed himself. His editorials have shaped our opinions; weaved as a tapestry with them were themes which have run on as though it were always downhill to the sea. I shall presume to construe them.

Newfoundland has a history, a past to call our own. This can never be submerged by any history made in Canada or elsewhere; the protagonists, their values, the stakes and the surrounds were always different in this country.

Do not view Newfoundland solely in a Canadian context, for the history of the land demands that one question how much this place is of Canada, how much in it.

Look back, not to happier days of legend more than truth, but to the formative centuries in which were created Newfoundland’s language and style and traditions.

Take proper pride in the process whereby the land and the sea were and still are being tamed, in the deeds of Newfoundlander’s wherever they were done, in the commonalty of striving to build one community of many parts, all freed from the legislated errors of colonialism.

(And, yet more than these), know, love, mourn, celebrate, respect, enjoy, strengthen, live Newfoundland, for here there still exists ample compass for any man’s achievements.

I have spoken to a poet, of an essayist, of an educator and of a historian, but these easy, factual labels still do not do justice to this caring man who had noticed so much life, and whose reports, called down to the deck, have been so trusty. Which of his multitude of accomplishments shall I select to provide a parting phrase? Mr. Vice-Chancellor, I present to you the doyen of our fourth estate, The Barrelman, who has gazed across space and time for a quarter of the century to orient Newfoundland’s people, and who has never abused his power, to receive at your hand the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Michael Francis Harrington.

WILLIAM PRYSE-PHILLIPS UNIVERSITY ORATOR 26 MAY 1989

53 Orations WILLIAM DAVID MULHOLLAND

Prometheus appears in Western literary tradition from Aeschylus to Shelley as a master of many arts and crafts, the guardian of resources and the benefactor and champion of man. In earlier Greek mythology, however, he is a Titan of an entirely non-moral nature, a type of supreme technologist and strategist. It is in this role that he appears, for example, in Hesiod who records that when Zeus hid fire away from man, Prometheus stole it and brought it to earth again. The poet gives what is probably the explanation on this incident: Prometheus had tricked Zeus with regard to the respective share of gods and men in burnt offerings: he wrapped all the meanest parts of the sacrificial animal up in fat, and the best parts in another bundle, and bade Zeus choose: the simple-minded god taking the fat, man has ever since kept all the best of the meat himself.

I do not know which (if, indeed, either) of the legends of Prometheus is a parableof the dealings of Newfoundland and the British Newfoundland Development Corporation over the resources of Labrador; or, for that matter, what will be the outcome of a second meeting between Zeus (disguised again as a Premier of Newfoundland) and Prometheus in the development of the Lower Churchill. But this at least can be said, that in the exploitation of provincial resources, the great linked enterprise of BRINCO, BRINEX and Churchill Power have in William David Mulholland, a modern industrial Titan eminently capable of dealing with a new age in which, in his own words, “the world’s work seems to be coming along in increasingly large packages.” As the sun sets on the British Empire, indeed, on all political empires, it rises on the fortunes of great supra-national corporations which, alone in the West, seem able to marshall vast resources of capital, technical expertise and management skills. In the case of the Churchill Falls development, it has been a complex and long-sustained task which can serve as a model of responsible, efficient, and ecologically sensitive development. Born in upstate New York, educated by the Christian Brothers and at Harvard, Mr. Mulholland’s career has been particularly concerned with the financing of North American resource enterprise, and he bore the principal responsibility for arranging a $500 million dollar bond issue, the largest ever raised on Wall Street, for the Churc hill Falls hydro development. He now presides, as President and Chief Executive Officer of BRINCO, over immense mineral and hydro resources in our Province, the development of which is, or should be, the signal in Newfoundland (as the book of Samuel exhorts us), “to sharpen every man his share.” MPrometheus, so the etymologists tell us, means “the forethinker.” And Mr. Mulholland is associated with other organizations which dip into the future. He is, for example, a memb er of the Board of trustees of The Hudson Institute, vulgarly known as Herman Kahn’s “Think Tank”, which has advised the Pentagon on how to win wars; and he is a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for the Future, the nearest classical parallel to which is, perhaps, Pandora’s Box, in the

54 Orations WILLIAM DAVID MULHOLLAND M

opening of which Prometheus warned in vain his brother Epimetheus to behave with care. In Mr. Mulholland, the world of industrial enterprise has indeed a master craftsman whose insistent question, “What will we be doing next?,” has implications for the people of this Province, the importance and sensitivity of which we acknowledge as I present for the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, William David Mulholland.

G. M. STORY PUBLIC ORATOR 21 OCTOBER 1972

55 Orations NORMAN PETERS

On these occasions, Mr. Chancellor, you have the enviable privilege of honouring men and women whose signal achievements, academic or lay, demand our admiration and our respect. Norman Peters adds a new dimension, Sir, to this select group of honoured graduates; for we pay tribute today not only to the things he has done but also to the way he has chosen to do them. The unique Peters blend of humor, mischief, shrewd intelligence and kindly wisdom has matured to a truly potent brew over 47 summers spent mapping and prospecting in the Newfoundland bush.

In 1927 Norman Peters left his native Springdale to sign on with that pioneer of Newfoundland geophysical exploration Dr. Hans Lundberg. Then throughout the privations and indignities of the thirties and on into the forties and fifties Mr. Peters continued to build the maps and explore the terrain searching for our mineral wealth and discovering his own resources of wit and pride.

As you know, Mr. Chancellor, it has become traditional on these occasions to cite one or two of the candidate’s principal achievements. We must not fail, in this context, to record Norman Peter’s original discovery of the asbestos deposit at Baie Verte for which he has so justly earned his place in our history.

And yet there is another achievement for which due credit has to be accorded Mr. Peters; one which is, perhaps, most typical of the man.

You see, Mr. Chancellor, in 1959 Norman Peters discovered a stone til then unknown in Newfoundland. In his choice of name for this stone he was guided by principles unique in the annals of geological science. He named it virginite.

The stone is quite pretty to look at, Mr. Chancellor, or so I am told. I have not myself been fortunate enough to see one. They are rather rare. I am further informed that though uncommonly resistant, virginite is nonetheless charmingly decorative in the proper setting. Linnaeus won his place in history by devising the system of names for biology. One can only speculate, Mr. Chancellor, on what Linnaeus could have done in collaboration with Norman Peters.

Mr. Chancellor, you may take real pleasure today in greeting the candidate before you – a brilliant prospector,P a geological pioneer, but above all, a man who has added a touch of joy to his work.

Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Norman Peters.

JOHN A. SCOTT UNIVERSITY ORATOR 8 NOVEMBER 1975

56 Orations

WILBERT HILL HOPPER

The art of alchemy has two goals: the distillation of the Elixir of Life, which would bestow upon us immortality; and the discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone, which would transmute lead into gold. There are those who say that alchemy is a myth, a dream, a hopeless ideal, but they are wrong. Even in our own days we have seen the transmutation of gold into lead — in alchemical terms it is called the Bre-X transformation — and if gold into lead, why not lead into gold?

But what if we were to find the Elixir of Life and the Philosophers’ Stone here in this province? Would we not triumph? Would we not gloat? Would we not thumb our noses at Ontario and B.C. and invite the great diaspora of home-sick Newfoundlanders back to this wind-swept rock where spring lasts for 45 minutes and the summer of our dreams goes on for ever? Indeed we would!

