In the Inaugural Ceremony of this afternoon, the University of British Columbia was officially given control of its permanent home. Tonight she celebrates the entry into her possessions by entering into the fullness of the academic powers conferred upon her by the laws of this Province. Heretofore, after an immemorial custom of Universities, she has admitted to the company of scholars such persons as have followed courses which she herself laid down, and she has admitted them only to the two junior orders or degrees of that honourable company - those of Bachelor and Master. The highest degree, that of Doctor, she confers tonight for the first time. And in conferring it, she recognizes, in accordance with another ancient University custom, that the noblest palms of knowledge are won in pursuing, not the curriculum of college but the curriculum of life.
I am therefore instructed by the Senate to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, seven men who have pursued a course, a self-determined course of service in the world of action or the world of thought, and who have attained high distinction in it: and I am instructed also to give you authority to confer upon each of them one of the oldest and noblest of University degrees that of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.
It is very fitting, Mr. Chancellor, that the recipient of the first honorary degree conferred by the University of British Columbia should be the Official Head of the State and a man of many and varied distinctions. For a generation an eminent citizen of this Province and of its chief city, he has made signal contributions to their history and progress. Founder and director of one of the leading journals in Canada, its very name is happily significant, he has identified himself with every worthy phase of civic, provincial and national life. He has staunchly advocated, by both precept and example, the sound conduct of affairs; he has consistently upheld the cause of good sportsmanship; he has been a discerning friend and patron of the arts. Today we likewise honour him as Official Visitor to the University and His Majesty’s representative in this Province. It is my high privilege to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, the Honourable Walter Cameron Nichol, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.
However much this University may value her own gestures of esteem, she can add but very little to the dignity of Sir Arthur William Currie, Principal of McGill. Honours have been heaped upon him by his Sovereign, by the Parliament and People of his own land, by the armies, governments and universities of many other lands. His record is the pride of every Canadian. And it is an even greater pride that the abilities once employed with such masterful power in the conduct of warfare are now being devoted with equal effectiveness to Learning and a Life whose chief end is Peace. This University will honour herself, Mr. Chancellor, by enrolling him in her records as Doctor of Laws.
This Congregation should be well schooled, by its own history, in an old bit of wisdom which bids us "Nurse no extravagant hope." But it is surely modest enough to wish that the whole of the next century may not witness as much unavoidable misfortune as did our first decade. For this University might easily have been overwhelmed, along with many an ancient and great foundation, in the calamity of the War and the confusion that followed. That it survived at all is due, in no small part, to the tact, the patience, the hopefulness and the statesmanship of the Honourable John Duncan MacLean, Minister of Education since 1916. His name is inscribed, with both official and real right, on the cornerstone of our first permanent building. And I now ask you, Sir, to confer the right of inscribing it on our first roll of honorary degrees.
In conferring a distinction upon Henry Suzzallo, President of the University of Washington, we are acknowledging a three-fold obligation. First, Dr. Suzzallo has extended to The University of British Columbia, from its beginning, the warmest and most friendly sympathy. His counsel, his rich experience, and his fine gift of eloquence have been freely placed at our disposal. Secondly, as graduate of Leland Stanford, as former professor in Columbia, as head of our great collegiate neighbour, he is a notable representative of the sister Universities of the United States that have contributed largely to the advanced training of our staff and are now with ample generosity training many of our graduates. Thirdly, we would do honour to a man of great gifts devoted to the advancement of great causes. His services to education, as investigator, teacher, executive, are writ large upon the educational history of his country. He is a power in the councils of state and an ardent promoter of the Union of English Speaking Peoples. In ten years he has led the way in elevating the University of Washington to the high status of a national institution and he is now directing it to the level of magnificence.
In ancient days it was a prerogative of demigods or of mortals otherwise favoured by divinity to have their names written on the sky: and that, only when they had ceased - usually by a merciful deliverance - from the business of living. Doubtless John Stanley Plaskett, Fellow of the Royal Society and Director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, would not claim to belong to either of these classes, and unlike them he is certainly very much alive. But, with equal certainty, he has inherited and merited their heroic distinction, for the mysterious double star that he discovered now bears his name. It rather appalls ordinary mortals to learn that this binary is the most ponderous and vast of the stellar systems. But there is some alleviation in the fact that the system is known familiarly as the "Plaskett Twins," and that they are the hottest entities known to man. Fortunately the name of their discoverer not only is placed aloft among the stars, but it is known also as belonging to a power still vital and productive in the mundane sphere of science. This is a region that does not recognize any national boundaries, but Dr. Plaskett will not deny to Canada or to the University of Toronto the right of claiming his as their own. The University of his Adopted Province now proposes to share the lustre of his name.
