And now, Mr. President, the University has an opportunity to express its gratitude to one who has long and ably served on its administrative councils, Mr. Francis Burd.
His contribution to the University will be all the more appreciated when it is seen against the background of his busy life. He has aptly been described as "Canadian journalism’s most durable veteran". He began his newspaper career as far back as 1883, when he became a carrier boy for the Winnipeg Free Press. After practical experience as a printer, he was aided by his brother to bring out a frontier newspaper in the Gold Rush days. Just before the last century ended, he was publishing the Whitehorse Tribune – in a tent with the thermometer somewhere near zero! He later came to Vancouver, and from 1903 onward was one of the most genial and energetic members of the Daily Province staff, first as circulation manager, and successively as business manager, managing director, and vice-president, retiring only a few years ago.
A charter-member of the Canadian Press, he was active in its organization, and served as one of its directors for eight years. He has also held positions of honour and responsibility in the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association and the American Newspaper Publishers’ Union. His policy as a newspaper publisher has been to avoid narrow partisanship and to present all sides of questions under discussion and debate.
For a quarter of a century he served the Vancouver General Hospital as one of its Board of Governors and as a trustee of its endowment fund; he worked for many years on the executive of the Welfare Association (now called the Community Chest), and has been a director of the B.C. Cancer Institute. He has been active in a host of agencies devoted to social, fraternal, and charitable activity, from the Masonic Order and the Rotary Club to the Victorian Order of Nurses and the St. John Ambulance. In 1938 he received the well-merited award of Good Citizen of Vancouver.
All these things, Mr. President, have a claim upon our admiration and esteem, but above all it is for his labours, long and cheerfully, faithfully and competently accepted and performed, as a member of the Board of Governors and of the Senate of our University that I now present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Francis James Burd.
I have the honour to present to you, Mr. President, a fellow Canadian whose public life has been especially devoted to putting at the service of our country the rich and enriching experience of a varied and enterprising business career. He left his native Ontario over half a century ago to come out to Calgary, and in 1913 he settled in Victoria. During the period 1937-1952 he was Federal Member of Parliament for Victoria, and in 1944 was made Parliamentary Assistant in the Ministry of Finance – a position which he held until 1948 when he was appointed Minister of Fisheries. In this latter capacity he helped to negotiate a fisheries convention that preceded, and conduced toward bringing about, the entry of Newfoundland into the Provinces of Canada. In 1949, along with the Honourable Mr. Pearson, Secretary of State for External Affairs, he attended the meeting of commonwealth Foreign Ministers at the Colombo Conference. He was present at a further meeting of the Conference in Australia in 1950 and again in London the same year, and may justly claim a share of the credit for the wise and generous planning that sought to better the lot of the people of South and South-East Asia. In September, 1951, he was again associated with Mr. Pearson, this time at the Japanese Peace Conference that met in San Francisco. Soon afterward he headed the Canadian delegation to Tokyo, where after some weeks there was concluded between Japan, Canada, and the United States of America the Triparty Agreement for the preservation of certain species of migratory fish – the first international agreement of its kind in the Pacific area. In November, 1952, he was appointed the first Canadian Ambassador to Japan, and he held this important post until his recent retirement from public life.
Our University today is privileged to honour a diligent architect of world peace, world prosperity, and world co-operation by conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon Robert Wellington Mayhew.
In presenting to you, Mr. President, the next recipient of an academic honour, I can assure you that in one sense, at least, he has carried the name of our Provincial University to greater heights than ever before: as an astronomical discoverer, he gave to a certain remote stellar galaxy, unexcelled for its intrinsic luminosity, the title of "U.B.C.", so that now we can make the same boast as Virgil’s Aeneas: that we are known by fame above the lofty places of the sky!
A native of Brantford, Ontario, and a descendant of old Loyalist stock, he enlisted in 1915 and served in France until war injuries compelled his return to Canada as training officer. After studying at the University of Toronto and at the famous Lick Observatory in California, he was appointed to the staff of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Victoria, becoming Assistant Director in 1935 and Director in 1940, and serving in the last-named capacity until 1951. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and was President of that learned body five years ago; he has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and Vice-President of the American Astronomical Society, and has served with several commissions of the International Astronomical Union, notably Commission 30 as whose president he helped to co-ordinate the data gathered by ten different observatories on stellar radial velocities.