And what is the Philosopher’s Stone save Voisey’s Bay; and what is the Elixir of Life save Hibernia? And may they not together bring about that transmutation foretold of old by our very own stogie- smoking and fur-coated prophet who proclaimed that one day the sun would shine and have-not would be no more? Indeed they may. And it is precisely in this connection, Mr. Chancellor, that I must direct your attention to the man who stands before you now, Wilbert Hill Hopper, alchemist and magician.

How so, you say? Let me explain. Bill Hopper was born in Ottawa on 14 March of a certain year, and that makes him a Pisces. Now in theory a Pisces is kind and helpful, good-natured and receptive, patient and devout, and they make good psychologists, good priests, good artists, and — you will note — good scientists, and a scientist is no more than an alchemist updated. They are also, we are told, pessimistic and over-sensitive, vague and indefinite, hysterical and superstitious, and often incomprehensible. But those are matters between Bill Hopper and his wife.

At an appropria te time after his Piscean birth, Bill Hopper made his way to Sydney in Australia, to Wellington in New Zealand, and thence to American University in Washington, D.C., where he took his BSc in geology. From Washington he wended his way to the University of Western Ontario, Hand then, having married Patricia Marguerite Walker, he began his dramatic ascent into the oily heights of the petroleum industry.

But I must also tell you, Mr. Chancellor, that Bill Hopper is a man of determin ed opinion. He is, moreover, a man who has not been reticent in expressing that opinion, and the only thing worse than a man who is not afraid to express his opinion is a man who is not afraid to express his opinion when that opinion is right. It is therefore no secret that Bill Hopper has not been without his detractors. No

58 Orations WILBERT HILL HOPPER H

less an authority than The Globe and Mail — that mouthpiece of the Almighty — has taken him to task; and in 1991 Mike Byfield in the Western Report called him some very rude names. But to a person like Bill Hopper, such criticisms were no more effective than Preston Manning’s French: fascinating to listen to, but little more than a curiosity.

In any case, they did not stop Bill Hopper from being elected chair of the Canadian Petroleum Association in 1988, and by that time he had been overseeing the development of Petro-Canada for a dozen years. In due course, he was to become its president and chief executive officer, and it was he who was the driving force behind the company from its creation until January 1993. Those latter years were heady years, when the newspapers and the media were full of the word Hibernia, and when Bill Hopper saw fit to put the full weight of his formidable personality behind the project and defend it against a strong and determined opposition. At the same time, and under his direction, Petro-Canada took over the oil refinery at Come-by-Chance and maintained it well and efficiently for a number of years until the province could find a new operator. And for that, too, we and the province are his grateful beneficiaries.

Thus, as we now see the impossible made possible, the dream come true, and the mammoth mass of Hibernia being towed out to its place of work, we should reflect that without Bill Hopper such a vision may never have become reality, such an ideal may never have been realized, and that the oily elixir of new life may have lain forever imprisoned beneath the swirling waters of the Grand Banks.

We have it on no less authority than the Book of Psalms that it is wine that maketh glad the heart of man, but oil that giveth him a cheerful countenance; and if we have a smile on our faces today and broader smiles when the first drops from Hibernia make their way to land, then the man we have to thank is the man who stands before you. It seems to me, therefore, that the least we can do to acknowledge his persistence, his optimism, his foresight, and his determination is to present him with the highest honor our university may bestow; and it is therefore with the greatest pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, that I present to you now, for the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, this alchemist extraordinaire, Wilbert Hill Hopper.

DAVID N. BELL UNIVERSITY ORATOR 29 MAY 1997

59 Orations TIMOTHY T. THAHANE

A university is as rich as the achievements of its graduates, and draws inspiration and strength from their example. Memorial is doubly enriched, sir, and strengthened in the achievements and example of the candidate who stands before you this afternoon. But achievements do not tell the whole story of this quiet, gentle, intelligent man who came among us, gracefully, as a stranger more than 30 years ago and to whom all of us who knew him then just want to say “Welc ome back, Tim.”

Tim Thahane has been busy during the years since he left Memorial in 1967 with his arts and commerce degrees. Like most of us Newfoundlanders he spent his mandatory “year in Toronto” in 1968, and then returned to Lesotho in ‘69 where he worked in senior advisory posts for four years before becoming Ambassador to the EEC at just 33 years of age. At 36 he was named executive director in the World Bank Group for Africa Group 1, and 1978 became Lesotho’s Ambassador to the United States for two years before becoming a vice-president and secretary to the World Bank in 1980. He served there for 16 years until moving to his current position as deputy governor of South Africa's Reserve Bank. Let me put this brief biography into a little fuller perspective, Mr. Chancellor. Look at some of the events which coincide with the points of transition in Tim's career:

In 1973 the Vietnam peace agreement is being signed in Paris. Salvador Allende is assassin ated in Chile. Exchange rates are starting to float around the world. OPEC is about to destabilize the world’s economy by driving up the price of oil. These are just some of the events which would have faced Tim as he arrives in Brussels as ambassador.

In 1976, when he takes over African responsibilities at the World Bank, Tim would have been preoccupied with news of the Soweto riots and the Israeli raid on Entebbe.

When he moves to Washington as Ambassador in 1978, martial law is being declared in Iran. Sadat and Begin are signing the Camp David Agreement. A Polish Pope is heading to Rome. The world is changing shape pretty dramatically, and Tim is at the eye of the storms of change.

In 1980 as he moves into senior responsibilities at the World Bank, the Solidarity movement is founded in Poland, and Ronald Reagan moves into the White House. Domestic deregulation and world trade liberalization are the new gospel. Global investment volatility gathers a terrifying momentum. Then, in the mid-’90s, in perhaps the most revealing of his career moves, Tim Thahane is called home by South Africa’s Mandela Government and entrusted to lead the “organizational development and ... transformation process” of South Africa’s Reserve Bank as that courageous country resumes its

60 Orations TIMOTHY T. THAHANE 

inevitably enormous place in the world economy. He takes responsibility for “relationships with other countries on the African continent ... multinational financial institutions ... the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”

Mr. Chancellor, Timothy T. Thahane has lived in some “interesting” times and places, including Newfoundland.

He will probably recall moments from those earlier Newfoundland years, like a bitterly cold Christmas in ‘63 in Grand Falls with Gar Pynn and his family. Tim was a stranger from a strange land whose grace and charm and warmth and quiet intelligence removed all estrangement the moment you met him. He came to Newfoundland to learn, and Newfoundland had much to teach Tim Thahane. But Newfoundland has learned much from him. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have always had a strong sense of their global role. Today we are coming to see increasing responsibilities and opportunities globally and locally. Tim has taught us that, all over the world, people will flourish if structures to nourish their growth are available. His career has demonstrated a wise, professionally- skilled dedication to people and to securing the conditions needed for growth of their local communities within increasingly globalized market conditions.

Memorial is about remembering, Mr. Chancellor. Today we are remembering not just achievements, but a man whose vision and energy makes our university a place where future memories are nurtured not just for us here, but for the whole world. Mr. Chancellor, I am very proud to present to you Timothy T. Thahane.

JOHN SCOTT UNIVERSITY ORATOR 27 MAY 1999

61 Orations CRAIG LAWRENCE DOBBIN

From its beginnings in the murk of the pond bottom, the dragonfly instinctively ascends, escapes the bounds of water and luminously traverses the domain of air, looking and sounding like a miniaturized Sikorsky helicopter. When Craig Dobbin’s commercial diving equipment malfunctioned at the bottom of St. John’s Harbour 30 years ago, there was nowhere to go but up, and up he came at a velocity obeying the law of Boyle but with a momentum that carried himsky-h igh. History repeats itself.