This university would be strangely unmindful of its own origin, if it failed at this time to remember its debt to the Honourable Henry Esson Young, Head of the Provincial Department of Public Health. An alumnus of Queen’s, he has long since been decorated by both Toronto and McGill, with degrees honoris causa. But the decoration which you, Mr. Chancellor, are directed to confer upon him will surely be worn with a difference as coming from a University peculiarly his own. The University of British Columbia is, very literally, of his foundation. A long series of enactments, drafted by him as Minister of Education and by him conducted through the Legislature, provided us with our first endowments, with our Constitution, with the site which we have dedicated this day, and with a general scheme of development which still guides us. His splendid vision of the University’s future has been fulfilled, as yet, only in small part. In conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, we hope, Sir, that he will live to see his dreams come true.
The University Act lays down that "in the absence of the Chancellor from any meeting, the President of the University, for the purpose of such meeting, shall have and exercise all the powers of the Chancellor." I have therefore asked Dr. McKechnie to vacate his place of office so that, in his absence from it, I may for once gratify myself with having and exercising all his privileges. I shall not repeat the request, I assure him. Unless circumstances compel me, I promise that I shall act in his place "once and only once and for one only." It would be idle to recite to any audience in this province the generous virtues of Dr. McKechnie as citizen and man: still more idle to tell them of his skill and fame as physician and surgeon; most idle of all to remind Congregation, here assembled, of his devoted services to this University. He has been honoured many times, more notably than now. Perhaps he would hold as chief among his distinctions those conferred upon him by his beloved McGill. But The University of British Columbia is proud of holding no second place in his regard.
In token of this pride and by virtue of the power entrusted to me by the Senate, I confer upon you, Robert Edward McKechnie, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The University asks you to wear the distinction not only as a mark of honour but as a tribute to gratitude and affection.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you Mr. Frank Burnett whom the Senate of this University recommends for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. Mr. Burnett’s story is the story of a modern Odysseus: for, "ever roaming with a hungry heart," much has he seen and known. He has traversed the Seven Seas and many of the lands, which they enclose. Thirty years of his life present a record, in epitome, of the westward growth of this Confederation; and his career during that time and always has been directed by forces that we like to think are characteristically Canadian: persistence and daring, the power to endure hardness, the passion for new horizons. For the past quarter-century and more he has been a citizen of British Columbia. In these years, using this, his home city, as a base, he has literally combed the South Pacific and its vast archipelagos. His writings relative thereto are well known over the English-speaking world; and they and his great collections, made in the teeth or peril, form a notable contribution to knowledge. For these he has most generously made the University of British Columbia the permanent repository. His name on our books will remind us of things that no University can afford to forget: the romance of knowledge and the eager curiosity of the discoverer.
Mr. Chancellor, it is the privilege of a young institution to be constantly doing good things for the first time. Today, for the first time, the Senate presents to you one of its own members, Theodore Harding Boggs, that you may confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. Unluckily for us, the good report of Professor Bogg’s teaching has spread altogether too wide. For fifteen years the products of his classroom have been establishing the credit of this new University all over the continent. And the finest memory of the virtues of that classroom: the classic virtues of balance and moderation, and the more persuasive virtues of sweetness and light.
Professor Boggs is severing his official connection with The University of British Columbia, but we will not let him go completely: the Senate asks you to confer upon him our highest degree to the end that he may not only enjoy all the rights and privileges but discharge the duties and obligations thereto appertaining.
In obedience to the further direction of Senate, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, the Honourable Henry Herbert Stevens, Federal Minister of Trade and Commerce, as one notably worthy of receiving the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. In naming him as recipient of our greatest honour, the Senate is mindful of his high place in the councils of this Nation and of the Commonwealth of Nations to which we belong. It is mindful of him, also, as a foremost citizen of this Province and this City. Above all else, it honours the man who, gifted by no special favour of worldly fortune, has become eminent by virtue of his public spirit, his honourable ambition, his unremitting and fruitful exercise of native energy. May his example be an incentive to the youth who are here assembled today to be enrolled, along with him, as members of the body corporate of this University!