He has published over sixty papers in his chosen field. His professional life has been especially devoted to the spectrographical observation and study of the more distant high-temperature stars, to the determination of stellar motions, and to the discovery and investigation of massive binary systems. The studies that he made, in conjunction with Dr. J.S. Plaskett, of the motions and distributions of stars and of interstellar matter have added greatly to human knowledge of the dynamics of the galaxy.
Under his administration the Victoria Observatory achieved world status. His attractive personality drew thither the greatest of the younger astronomers of Canada, and he always made his knowledge and that of his staff available to both graduates and undergraduates of our University.
It may be truly said of him, Mr. President, that he has brought to us light from that awesomely remote region where, in the words of the English poet, "the wheeling systems darken and our benumbed conceiving soars". In recognition of his devoted service to astronomy and to mankind, I now present to you for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Joseph Algernon Pearce.
The degree, Mr. President, which you are now requested to confer is a tribute to the personal qualities of mind and heart, and to the concept of public duty of one of our own graduates who, in many capacities, has contributed greatly to the education of the young in this province.
In the first World War he joined the Western Universities Battalion, and was one of that fine group of men who, after serving overseas, brought to our campus in the early 1920’s steadiness, diligence, and a high sense of duty and responsibility.
His life has been devoted to education in this province. Years of effective experience in teaching were followed by years of effective administrative experience culminating in the position of Deputy Minister and Superintendent of Education which he now holds.
In addition to being co-author of a text book in English and of another in Mathematics, he has been an authoritative writer of articles on many aspects of educational practice in a wide variety of education journals. In 1952 he had the distinction of being the Quance Lecturer in Canadian Education at the University of Saskatchewan.
It seems particularly appropriate, Mr. President, on the eve of the establishment of the new College of Education, to honour one who has tirelessly sought to improve the facilities for training for, and the conditions of service in, the profession of teaching.
In recognition of his contributions to the teaching world, and especially to the field of education in our, and his, own province, I now present to you, Mr. President, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Provincial Deputy Minister of Education Harold Lane Campbell.
Mr. President, I now have the honour to present to you a distinguished author whose human understanding and literary discrimination have gained followers wherever good writing is read and enjoyed. We, who share with her the British Columbian scene, participate in special degree in her enjoyment of our towns and cities, our rivers, lakes and mountains, our people and their loves and their lives, but, by virtue of the universality of her art, we also share that pleasure with readers of many languages in many lands.
Her work reflects the personal qualities which produced it; clarity of observation, honesty in speculation, a thorough enjoyment of individuality in human character, love of natural things, and participant sympathy in the courage which the full acceptance of life requires.
For all these qualities and for their influence on the minds and hearts of others, I now present to you, Mr. President, for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Ethel Davis Wilson.
The lady whom I have the honour to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, comes not as a stranger but as one of the original founders and organizers of our University’s training courses in Social Work.
A pioneer in the Social Welfare field, she worked under Jane Addams at the famous Hull House Settlement in Chicago, and was one of the first three professional social workers who came to British Columbia, after the Survey of 1927, to reorganize the Children’s Aid Society. Besides acting as Executive Director of this society, she gave generously of her time, experience, and resources to help the University establish its own courses in Social Work. She was our first director of field work instruction, and for several years performed this task on a voluntary basis.
Upon retiring from the Children’s Aid Society she assisted the welfare services of the Provincial Government in various capacities, especially in the Child Welfare Division. Even after this she was not allowed to retire but was recalled to the University, where, during the post-war years of heavy enrolment, she supervised students in their field work for three years. She finally retired – so far as such an active and enthusiastic a person can retire – in 1953.
Her competence, energy, devotion and pioneering spirit have always been accompanied by an unassuming modesty. Status, position, money were not her goal, but the ensuring of a sound foundation for Social Welfare in our province.
In recognition of her range of interest and exemplary service, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Zella May Collins.