Starting de profundis with the insight in the outfall that there had to be a better way to make a buck, our honorary graduand initiated multiple projects that led to multiple successes, achieved at an accelerating pace as initial ventures into property led to the formation of Omega Investments, to which fulcrum he applied the principle of leverage and, beginning with a single Sikorsky, set out to move the world.

And the world was moved, as one Sealand Helicopter grew into the squadron of 370 now operated by the Canadian Helicopter Corporation, a Newfoundland company and the largest of its type in the world. The dragonfly has neither rotors nor fixed wings, but Craig Dobbin, in creating Air Atlantic and now Touchdown Aviation, has both. His newest creations build aerospace parts and repair aircraft in P.E.I and Gander, while Vector Aerospace, born of the helicopter corporation, enriches our school of business administration through membership of the associates program.

In the creative sphere of business, whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can’t, you’re absolutely right. One essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Life is trying things to see if they work, which involves some risk - if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you. Craig Dobbin was not immune to such reverses — underwater when his SCUBA gear malfunctioned, on land when his aquaculture facilities burned, in the air when the international economy grounded Air Atlantic.

But as Craig Dobbin has always overcome adversity, today I celebrate his return of so much from his business successes to benefit this province and its people. During those years of regular and trusted service, he gave back through Air Atlantic a tithe of the seats purchased for Memorial, so disseminating the skills of members of our faculties of music and of physical education even into the terra incognita Dof central Canada. He was a munificent donor to Memorial’s opportunity and anniversary funds. And although his charity began at home, the scholarships that he created for Caribbean students and his support of St. Mary’s University and of University College, Dublin, witness his global perspective on the needs of others.

62 Orations CRAIG LAWRENCE DOBBIN D

Mr. Chancellor, this determined and forceful man has swashbuckled his way up from harbour bottom through the cadre of those content with the middle ground; has audaciously but honestly circumvented the restrictive yokes imposed upon business by those lacking distance vision; has beguiled Dublin with its own blarney, so that he is now as Irish as his passport; and has infectiously exulted in the life of the land he loves. This loyal, caring, wily risk-taker is himself one of the foxes of Beachy Cove. Vigorous and venturesome, he has added spice to the space of life as a salmon fisherman, as a friend (indeed, a saviour) of an American president, as a confidant of legislators of multiple persuasions, as a percipient patron of the visual arts and as a visionary who has put aside time for the view. In his support of Irish studies, Craig Dobbin has cherished the past; in business ventures he adorns the present; in philanthropy he has created for the future. He has frequented this university as a parent, an advisor and as a friendly benefactor.

St. Augustine characterized friendship thus: “To talk and to laugh with mutual concessions; to jest and to be solemn; to dissent from each other without offence; to teach each other somewhat, or somewhat to learn; to expect those absent with impatience, and to embrace their return with joy.” Mr. Chancellor, I present to you a friend of the university whose visit we embrace with joy. His enterprises span earth, air and water, but I think his greatest love is for the waters where the salmon may be diverted by his fly. A Blue Charm? No, even blarney has its limits. Thunder and Lightning? Again, no; that’s just his management style. Mr. Chancellor, I ask you to create as a Silver Doctor of laws, honoris causa, our benefactor and exemplar in the arts of getting and of giving back, Craig Laurence Dobbin.

WILLIAM PRYSE-PHILLIPS UNIVERSITY ORATOR 26 MAY 2003

63 Orations GRACE M. SPARKES

Retirement! What a word! That goal, that golden glow on the far horizon that lures us into setting forth to our labors, clocking in our days, teaching another 160 students, and seeking our beds late at night after correcting the spelling of “similiar,” “diety,” and “argument” for the two-millionth time. Retirement! That happy age when some of us can take up as a hobby what for others has been a way of life viz. philately, or collecting your stamps.

But for many, you know, retirement is not entirely pleasant. The first week is splendid, the second tolerable, but in the third, there are some who find themselves in much the same situation as students who have missed the deadline for dropping courses without academic prejudice. They now face the mind-boggling boredom of ten weeks or ten centuries of listening to professor what’s-his-name in the faculty of you-know-what read his notes in that dead, dread monotone brought to perfectione by th clergy and the honorable members of the House of Assembly.

But this is not true for Grace Sparkes. For her retirement has never existed, and far from doing what she is supposed to do at the age at which she is – doing nothing at all, that is, but doing it very well, much like the Upper House of the Canadian Parliament — she appears to be doing everything and doing it with remarkable success.

I think it all started when she was a youngster and was standing, precariously balanced, one th jib-boom of a schooner in Grand Bank harbor. She’d been dared to jump in. Now all of us know what swimming in Newfoundland waters can be like: the slow building up of one’s courage, the rapid breathing, the glazed expression, the deliberate ignoring of the iceberg a hundred yards away, the bulging of the eyes when the water (as Isaiah puts it) discovers one’s secret parts, the cowardice, the abject terror. But did Grace Sparkes hesitate? No, sir, she did not. In she plunged and down she went, and thereby, at one and the same instant, confounded those who thought she wouldn’t, prefigured her future association with a university whose motto is Provehito in altum, “Launch out into the deep,” and indicated to those with eyes to see her whole approach to life. There it is: go for it!

Do you really want me to tell you what she has done? You need only name the field. The arts? No problem. Grace Sparkes is a musician, and has an entrance scholarship to our School of Music named after her. She is also an actress, and my belief is that she is really not Grace Sparkes at all, but Grandma Walcott from Pigeon Inlet. The Sciences? Of course. She began her education in medicine and at a later date taught the “new math” at Prince of Wales Collegiate. The “new math,” I take it, refers to that form of Newfoundland arithmetic where 10 equals 42 and 70 per cent now equals average.

64 Orations GRACE M. SPARKES 

So what about sports? Even easier. Grace Sparkes is a bridge player, a member of the Curling Hall of Fame, and a golfer who, at the age of never mind, can polish off 18 holes of golf with the speed and competence of a student xeroxing his buddy’s lecture notes. Religion? You have but to mention it. Grace Sparkes has served as a board member of the Newfoundland Conference of the United Church of Canada and is a member of St. James’ United Church here in St. John’s. So how about politics? No difficulty! She was an ardent supporter of Responsible Government, ran for the PC party in both provincial and federal elections, and most recently was a member of the constitutional committee appointed by the government of Newfoundland.

What, then, of the university and the world of learning? Easiest of all. You see before you a BA of Memorial University, an honorary doctor of Mount Allison, a founding member of the MUN Alumni Association, a long-serving member of the Board of Regents, a one-time chair of the board’s Appointments Committee, and the MUN Alumna of the Year for 1986.

What more can I say? Grace Sparkes reminds me of those multitudinous “How many” jokes, how many Newfoundlanders does it take to screw in a light-bulb; how many vice-presidents does it take to run a university? You know the ones. In this case, how many mainlanders does it take to equal one Grace Sparkes? The answer, so far as I can see, is 234; and the only thing left for me to do, before I am struck dumb by my own inadequacy, is to call upon the university to recognize the achievements of this amazing woman, this Jill of all trades, this Jaycees Citizen-of-the-Year, and I therefore have the honor to present to you, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa: Grandma Wilcott.