The Senate of this University has instructed me to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the purpose of conferring our highest degree, Edward Burness Paul, first Principal of Victoria College, Master of Arts and Doctor of Laws of the University of Aberdeen. For over forty years Dr. Paul has exercised a persuasive influence on the education and social life of British Columbia. In classroom, in educational council, in lodge, in personal companionship, two generations of men have benefited by his converse. Moulded by the ancient disciplines of classics and mathematics and adorned by the graces of diplomatic experience, he has taught hundreds of students and fellow-citizens the values that are truly humane in letters, manners, thought and outlook. The Senate asks you, Sir, to confer the academic title on one who, by common consent of his fellows, has long since been acclaimed Master of the Arts and Doctor of the Laws of Life.
Mr. Chancellor, this University has today the privilege of enrolling among its graduates on Honourable Herbert Marler, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of our Gracious Sovereign’s Canadian Government to the court of His Imperial Majesty of Japan. The honours already conferred upon our newest alumnus have been many and great, in due accord with a life of high attainment and most notable service. Born to an environment of academic and public distinction, he has made richly fruitful use of the talents delivered unto him. His services to the State, as private citizen, as Member of Parliament, as Privy Councilor, have touched education, the problems created by the war, many other branches of Canadian economy, imperial and international relations. And now, the Senate of this University wishes him godspeed as he returns to the congenial duty of interpreting Canada to a great and friendly people whose good-will he has so amply won; and in token of this wish, I am directed to present him to you, Sir, that he may be named Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, it is today my privilege to present, as initiate to our highest academic rank, a man who, in a very real, though not literal sense, is a native son of British Columbia. His Honour Judge Frederic William Howay was reared and schooled in this province; he has served in its courts for more than a quarter of a century; he has represented its interest as Fellow of the Canadian Royal Society, and he has long been a governing member of this University’s Convocation. But I think he would gladly be remembered by a more familiar name: as a British Columbian Old Mortality. For, in a notable series of publications, he has rescued from oblivion many a record and memory of our past; he has followed, literally, the very footprints of our explorers; the pathways of the province are everywhere dotted with monuments conceived, and in large part built, by his tireless piety. In view of which finial observance, the Senate of the University of British Columbia bids me present him as one eminently worthy of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you, at the request of Senate, Charles Joseph Gravier, Professor of Zoology in the National Museum of Natural History at Paris and official delegate from France to the Fifth Pacific Science Congress, that he may receive the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa. Member and representatives of the French Academy of Sciences, leader of notable scientific expeditions, author of many valuable researches, Officer of the Legion of Honour, he has received and richly merited great distinction in his own country and in the general world of science; heir of a tradition wherein form and measure and rigor of thought combine to make knowledge, as the great French humanist would have it, "malleable and supple, - as Hymettian wax is softened in the sun."
Under authority of Senate I present to you, Mr. Chancellor, that you many confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, Fellow and Yarrow Research Professor of the Royal Society, and the Royal Air Force at the Fifth Pacific Science Congress; Fellow of Newton’s College; a keeper and enlarger of the Cambridge inheritance; mathematician, meteorologist, aeronaut, happier than Daedalus, voyager thro’ seas of space and thought stranger than ever Newton dreamed.
On this occasion, it is an especial pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, to welcome and honour at The University of British Columbia a body of notable scientists from the Orient. One of them I now introduce to you in the person of Shinkishi Hatai, Professor of Zoology and Biology at the Tohoku Imperial University, official representative of the Government and National Research Council of Japan: a distinguished scholar and teacher in American institutions of learning; equally distinguished in his own country for his researches and his capacity as organizer and director of scientific investigation; tireless and fruitful in contribution to the knowledge of his chosen fields. By authority of the Senate I ask you to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
The Senate of this University recommends, Mr. Chancellor, that you confer the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws upon Professor Doctor Gerrit van Iterson, Junior, of the University of Delft and official representative of the Netherlands; one of the most eminent living authorities on plant organisms; discoverer and disseminator of knowledge; founder and director of institutions of research; a scientist who brings to bear upon his special interest the resources of chemistry, physics, bacteriology and economics; a citizen of the world traversing the seven seas and equally at home upon them all.
Mr. Chancellor, the Senate directs me to introduce Thomas Wayland Vaughan, Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Scripps Institution of California, to be recipient of our highest academic degree. The record of his travels and researches and scientific distinctions would seem to be fulfillment of a Vergilian prophecy; he measures the movements of the sea as with a rod and he tells how continents rise into being. In his laboratory the myth of Wayland acquires good omen: for there, wealth is amassed of pure knowledge only and weapons are forged not to destroy the Light but to liberate it.
Mr. Chancellor, six universities have preceded us in enrolling Henry Marshall Tory, President of the Fifth Pacific Science Congress, among their honorary graduates. They have so paid tribute to the building of a noble university, to service on many national commissions, to the direction of a great educational movement in war-time, to labours in the cause of peace, to the establishment and guidance of the National Research Council. The Senate directs that the University of British Columbia follow the just example of its fellows and confer upon this distinguished Canadian the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.
It is, Sir, a matter of great regret that I cannot present in person Wen Hao Wong, Director of the Geological Survey at Peiping and world-famous scientist. Dr. Wong has applied the culture and science of an ancient university of the western world to the effective service of a civilization far older and in fundamental ways more enduring. In the midst of national disturbance and in spite of insufficient resources he has brought out, and is still engaged with, a monumental series of publications on the geology of China. His work is an example of the patient and selfless courage of true science. The Senate authorizes you, Mr. Chancellor, to depart from the custom of this University and confer upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in absentia.
Mr. Chancellor, the Senate would enrol among the members of Convocation a most distinguished graduate of the Imperial University of Tokio, the Honourable Iyemasa Tokugawa, Minister of His Imperial Japanese Majesty to the Canadian Commonwealth; diplomat and statesman signally honoured in his own country and in ours; true citizen of the world to whom both East and West are home; devoted friend of Canada who graciously interprets to our people an ancient and exquisite civilization. The Senate bids me present him to you, Sir, that you may confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, we are signally honoured today by the presence of His Excellency The Right Honourable Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, Governor-General of Canada. It is indeed a notable privilege to be allowed to offer our loyal respect to the representative of His Gracious Majesty The King. And there is for us an intimate pleasure in welcoming and enrolling on our own lists a graduate of that ancient nursery of arts from which this infant among universities derives some of its cherished forms and traditions. In his person, also, we pay tribute to the immemorial wisdom developed in three of the most eminent legislatures known to history. And as Canadians we are hereby permitted to express gratitude for the spirit and momentum he has communicated to the creative arts.
Mr. Chancellor, the University Senate has directed me to present John Pease Babcock, a most distinguished member of the civil service, that you may confer upon him our highest academic honours. For over forty years - more than thirty spent in the service of this Province - he has devoted his great energies and patience to the study and conservation of the Pacific fisheries. Member and Chairman of Royal and International Commissions and Executive Officer of a Provincial Department, he himself has done work of which the value cannot well be measured; and in selfless generosity her has encourages and directed many others to effort as valuable as his own. As with many advisers of state, his wisdom outran the wisdom of his generation; but he retires from labour in the clear assurance that his work is bound to go on.
The Senate recommends that you, Sir, confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
The first of these is Ernest Albert Cleveland, President of the Engineering Institute of Canada. Of him it can be said, more literally perhaps than of any other citizen of this province and city, that the work of his hands is established all around us. For nearly a decade he was Provincial Comptroller of Water Rights, and for a full decade he has directed many of the great engineering concerns and projects on which the existence of Vancouver depends. He has never courted public attention; but by the sheer virtue of his service, he merits and has won the acclaim and affection of a whole community. This university is justly proud of its graduates in engineering; and, as a further incentive to them, the Senate would enrol this most distinguished member of the profession among their number.
The long record of Professor Harold Hibbert’s distinction and achievement reminds us that our University has many obligations. Doctor of Philosophy of Leipzig and Doctor of Science of Manchester, he recalls our debt to the Universities of Europe. His years of fruitful work in American college and industry emphasise the necessity of close economic and educational relations between Canada and the United States. As Professor of Industrial Chemistry at McGill, he recalls what we owe to that parent institution and to our happily continuous association with her. The very name of his chair suggests a University’s obligation to the state. And, finally, the vast body of his publication gives impressive witness that a primary function of Universities is research. Living proof that all these duties may be fulfilled in one person, he is presented by Senate as eminently worthy of our highest distinction.