DAVID N. BELL UNIVERSITY ORATOR 29 MAY 1992

65 Orations FATHER DESMOND THOMAS MCGRATH

Mr. Chancellor, the recital to you of the achievements of an honorary graduand offers our brand- new graduates inspiration, guidance, direction, or even on occasion, an awful warning for their pursuit of a profession or vocation.

From Father Desmond McGrath, the “codfather’, who stands before you, they can learn today of a colorful person who has used his achievements to serve his fellow man in matters both spiritual and secular.

If there is a catch phrase to be applied to Desmond McGrath’s biography, it is “there must be something more to life than this.”

He could have expressed this sentiment as an apprentice electrician in Corner Brook when he thought of this future while filling in company pension forms. He sought something more at St. Francis Xavier University in the full round of student life — in study, in sports, and in high jinks. In the 1950s, St FX was a hotbed of student politics, from which bloomed politicians like Warren Allemand and . Young McGrath’s growth was more toward the politics of social reform, with a dash of the revolutionary. As his social awareness burgeoned, he learned from Father Moses Coady, founder of the Antigonish Movement, how community education and co-operatives were fostered among poverty-stricken fishermen and farmers in the 1920s and 1930s.

His next”something more” was studying for the priesthood in Toronto where he met priests who had been involved in mission service during the turbulent social changes in South America.

After his assistantship in the Cathedral Parish in Corner Brook he was appointed to take charge of Holy Family Parish on St. Barbe Coast. His colleagues and his bishop presumably did not know what they had let themselves in for. The “something more” that he had sought in his training and experience — his work in the mill, his education and involvement in student politics at St FX, his interest in the Antigonish Movement, the ideas of the mission priests — all these influences came together to form a new and demanding “something more” — an active commitment to organizing fishermen in order to improve their lot.

The idea of a fishermen’s union emerged, and this enthusiastic priest went the rounds of fish Mstages, taverns, boats, even into halls owned by the Loyal Orange Lodge, talking to and persuading fishermen.

Dr. Gordon Inglis, in his forthcoming book, analyses the characteristics and qualities of leadership expected by the Newfoundland fishermen and asserts that Father McGrath and Richard Cashin together met these expectations. A priest and a lawyer, friends since their student days, they combined

66 Orations FATHER DESMOND THOMAS MCGRATH M

their talents to steer the union through its early troubles and to launch it as a potent social, economic, and political force in the province. In doing this, they gave a dignity to the status of Newfoundland fishermen.

Sir, dignity for fishermen has had, and will have long-reaching consequences for the social structure and values of this province. However, fish merchants, plant owners, and politicians do not readily acknowledge this contribution of McGrath and Cashin. These otherwise kindly men froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the names of this dynamic duo.

Mr. Chancellor, Father McGrath is in double jeopardy as an activist priest for he can exasperate not only the commercial or mercantile establishment, but also the powerful establishment of his mother-church. He is the antithesis of the Vicar of Bray who pioneered the vocation of keeping out of trouble.

On one occasion he accompanied his parishioners to a seal hunt. The expedition got stuck in the ice, so he was prevented from carrying out his parochial duties and from attending a celebration for a retiring bishop — an event important enough to be broadcast on the radio. Trouble enough, Sir. The radio audience heard that Father McGrath was unable to attend the ceremony because he was at the seal hunt, which was going well. But this announcement informed Fisheries Patrol Officers that Father Des and his parishioners were taking seals before the official opening of the season.

On the face of it there is an anomalous balance in adherence to trade unionism rooted in Marxist- Leninist philosophy, and the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. Father McGrath is following the dictates of his conscience into an unconventional and controversial social role.

The Pope recently cautioned priests against this type of secular involvement. But surely, Sir, his case against Father McGrath is not strong, for a Pope who is himself described as being in the Shoes of the Fisherman, cannot object to one of his priests literally and figuratively putting himself in fishermen’s shoes.

Mr. Chancellor, intoxicated by my temerity in chiding the Pope, I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris cause, Desmond Thomas McGrath.

R. M. MOWBRAY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 25 MAY 1984

67 Orations JAMES JONATHAN IGLOLIORTE

In the golden realms of history, literature and religion, tales of just and celebrated judges are not unknown. There was, for example, Solomon, whose legal wisdom will ever be associated with divided babies. There was Shakespeare’s Portia, a young woman whose sole court battle was with a certain money-lender offering instant and permanent weight loss. And in the realm of religion we have the Judge of the Second Coming, that dread figure who will appea r in glory at the Last Trump, separating sheep from goats, and judging each of us with an everlasting judgement — an event which most of us hope may be indefinitely delayed. And then there is Judge James Igloliorte who stands before you now.

This is not to say, of course, that there are not certain differences between Solomon, Portia, the Son of Man, and Judge Jim. Unlike Solomon (so far as I am aware), His Honour does not have seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. Unlike Portia, he is not a woman in disguise, despite his rather fetching red robes — though these days one cannot be certain of anything. And although, in the court room, His Honour may be the Shadow of God upon Earth and Vice-Regent of the Almighty, his judgements, so far as we know, apply only to this world, and if we are to weep and wail and gnash our teeth, the gnashing will be of limited duration.

So much, then, for the differences. What do these remarkable judges have in common? What they have in common, Mr. Chancellor, is the sense of justice. Now justice, as we all know, is not to be confused with law. The law is mutable, sometimes fickle; justice is not. You will remember, I am sure, the tale of the school-teacher, the scientist, and the lawyer, each of whom was asked to add up two plus two. Four, said the school-teacher. It could equal four, said the scientist, but from a mathematical point of view, there are other possibilities. But the lawyer closed the door, drew the curtains, put his arm round his client’s shoulders, and whispered, "What would you like it to equal?" But that is not the way of Judge James Igloliorte. He does not confuse legality with justice, and his concern is less with what is lawful and more with what is right.

This has not always been well received. His Honour’s approach to the sentencing of native people has sometimes brought criticism — sharp criticism — from non-natives. He has been accused of being too lenient, but as he himself says, it is more important to solve the problem than to punish the offender. But his skilful and compassionate approach to aboriginal problems has certainly built up a Iregard for justice within the native community, and to accommodate the demands of the law to the light of justice takes the wisdom of a Solomon and the subtlety of a Portia. It also takes a great deal of courage. Judge James Igloliorte exemplifies that courage — he may not break the rules,but he will certainly bend them — and in his progress from school-teacher to magistrate to judge of the Provincial

68 Orations JAMES JONATHAN IGLOLIORTE I

Court, he has displayed all those qualities of determination, dedication, independence, and fortitude which have made him such a respected member of the Labrador community and, especially for the young, such an outstanding role model. Indeed, he has already been recognised for his talents by receiving the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 1999.

The man who stands before you, then, is not merely a judge, however honourable that may be. He is also a mentor for aboriginal youth, a man with a deep sense of pride in his own culture, and someone wholly devoted to serving the community and attempting to resolve at least some of those grievous problems that currently beset the aboriginal peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador. He may not be as old as Solomon, he may not be as young as Portia, but he has behind him decades of devoted service to his province and his people; and he is just the right age to be honoured for his achievements with the highest honour our University may bestow. It is therefore my pleasure and privilege, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa: Judge Jim.

DAVID N. BELL UNIVERSITY ORATOR 31 MAY 2002

69 Orations TEAM GUSHUE

Never in the field of Olympic conflict were so many gathered around so many television screens to watch so few achieve so much. Wherever two or three Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were gathered together in airports and arcades, shopping malls and stadiums, board rooms and bars, in every Canadian province, in every Canadian embassy and consulate around the world, they watched this “few, this happy few,” this “band of brothers” make history by winning gold medals in the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.