The Senate feels regretful and hesitant, Sir, in confessing that this University has hitherto paid no formal tribute to the Fine Arts, either in official courses of instruction or in academic award. But there is likewise a hope that the presence of Sir Ernest MacMillan may be a happy augury of better things to come. Obviously we can add little to the weight of honour that he now sustains. A royal distinction witnesses to the extraordinary range of parts that plays so admirably: conductor of a great orchestra and head of the chief Canadian school of music; familiar spirit alike of Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, Stravinsky; creative artist of distinguished order. By conferring an honorary degree upon him, we symbolise our admiration for the man, our friendly envy of Toronto, and our own deferred but lively hope.
Perhaps it might appear, Mr. Chancellor, that an honorary degree is conferred all too tardily on the Honourable Mr. Justice Denis Murphy, seeing that four of his children already hold a degree with honours from this University. But a parent even of the Gracchi may have distinction of his own. For nineteen years he applied to the government of these Colleges the benefits of a unique equipment: namely, the realistic worldly wisdom of the Cariboo Trail and the angelic wisdom, so the Middle Ages called it, of St. Thomas Aquinas. And with this same equipment he has for upwards of thirty years dispensed from the Supreme Court of British Columbia that even-handed justice which the Senate emulates in recommending him for the degree of doctor of laws.
In recommending Robie Lewis Reid, King’s Counsellor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, the Senate reminds you, Sir, of the University’s origin - for he was member of the first Board of Governors; and it gratefully recalls his intimate and continued personal interest in the life of faculty and students. It is mindful, also, of what he has done for the Society of Benchers, the Civic Drama, the Public Library, and the cause of Canadian Literature. All these interests have been directed by devotions to the ancient landmark and to the new-cut ashlar. The first regard he brought with him from an old maritime province and college, and in it he rooted the second by becoming for British Columbian history both a foremost authority and a primary source. Already a Past-Member of our Community, he is now presented, Sir, that you may raise him to a still higher degree.
Finally, we are glad to welcome and honour David Thomson, Professor of Latin at the University of Washington and Vice-president of that great institution. Trained at Toronto and Chicago, he brought to the far west the classical traditions of Hutton and Shorey. With the eyes of a Roman builder, he has watched his own University expand from insignificance into splendor; and no other man has contributed more steadily, unobtrusively, effectively, to that inspiring growth. In asking you, Mr. Chancellor, to do him honour, the Senate would wish him to accept it both as a tribute to himself and as a token of gratitude for the unmeasured generosity of American Universities that have trained so many of our staff and freely adopted hundreds of our graduates.
Acting under the authority of Senate, I have the privilege of presenting to you, Mr. Chancellor, the Honourable Thomas Dufferin Pattullo, Premier of the Province of British Columbia. During nearly the whole period of this University’s existence, Mr. Pattullo has been devoting his remarkable energies to the business of state - as Member of the Legislature, as Minister of the Crown, and now, for the second term, as Premier of the Province. On this occasion, as he rounds out his twenty-first year of public service, the entire University body congratulates him on attaining his political majority. And, to mark the event and to do honour to the notable achievement which it symbolizes, the Senate directs you, Sir, to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Read his convocation address....
Mr. Chancellor, the Senate directs me to present Helen Gregory MacGill, that she may receive at your hands the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. It is fitting that the first woman to attain this distinction at The University of British Columbia should be one who has championed civilised rights for women for so long and so ardently. The Senate is mindful, also, of the years, the energy, the intelligence which Mrs. MacGill has expended on other forms of social betterment in this Province, especially on the relief of the suffering and helpless. This occasion is the jubilee of her own graduation from college, and the Senate hopes that her example will encourage those who now graduate to prove themselves worthy of their privilege.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the privilege of presenting to you His Excellency the Right Honourable Sir Lyman Poore Duff, Administrator of the Government of Canada, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The University of British Columbia cannot hope to add anything significant to Sir Lyman’s record of distinction. It was begun long before this University had its own beginning, and it is now written large on these pages of Canadian history. But the Senate rejoices to remember that his first great honours were won in this province; and as we enrol him among our graduates we should like him to know that he is being welcomed home.
It is my honour, Mr. Chancellor, to introduce to you William, Viscount Finlay of Nairn, Judge of His Majesty’s High Court of Justice in Great Britain. By virtue of inheritance, training, and personal achievement he represents, in his own presence, one of our proudest racial traditions as it still flourishes in its primal seat. The Senate pays tribute to the eminence of his office and his person; and it does so with a certain familiar satisfaction, for this youngest of universities would gladly make some return for receiving so much of its first inspiration from that ancient nursery of arts - his own University, Cambridge.