Because of their spectacular success in men’s curling, we shall always remember where we were on Feb. 24, 2006, when Team Gushue — Michael Adam, Bradley Gushue, Russell Howard, Jamie Korab, Tobias McDonald and Mark Nichols, these names now as “familiar as household words” — swept to victory. Like the alchemists of old, they transformed granite rocks into gold and changed, forever, how we think about ourselves.

These athletes have told the world that the sources of their winning attitude and achievement are to be found in the love of their families, in the pride of their communities, and in the support of the professionals at this university. So we all share in their golden, winning moment and are inspired by it. They are role models for us all, and for the next generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

These men are a new brand of sports hero: tough and competitive, yet willing to subsume the self for the good of the team; rigorously disciplined, yet flexible enough to risk new strategies; tightly focused and self-controlled, yet unabashed about showing emotion. Never servants of technology, instead they mastered it to share that moment of triumph in Torino. Who will ever forget, in the midst of that media frenzy, Brad looking into the CBC camera in Italy and telling his mother in Newfoundland to pick up the phone and talk to him?

They have given us a new spin on an epic narrative. Like the Arthurian knights of old, for five long years they journeyed on their grail quest for gold. And, along the way, they withstood the temptations of settling for lesser achievements, they confronted the despair of disappointment, they deflected the derision of skeptics and naysayers. Their collective faith, their cerebral and physical strength protected them against the insidious forces of sickness and anxiety. Through it all, they held faith with their mission to be the best sports team in Canada, to become the best in the world, and to do it from this place. And, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, they played for high stakes in the arena of world competition. There was drama, there was suspense and there was the thrill of the final chase down the ice of that killer stone in the sixth end. Yet their narrative is no mythic tale, no Mission Impossible

70 Orations TEAM GUSHUE

III. There are no secret codes to lead these grail-seekers through mysteries to meaning. They are our own genuine heroes for the working day. For all the allure of this sextet witness the Gushuemania that swept through St. John’s airport when they returned — these men are not spurious, screen idols. In fact, you could argue they are much better looking than Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks.

They are, as all the graduates at this convocation are, young people who have achieved excellence through fortitude, self-sacrifice and teamwork and through the love of their families and the support of this community. They are part of a new generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians equipped through reason, hard work, imagination and courage to turn the intractable materials of rocks and ice into the eternal gold of national and international recognition.

As Skip Meisen of Team Memorial who regularly “calls the shots” let’s see if you can replicate that amazing shot in the winning game and score six in the sixth end, by giving these six heralds of a golden age, not the Olympian garland of laurels which wither and die, but the doctoral hood of Memorial University which confers lasting honour. I ask you to hurry, hurry hard, Mr. Vice- Chancellor, and confer on Michael Bruce Adam the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Bradley Raymond Gushue the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Russell Winston Howard, in absentia, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Jamie Arthur Korab the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Tobias Francis McDonald Jr. the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, and Mark Bradley Nichols the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

ANNETTE STAVELEY DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR 26 MAY 2006

71 Orations CONVOCATION ORATORS May 1960 – Oct 2008

PUBLIC ORATOR

G.M. Story 1960-1994 P.J. Gardiner DPO 1964-65, PO *1966 Shane O’Dea UO 1982-92, DPO 1992-95, PO 1995-

DEPUTY PUBLIC ORATOR (as appointed by Senate)

Bryan P. Reardon DPO 1961-64, 1967 Robert M. Mowbray DPO 1973-86 Annette Staveley UO 1982-86,1992-95, DPO 1986-92, 1995-

UNIVERSITY ORATOR

M.O. Morgan 1964 Ian Ball 1986 George Hickman 1964 Ken Livingstone 1988 S.J. Carew 1964 Michael Coyne 1988 John Hewson 1968-75 Edward Moore 1990 John Molgaard 1974-86, 1994 Jean Guthrie 1990-2007 M.J. Newlands 1974 Rosanne McCann 1993 Alan Hall 1974 James Greenlee 1998, 2000, 02, 06 Jack Blundon 1975, 1976 David Graham 1994 John A. Scott 1975-2007 Sheena Findlay 1996 Otto Tucker 1975,78,1980-82 Laurel Doucette 1998 Alice Collins 1999 William Pryse-Phillips 1976-2003 Kjellrun Hestekin 2000, 03, 05-08 Arthur Sullivan 1978, 1982 Krstina Szutor 2000 Terry Goldie 1980 E. Holly Pike 2001, 2003 Gildas Roberts 1982 Donald McKay 2004, 06-08 David Freeman 1983-99 T.A. Loeffler 2005 David Bell 1983- Dale Foster 2006, 08 A.A. den Otter 1985 Danine Farquharson 2006 Adrian Fowler 2007 Georg Gunther 1985, 2004, 07 Ivan Emke 2008 John Steffler 1985 ORandall Maggs 2008

*P.J. Gardiner was appointed “Second Public Orator” 22 Mar 1996 but left the University in September of that year.

72 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES OF MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 1960 – Present

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1960

Monnie Mansfield Master of Arts G.M. Story

SPECIAL FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1961

Eleanor Roosevelt Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Rt Hon John Diefenbaker Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Hon Joseph Smallwood Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Duke of Devonshire Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Rt Hon the Viscount Rothermere Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Most Rev P. J. Skinner Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Rt Rev J. A. Meaden Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Rt Rev Hugh Alexander Mcleod Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Hon Sir Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Lord Beaverbrook Doctor of Laws G.M. Story M. J. Boylen Doctor of Science B.P. Reardon Armando Zugarte Cortesao Doctor of Letters B.P. Reardon Frank Cyril James Doctor of Letters B.P. Reardon Arthur Jensen Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Maurice Lebel Doctor of Letters G.M. Story E. J. Pratt Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Edmund de Rothschild Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon Edgar William Richard Steacie Doctor of Science B.P. Reardon Albert William Trueman Doctor of Letters B.P. Reardon

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1962

Cluny Macpherson Doctor of Science G.M. Story Norman Archibald Macrae Mackenzie Doctor of Letters G.M. Story A. C. Hunter Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rev Lionel Groulx Doctor of Laws G.M. Story HSPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1963 Sir Eric Bowater Doctor of Laws G.M. Story William Henry Durrell Doctor of Science G.M. Story The Hon Campbell Macpherson Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Francois Charles Archile Jeanneret Doctor of Letters G.M. Story John Stuart Foster Doctor of Science G.M. Story

73 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1964

The Rt Hon the Lord Thomson Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Briston Guy Ballard HDoctor of Science G.M. Story John C. Doyle Doctor of Laws G.M. Story E. J. Phelan Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon David Quinn Doctor of Letters B.P. Reardon Alfred Kitchener Snelgrove Doctor of Science B.P. Reardon

SPECIAL FALL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER, 1964

Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Doctor of Laws P.J. Gardiner The Rt Hon Lester B. Pearson Doctor of Laws P.J. Gardiner

FALL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER, 1964

Allan Bishop Master of Arts George Hickman Raymond Charles Manning Master of Arts S.J. Carew Paul Winter Master of Arts M.O. Morgan

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1965

The Right Rev Ernest Marshall Howse Doctor of Letters P.J. Gardiner Frederick Ronald Hayes Doctor of Science P.J. Gardiner Leslie Tuck Doctor of Science P.J. Gardiner