Mr. Chancellor, I beg to present Arthur Thomas Vanderbilt, Professor of Law in New York University, and Past-President of the American Bar Association. The first title witnesses to his mastery of legal scholarship and science; the second to his professional distinction and to the esteem of the vast and powerful body which he has led. The Senate takes a double pleasure in honouring a man so notable in his own right, and an exponent of the noble tradition which began with Marshall, and which in our own day has produced a Holmes and a Cardozo.
Mr. Chancellor, the name of the Honourable Senator John Wallace deBeque Farris will probably be familiar to you, for you have already conferred degrees upon his four children. We are glad indeed to receive him, however late, into the academic company of his family, who will no doubt instruct him in the rights and privileges of his new degree. We would also add our voice to his own great and amply merited fame as orator, counsel, and public servant; and we are happy to do so now, as he stands before us an acknowledged head of his profession in Canada.
Mr. Chancellor, the University Senate directs me to present to you His Excellency, the Right Honourable Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada, that you may confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. We are respectfully aware that we cannot confer honour on the King’s Representative, or give new meaning to a beloved household name. There is no need to recite His Excellency’s manifold distinctions in scholarship, letters, and public service. It is enough to remember that he obeys a supreme injunction: for, being greatest among us, he is likewise minister to our edification and delight.
Mr. Chancellor, acting under the direction of the University Senate, I have the privilege of presenting to you and to Congregation the Honourable Eric Werge Hamber, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. His Honour is no stranger to this University, for the counsels of its Governors have profited much from enlightened interest and wide experience; and these same benefits have been bestowed, with equally gracious generosity, on all worthy phases of our community life. As sign of our recognition that he adorns the high office which he holds, we ask you to adorn him with the symbols of our greatest academic distinctions - the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
The Senate has not forgotten, Mr. Chancellor, that in 1916 there was sent to a new university, as to the Early Church, a man whose name was Paul; and that we have known, in our meaner world, a Paul who planted, and whose planting has yielded manifold increase. It is much to extend the limits of knowledge by research and teaching; it is far more to help create a soil, and a very climate even, in which thought may grow abundantly to the enrichment of men’s lives and the greater glory of the truth. Remembering all this, the Senate and the whole University Body Corporate unite in asking you to confer our highest honour on Paul Axel Boving, professor quam meritissimus.
At its first meeting, on February 16th, 1916, on motion of the Bishop of New Westminster, the Senate of this University authorized the President to establish procedure for the granting of degrees. In accordance with this motion, the Senate now instructs me to present the mover, His Grace the Most Reverend Adam Urias de Pencier, Archbishop emeritus - if he will pardon the intrusion of an academic word - that you may recognize with honour a life devoted to faithful service.
This year is the Jubilee of His Grace’s ordination. For half a century he has been a builder of good works; or rather let us say "co-builder", for he would surely prefer it: co-builder of churches, of colleges, of a great and merciful service to his country in time of war. We rejoice that he lives to see some measure of his ideals transmuted into reality: in the sense of the Psalmist, he has not laboured in vain at his building. And we therefore ask you, as sign of our esteem and gratitude, to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
We are told, Sir, of a "certain discipline" who was "full of good works and almsdeeds which she did". Another such discipline is here before you. Miss Jamieson is one of those all-too-few persons who ardently seek the public good, and yet keep untouched by the temptation to self-display or by the feeling of superiority. Hundreds of men and women thankfully remember the liberating power of her instruction. She has cheerfully kept on performing the difficult and often thankless duties that fall on the School and Library Boards. And the University will not lightly forget her long service as member of Senate and Board of Governors. We would honour her as the model of good citizenship: may her kind increase!
You have long since grown accustomed, Mr. Chancellor, to conferring degrees on Dr. Farris's family. All five of them have passed before you clad in our academic array. Clearly she is entitled to adopt some words of an ancient sage: "I do not fear the snow for my household, for it is clothed with scarlet". It is now high time that we offer distinction to Dr. Farris herself. The University of British Columbia has been her avocation, quite literally a second life work. To record her long devotion would almost involve recital of the University's active history. We would therefore wish our gratitude to be not unworthy of our debt: "Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates".
You may not know, Mr. Chancellor, that some of Dr. Fraser’s friends have been heard to address him as "Pacific Oyster" and that he has answered to the call. I ask you to forgive them, as he himself forgives; for there is pride as well as affection latent in the irreverent nickname. Pride, because he has brought fame to himself and the University as a sovereign authority on the marine life of the Pacific. Deep affection, also, because the phrase suggests, to the idle fancy of colleague and student alike, a man who is of all men the most self-effacing. Dr. Fraser has added notably to the sum of human knowledge. But in other ways, perhaps even more important, his work continues "great beyond his knowing".
To a very great number of our people, Sir, Mr. Robertson’s name will mean not so much a college professor as a lively and benevolent campus spirit, a genius loci. Long before this province had a university, a university life began to operate in whatever classroom he entered. It was his idea and his formula that shaped the mould from which this body of ours emerged without jar of transition. And ever since the emergence, his teaching and wealth of experience have continued to help the University grow. Twenty-seven classes of our students gladly bear witness to his liberal humanity; in like manner, his colleagues and associates have profited, constantly and much, by his exercise of "the greatest trust between man and man", which is "the trust of giving counsel".
Today, for the first time, Mr. Chancellor, the Senate has resolved to give the President of the University no part in making recommendation for a degree; for it wishes to present the President himself.
On July 1st, 1914, as you remember, Dr. Klinck was appointed Dean of Agriculture in a University that was only a name - a name, as you also remember, that was apparently fated to be writ in water. The omens of thirty years ago remind us how well and faithfully Dr. Klinck upheld the hands of his heroic predecessor during those four years when the University was beset by war, depression, and a cloud of enemies. Nor can we forget that the twenty-five years of his own presidency have been equally difficult. He has had to pilot us through the disturbances of unparalleled growth, through a second and greater depression, and now finally to landfall in a second and greater world-storm. Surely we may hope, as he does, that his successors will never again be compelled to plot a course through times so infelicitous. But never again can we expect, nor should we, that our University’s Head be so cruelly unsparing of his own energies or so incredibly selfless in devotion.
It is clear that the occasion and the graduand are alike unique. The Senate therefore recommends, Sir, that you confer on President Leonard Silvanus Klinck a degree never before conferred by this University:
DOCTOR OF SCIENCE, honoris causa maximi.
Artist, administrator, citizen of the world, who applies his insight, training, and experience to building a structure of universal good will. We would pay tribute to the man himself; and we ask him, also, to regard it as a token of this University’s gratitude for the generous learning and comradeship of his country, which is divided from ours by a line that is not recognized by the humane spirit.
Scholar, statesman, patriot, whose vision sees the world as one community. We honour him greatly for his own distinctions and even more - for he would it so - as envoy of a people to whom we owe an immeasurable debt for many centuries of civilizing example and, in this present day, for a heroism never surpassed in recorded time.
A soldier born and trained in England whom Canada stoutly insists on claiming as her own. He has long worn decorations nobler than any we can confer, but we would now salute him as bearing the characters which the Romans discerned in good soldiers and good men, and which we would feign believe are the enduring marks of our own kind: virtus, fides, integritas.
Inheritor and enlarger of liberal ideals in education and statecraft, he links us, officially and in the warmth of long established friendship, with two of our most cherished associations - with what we affectionately call the Old Country, and with the British Commonwealth of peoples.
The Senate regrets that duty in England prevents him from being present in person, and recommends that he be granted the degree in absentia.
It is our very great honour, Mr. Chancellor, to welcome here, today, His Excellency, the Governor-General of Canada, the Right Honourable the Earl of Athlone, Knight of the Garter. It is a great honour also to all members of this University that he has consented to be enrolled among its graduates. As loyal citizens of Canada and of the Commonwealth we thank him for the generous interest he has shown in all phases of Canadian life during his tenure of the high office of Vice-Regent. And we eagerly hope that he and Her Royal Highness the Princess Alice will cherish, for Canada and for British Columbia, memories as gracious as our memories of them will be grateful.
Sir, I am directed by the University Senate to present His Excellency that you may confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
We had hoped today to acknowledge the honour which has been brought to our province by one of her most notable children; for the Senate had proposed to confer the degree of Doctor of Letters on Emily Carr, whose pictures and books have made British Columbia famous in the world of art. It is good to know that the Senate’s invitation gave pleasure to Miss Carr and that she would have accepted it. We mourn her untimely death; but we are proud to enroll her name on the records of the University as of one belonging to its fellowship.