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1966

Eduardo Brazao Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Eugene Forsey Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Henry Mews Doctor of Laws G.M. Story John Stewart Morgan Doctor of Laws P.J. Gardiner Chesley Pippy Doctor of Laws P.J. Gardiner Ernest Rouleau Doctor of Science G.M. Story

SPECIAL SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1966

General, The Rt Hon Georges Vanier Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Pauline Vanier Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPECIAL FALL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER, 1966

The Most Rev and Rt Hon Michael Ramsey Doctor of Letters G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1967

Dorothy Pearson Boylen Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Hon J. W. Pickersgill Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Raymond Gushue Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Colin MacKay Doctor of Laws B.P. Reardon The Rev Stanley Brice Frost Doctor of Letters B.P. Reardon

74 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPECIAL SPRING CONVOCATION – JUNE, 1967

Arthur Davis Hasler Doctor of Science G.M. Story Alfred Clarence Redfield HDoctor of Science G.M. Story Frederick George Walton Smith Doctor of Science G.M. Story William Stewart Hoar Doctor of Science G.M. Story Archibald Cowanlock Huntsman Doctor of Science G.M. Story

SPECIAL CONVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION OF THE RT HON THE LORD TAYLOR AND MOSES OSBORNE MORGAN – FEBRUARY, 1968

The Rt Hon the Lord Stonham Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Baroness Summerskill Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Harold Rocke Robertson Doctor of Science G.M. Story John Ferguson McCreary Doctor of Science G.M. Story Garrett Brownrigg Doctor of Science G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1968

Colin Low Doctor of Letters John Hewson Raleigh Ashlin Skelton Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Viscount Montgomery Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Herbert Thomas Coutts Doctor of Laws John Hewson Sydney Frost Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPECIAL FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1968

John Tuzo Wilson Doctor of Science G.M. Story Gerhard Herzberg Doctor of Science G.M. Story Alan Woodworth Johnson Doctor of Science G.M. Story Ralph Lent Jeffery Doctor of Science John Hewson Harold Lambert Welsh Doctor of Science John Hewson William George Schneider Doctor of Science John Hewson

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1969

The Hon Fabian O’Dea Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Helge M. Ingstad Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Hon Justice Harry Winter Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Jean Boucher Doctor of Letters John Hewson Helen Mussallem Doctor of Science John Hewson

FALL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER, 1969

George Malcolm Brown Doctor of Science G.M. Story The Hon Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Douglas Tyndall Wright Doctor of Science G.M. Story

75 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1970 Maud Karpeles HDoctor of Letters G.M. Story Chester Woodleigh Small Doctor of Science G.M. Story Brough Macpherson Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Lord Shackleton Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Vera Perlin Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1970

The Hon Donald Jamieson Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Hon Leslie Curtis Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Gordon A. Winter Doctor of Laws John Hewson John Mckee Olds Doctor of Science John Hewson

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1971

William Peacock Doctor of Letters John Hewson Clarence Wiseman Doctor of Laws G.M. Story John Edwin Hodgetts Doctor of Letters John Hewson The Rt Rev R.T. McGrath Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Lister Sinclair Doctor of Letters John Hewson

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1971

Don Martindale Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Sir Edward Crisp Bullard Doctor of Science G.M. Story Leonard Miller Doctor of Science G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1972

Christopher Pratt Doctor of Letters John Hewson David McCurdy Baird Doctor of Science G.M. Story Frederick Emerson Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rt Rev Robert Seaborn Doctor of Laws John Hewson

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1972

P. J. Hanley Doctor of Laws John Hewson Bro J. P. Keane Doctor of Laws John Hewson Malcolm Muggeridge Doctor of Letters G.M. Story William David Mulholland Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1973

Edward Russell Doctor of Letters G.M. Story The Rt Hon the Lord Snow Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin Doctor of Science G.M. Story Albert Lehninger Doctor of Science John Hewson E. R. Seary Doctor of Letters G.M. Story

76 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

Bernard Summers Doctor of Laws John Hewson Albert Perlin HDoctor of Letters John Hewson SPRING CONVOCATION – JUNE, 1973

Sir Richard Doll Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Oliver James Vaughan-Jackson Doctor of Science John Hewson Nigel Rusted Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Charles Drake Doctor of Science John Hewson Melville George Coxon Doctor of Science John Hewson John Evans Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1973

Florence Mary O’Neill Doctor of Laws John Hewson The Rev Arthur Butt Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Walter White Doctor of Laws John Hewson

SPECIAL CONVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION OF MOSES OSBORNE MORGAN, FEBRUARY 9, 1974

John James Deutsch Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Allan Gillingham Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Frank Pearce Doctor of Laws John Hewson Piercy Pickett Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Catherine Wallace Doctor of Laws John Hewson

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1974

Sidney Martin Blair Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard J. B. Angel Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard John Rannie Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard Thomas Winter Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard Claude Howse Doctor of Science M.J. Newlands George William Jeffers Doctor of Science M.J. Newlands Robertson Davies Doctor of Letters Alan Hall Pierre Dansereau Doctor of Science M.J. Newlands Sarah Organ Dixon Doctor of Letters M.J. Newlands Myra Bennett Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Lea Chapman Steeves Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Keith John Roy Wightman Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray R. A. Parsons Doctor of Letters Alan Hall

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1974

George Albert Hickman Doctor of Laws John Hewson Helena Frecker Doctor of Letters John Hewson The Hon E. J. Harnum Doctor of Laws John Molgaard Donald Creighton Doctor of Letters M.J. Newlands Cecil Mouland Doctor of Laws M.J. Newlands

77 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1975

The Hon W. J. Browne Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Clarence Williams HDoctor of Laws G.M. Story Sir Allan Bullock Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Jessie Mifflin Doctor of Laws John Blundon Clara Gillingham Doctor of Laws John Blundon Stephen H. Stackpole Doctor of Laws John A. Scott J.A. Corry Doctor of Letters John A. Scott

SPECIAL CONVOCATION AT CORNER BROOK, OCTOBER 25, 1975

The Hon Frank Duff Moores Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray George Andrew Ferguson Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray William J. Lundrigan Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Henry Payne Doctor of Laws John Blundon Noel F. Murphy Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Harry S. Oxford Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Elizabeth Goudie Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker

FALL CONVOCATION – NOVEMBER, 1975

W. G. Rowe Doctor of Laws John Blundon George Hobbs Doctor of Engineering John Hewson Norman Peters Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Luc Lacourciere Doctor of Letters John Hewson Hugh Robert Wynne-Edwards Doctor of Science John A. Scott

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1976

John Polanyi Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Wilfred Templeman Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Frank Archibald Milligan Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Rudolph Duder Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Henry Bertram Mayo Doctor of Letters John A. Scott

SPECIAL FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 11, 1976

Dame Vera Lynn Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1976

F. W. Russell Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Philip Smith Doctor of Letters William Prsye-Phillips Sylvia Gelber Doctor of Laws John Blundon William Andrew Mackay Doctor of Laws G.M. Story H. T. Renouf Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1977

William Charles Winegard Doctor of Engineering John Blundon Harold Goodridge Doctor of Laws John Blundon

78 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

Donald Olding Hebb Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips Ira Edwin Puddington Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips Marsh Jeanneret HDoctor of Letters R. M. Mowbray Arthur Scammell Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

FALL CONVOCATION – DECEMBER, 1977

Max Leo Baker Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard Albert Sherwood Barber Doctor of Laws John Molgaard Anthony Paddon Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips Gordon Thomas Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1978

The Hon Clarence Gosse Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Larkin Kerwin Doctor of Science John A. Scott Arnold James Kerr Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Hugh O’Neill Doctor of Laws G.M. Story The Rev Malcolm MacDonell Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Edith Manuel Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1978

Campbell Eaton Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Esau Thoms Doctor of Laws A.M. Sullivan Donald Alexander Cameron Doctor of Laws John A. Scott William May Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips Doctor of Science William Prsye-Phillips Lewis Thomas Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray John Wendell MacLeod Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1979

Clarence Powell Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Averil Lysaght Doctor of Letters John A. Scott The Rev George Earle Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Maxwell John Dunbar Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray G. A. Frecker Doctor of Laws G.M. Story Eleazer Hiscock Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1979

Gordon Murray MacNabb Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Anne Stine Ingstad Doctor of Letters G.M. Story Victor Almon McKusick Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Rev E. J. O’Brien Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1980

Dennis Chapman Doctor of Science M.J. Newlands

79 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

Most Rev Alphonsus L. Penney Doctor of Laws M.J. Newlands Millicent Loder Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Alfred Ernest Pallister HDoctor of Science Otto Tucker The Hon Justice Robert S. Furlong Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Harry D. Roberts Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1980

Bernard Roland Belleau Doctor of Science M.J. Newlands Brian Mulroney Doctor of Laws Terry Goldie Ignatius Rumboldt Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Frederick Ross Johnson Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1981

Grace Butt Doctor of Letters John A. Scott J. M. S. Careless Doctor of Letters John A. Scott James Milton Ham Doctor of Engineering R. M. Mowbray Arthur Lundrigan Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Charles Tittemore Doctor of Engineering R. M. Mowbray Sarah Woodland Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1981

Gioia Marconi Braga Doctor of Laws John Molgaard Alexander Colville Doctor of Letters John A. Scott Baxter T. Gillard Doctor of Laws Otto Tucker Raymond U. Lemieux Doctor of Science John Molgaard

SPECIAL CONVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION OF LESLIE HARRIS AND IAN E. RUSTED, FEBRUARY 20, 1982

Francess Halpenny Doctor of Letters R. M. Mowbray His Eminence Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger Doctor of Laws G.M. Story

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1982

Sr Mary Teresina Bruce Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Sr Mary James Dinn Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Douglas Fraser Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Malcolm Francis McGregor Doctor of Letters G.O. Roberts Hon Frederick W. Rowe Doctor of Letters Otto Tucker Robert Thomas Russell Doctor of Laws G.O. Roberts Jean-Guy Sylvestre Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1982

Frederic G. Cassidy Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Jean Manery Fisher Doctor of Science Annette Staveley Aloysius P. O’Brien Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Maurice H. Saval Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

80 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1983 Peter John Hilton HDoctor of Science David Freeman Herbert Henry Jasper Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray The Rt Rev Francois Maurer Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Michael Nolan Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Geoffrey Arthur Rose Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray Robert Bruce Salter Doctor of Science R. M. Mowbray William Taylor Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1983

Alexander Campbell Cheyne Doctor of Letters David N. Bell Helen Preston Glass Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1984

Angus Bruneau Doctor of Engineering J. Molgaard James Walter Church Doctor of Engineering J. Molgaard The Rev Desmond McGrath Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Mavor Moore Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Bobbie Robertson Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Gordon Stirling Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1984

Pierre Maranda Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Daniel Fraad Doctor of Laws David N. Bell

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1985

William J. Carew Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Gerald Gordon Lewis Henderson Doctor of Science John A. Scott Elliott Merrick Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Anna Templeton Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Morris Zaslow Doctor of Letters A.A. den Otter

SPECIAL CONVOCATION – OCT. 5, 1985, 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE.

William Joseph Carroll Doctor of Laws Georg Gunther Edward Berwyn Pulford Doctor of Laws John Steffler

FALL CONVOCATION – NOVEMBER 1985

Andreas Barban Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Sr Mary Loretto Croke Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Malcolm Troup Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Frederick Kenneth Hare Doctor of Letters David N. Bell Benjamin Hyde Harvey Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

81 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1986 Ethel Brinton HDoctor of Laws Annette Staveley Rudolph Roland Haering Doctor of Science Ian Ball Robert Edward Oliver Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Mary Pratt Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley The Rt Hon the Lord Taylor Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray

SPECIAL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER 30, 1986, 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF CANADA.

David Lloyd Johnston Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1986

Henry Collingwood Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Edward Irving Doctor of Science Annette Staveley The Hon A. Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea David William Strangway Doctor of Science John Molgaard

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1987

Norah Browne Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Herbert Halpert Doctor of Letters David N. Bell Ralph Moore Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Agnes O’Dea Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Gordon O. Rothney Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1987

Joseph Josephson Doctor of Science David N. Bell Harold Peters Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea Roger Tory Peterson Doctor of Science Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1988

James Anderson Doctor of Laws R. M. Mowbray Emile Benoit Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley June Callwood Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Gillian Cell Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Charles Cronhelm Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips

SPECIAL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1, 1988 OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS, SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

Gordon Pinsent Doctor of Letters Ken Livingstone Helen Parsons Shepherd Doctor of Laws Michael Coyne Reginald Shepherd Doctor of Laws Michael Coyne The Hon Justice Lloyd Soper Doctor of Laws David Freeman

82 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1988 Fredrik Barth HDoctor of Letters Annette Staveley Paul O’Neill Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1989

Michael Harrington Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Arthur May Doctor of Science David N. Bell Orvil Alva Olsen Doctor of Science `William Pryse-Phillips Charles White Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley George Whiteley Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1989

William Sefton Fyfe Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea Geraldine Kenney-Wallace Doctor of Science Annette Staveley Ward Neale Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea Raymond Alexander Price Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1990

Paul Desmarais Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Jan Furst Doctor of Engineering E. Moore James Donald Hatcher Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Francis Norman Hughes Doctor of Science David N. Bell Kathleen MacPherson Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – 1990

Ursula Franklin Doctor of Science E. Moore Alice Wareham Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie

SPECIAL CONVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION OF ARTHUR WILLIAM MAY AND ALBERT REGINALD COX, FEBRUARY 2, 1991

James Downey Doctor of Letters David N. Bell George Ivany Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea David Strong Doctor of Science Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1991

Richard Cashin Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Mario Duschenes Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Janet Elizabeth Halliwell Doctor of Science David N. Bell Shirley Stinson Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea Elizabeth Summers Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie William Whitesides Warner Doctor of Science Annette Staveley Glyndwr Williams Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley

83 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1991 Sandra Gwyn HDoctor of Letters Annette Staveley Peter Waite Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1992

Alfred Evans Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley The Hon James A. McGrath Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Grace Sparkes Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Gerald Squires Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Peter Troake Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Beatrice Watts Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie

SPECIAL SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1992 SIR WILLFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

David Blackwood Doctor of Letters David Freeman

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1992

John A. Fraser Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Paul Henri LeBlond Doctor of Science Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1993

Mary Ellen Avery Doctor of Science William Pryse-Phillips Roberta Bondar Doctor of Science David N. Bell Murray Fraser Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Edgar House Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Conor Cruise O’Brien Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Ann Ward Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Patrick Watson Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Edwina Wetzel Doctor of Laws Rosanne McCann

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1993 SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

Selma Barkham Doctor of Letters David Freeman

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1993

Jack Granatstein Doctor of Letters David N. Bell Aidan Maloney Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1994

Ottar Brox Doctor of Letters Kevin Condon Doctor of Laws John A. Scott J. D. Eaton Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie J. M. C. Facey Doctor of Engineering Shane O’Dea

84 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

Edward Finn Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Leslie Gordon Jaeger Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard Paul Johnson HDoctor of Laws David Graham M. O. Morgan Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Doris Saunders Doctor of Letters William Pryse-Phillips Gordon Richard Slemon Doctor of Engineering John Molgaard George M. Story Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1994

Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Vera Jacqueline Winsor Doctor of Laws David Freeman

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1994

The Rt Hon Ramon Hnatyshyn Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1995

Thomas Curran Doctor of Laws John A. Scott John Dewey Doctor of Science David Graham Victor Ling Doctor of Science Annette Staveley Satya Nandan Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Gregory Power Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Nancy Riche Doctor of Laws David N. Bell The Hon Madame Justice Bertha Wilson Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1995 SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

Cyril F. Poole Doctor of Laws David Freeman

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1995

Grunia Movschovitch Ferman Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Moishe Kantorowitz Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Charles Murphy Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1996

Maude Barlow Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Timothy Findley Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Edward Ives Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea William Andrew O’Neil Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Wallace Read Doctor of Engineering Sheena Findlay Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Victor Young Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1996 SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

Joseph Kruger II Doctor of Laws David Freeman

85 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 1996 Albert Chislett HDoctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Rosemarie Landry Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Christopher Verbiski Doctor of Laws J.A. Scott

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1997

Anne Meredith Barry Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Gertrude Crosbie Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Darryl Fry Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Wilbert Hopper Doctor of Laws David N. Bell The Rt Hon Roméo LeBlanc Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Geoffrey Alan Perry Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Helen Fogwill Porter Doctor of Letters William Pryse-Phillips Otto Tucker Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 1997 SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE

Roch Carrier Doctor of Letters David Freeman

SPECIAL CONVOCATION – SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 OPENING OF THE SUMMIT OF THE SEA CORE CONFERENCE

Vigdís Finbogadóttir Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1997

Rex Murphy Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1998

Janet Gardiner Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Dorothy Inglis Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Bernice Morgan Doctor of Letters John A. Scott R. Murray Schafer Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Lynn Verge Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Philip Warren Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Vincent Withers Doctor of Laws Laurel Doucette

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY, 1998

Joan Clark Doctor of Letters James Greenlee

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1998

Jean Bruneau Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Edythe Goodridge Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

86 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 1999 The Hon John C. Crosbie HDoctor of Laws Annette Staveley Leslie Harris Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea The Hon Maxwell House Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips W. J. Kirwin Doctor of Letters Jean Guthrie Timothy Thahane Doctor of Laws John A. Scott Jane Urquhart Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea David William Robert Wright Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY, 1999

Percy Metsing Mangoaela Doctor of Laws David Freeman

SPECIAL CONVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION OF AXEL MEISEN OCTOBER 21, 1999

Chawat Arthayukti Doctor of Laws David N. Bell John Kenneth Galbraith Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea James Hubert Rogers Doctor of Engineering Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 1999

Donald Cook Doctor of Laws David Graham David Christian Ward Doctor of Science Alice Collins

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY, 2000

Peter Neary Doctor of Letters James Greenlee

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 2000

Hon Monique Bégin Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie The Rt Hon Jean Chrétien Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Michel Chrétien Doctor of Science Annette Staveley Craig Dobbin Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Andrew Jones Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Catherine Jones Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Gregory Malone Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Hon William Rompkey Doctor of Laws Kjellrun Hestekin Mary Walsh Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea John Widdowson Doctor of Letters Kristin Szutor

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 2000

Antonine Maillet Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

87 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY, 2001 William Pruitt HDoctor of Science E. Holly Pike SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 2001

The Hon Madam Justice Louise Arbour Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Timothy Borlase Doctor of Laws Alice Collins Gwynne Dyer Doctor of Letters David N. Bell Ray Guy Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Anton Kuerti Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Michel Serres Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Wesley K. Whitten Doctor of Science William Pryse-Phillips

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 2001

Peter Gardner Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY, 2002

Brenda Milner Doctor of Science James Greenlee

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 2002

Sr Elizabeth Davis Doctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips Sandra Djwa Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Ronald Hynes Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea James Iglioliorte Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Henry Mintzberg Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Marion Pardy Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 2002

Robert Cole Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Simon Schama Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION MAY 2003

Butt, Donna Doctor of Laws E. Holly Pike

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY, 2003

Arthur J. Carty Doctor of Science Kjellrun Hestekin Ben Heppner Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Thomas Worrall Kent Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie The Hon Flora Macdonald Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

88 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

The Hon Edward Roberts Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Sir David Wilcocks Doctor of Letters William Pryse-Phillips Melvin Woodward HDoctor of Laws William Pryse-Phillips FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER, 2003

Natalie Zemon Davis Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea John Bruton Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION SPRING 2004

Chief Misel Joe Doctor of Laws Georg Gunther

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 2004

Bruce Aylward Doctor of Laws Donald McKay Aung San Suu Kyi Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Elmer Harp Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Donald Hillman Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Elizabeth Hillman Doctor of Laws David N. Bell Susan Knight Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea John Lau Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Janet Story Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 2004

Parzival Copes Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Davis Earle Doctor of Science Annette Staveley

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION SPRING 2005

Rick Mercer Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea

SPRING CONVOCATION - MAY 2005

Gudrun Doll-Tepper Doctor of Laws T.A. Loeffler Henry Giroux Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Bernard Jackson Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea John Murphy Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Chesley Penney Doctor of Laws Kjellrun Hestekin David Pitt Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 2005

Scott Hand Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Elizabeth Penashue Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie

89 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION SPRING 2006 H Paul Muldoon Doctor of Letters James Greenlee

SPRING CONVOCATION - MAY 2006

Sr Kathrine Bellamy Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Gary Bruce Doctor of Letters Donald McKay Robert Gellately Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Alex Himelfarb Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Roland Jean Le Huenen Doctor of Letters Kejllrun Hestekin Roland Martin Doctor of Laws Dale Foster Mary Kaye Matthews Doctor of Laws Jean Guthrie Team Gushue Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Philip Riteman Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 2006

Alison (O’Reilly) Feder Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Anne Hart Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Ingeborg Marshall Doctor of Letters Danine Farquharson

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION SPRING 2007

Chris Brookes Doctor of Letters Georg Gunther

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 2007

Miller Ayre Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley Moyra Buchan Doctor of Laws Moyra Buchan Jack Clark Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Bruce Cockburn Doctor of Letters Annette Staveley Hon Roméo Dallaire Doctor of Letters John A. Scott Barbara Hopkins Doctor of Laws Donald McKay Wayne Johnston Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Hayley Wickenheiser Doctor of Laws Kjellrun Hestekin

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION FALL CONVOCATION – 2007

Pamela Morgan Doctor of Letters Adrian Fowl,er

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 2007

Linda Hutcheon Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Shirley Tilghman Doctor of Science Shane O’Dea

90 Orations HONORARY GRADUATES

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION SPRING CONVOCATIONH - 2008 David Quinton Doctor of Laws Ivan Emke

SPRING CONVOCATION – MAY 2008

Gladys Osmond Doctor of Laws Donald McKay Lanier Phillips Doctor of Laws Kjellrun Hestekin John Perlin Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Walter Kirwan Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea John Ford Doctor of Laws Dale Foster Gus Etchegary Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley David Lowenthal Doctor of Letters Shane O’Dea Mary May Simon Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea

SIR WILFRED GRENFELL COLLEGE CONVOCATION FALL CONVOCATION – 2008

John Ennis Doctor of Laws Randall Maggs

FALL CONVOCATION – OCTOBER 2008

Robert Blakely Doctor of Laws Shane O’Dea Clyde Rose Doctor of Laws Annette Staveley

91 Orations 92 Orations