Mr. Chancellor, in presenting to you Dr. George Davidson I bring before you a man whose career has bridged the gap – or, I should rather say, has shown the unreality of the gap – between the humanities and the social sciences. In his under-graduate years at our University and in his doctoral studies at Harvard, his chosen work was in Greek and Latin; his subsequent achievements in the field of Social Welfare are both a vindication of the ancient classical disciplines and an indication of his own flexibility of mind.
He was attracted to social service activities by the imaginative pioneering of the late Dr. George Weir, who himself went from this campus to public service. Dr. Davidson soon took a leading part in social planning when the great depression of the thirties lay heavy upon Vancouver. In 1934-35 he served as Superintendent of Mothers’ Pensions and of Neglected Children, and then for several years directed the Vancouver Welfare Federation, now known as the Vancouver Community Chest and Council. In 1939 he became the Provincial Government’s Director of Social Welfare, and in 1942 was called to the executive leadership of the Canadian Welfare Council. He was appointed to his present position of Deputy Minister of Welfare in the Federal Department of Health and Welfare in 1944.
As the dispenser of Family Allowances he has become – if not the country’s pater familias – at least its Alma Mater. During his tenure of his present position he has served the country and the international committee of the United Nations in many technical and advisory capacities.
For his personal qualities, which so well reflect his humane studies, no less than for his contributions to the improvement of human welfare in British Columbia, in Canada, and through the United Nations, the Senate of his own University delights to honour, by presenting for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, George Forrester Davidson.
Mr. Chancellor, as we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Social Work teaching at our University, we shall hear – and not from one speaker alone – of the work of the Canadian Welfare Council. And there now stands beside me, the Council’s Executive Director, Richard Davis, whom we are to honour today.
"Dick" Davis was born in Toronto, and received from the University of Toronto, the degree of Bachelor of Arts with honours in English and History. He later did graduate work in sociology at McGill and Columbia universities and at the London School of Economics.
For over twenty years he served the Young Men’s Christian Association in various capacities at local and national levels, and was Secretary for Personnel and Programme in the Y.M.C.A.’s National Council. In 1943 he became Director of the Canadian Youth Commission, and contributed in great measure to the Commission’s valuable survey of the problems of Canada’s young people. When this survey was completed, he assumed his present position with the Welfare Council.
His entire career has been guided by three great ideals: first, the desire to make social welfare an interest not of a few professional experts but of the community as a whole; secondly, a sensitive awareness of the need for knowledge and understanding between class and class, between Province and Province, between English-speaking and French-speaking; and, thirdly, the acceptance of the principle that we human beings, wherever, whoever, whatever we may be, are truly members one of another.
In tribute to a great Canadian social worker and to the ideals for which he has consistently and arduously striven, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Richard Edward Gillmor Davis.
I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, an internationally-known scholar and philosopher in the field of Social Work, whose many professional publications reveal not only the clearest of technical thinking but also the philosophy that underlies Social Work practice. Professor Amy Gordon Hamilton has been for many years a practitioner, a teacher, and a consultant, whose mature wisdom and wide knowledge have been called on again and again by her country’s Federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, by the American Association of Schools of Social Work and its successor, the Council on Social Work Education. A teacher of teaching who has just retired as Associate Dean from the New York School of Social Work, Columbia University – the oldest school of social work on this continent – she has been a leader of those who have laid foundations and raised professional standards wherever social welfare programmes are in operation or even projected. She has written brilliantly on social "cases" without losing sight of the great truth that social cases are human situations and not numbered slips of cardboard in a steel filing cabinet.
Mr. Chancellor, the Senate presents for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Amy Gordon Hamilton.
Of all the guests who today receive our highest academic honour, Mr. Chancellor, none comes from so far away as Miss Eileen Younghusband. Far Journeys are a tradition in her family; her father was the late Sir Francis Younghusband, soldier, diplomat, author, and mystic, who in the early years of this century opened the forbidden fastnesses of Tibet to the outer world. Equally venturesome herself, she has busied herself in another field, the realm of social problems and human needs. For many years she has been Lecturer and Director of Field Work in the Department of Social Service at the London School of Economics. She has served on every important governmental committee in the United Kingdom dealing with social welfare matters; penal reform, child care, youth service, care of the aged – these are only a few of her interests and activities. Her reports on social work employment and training in Great Britain, produced under the auspices of the Carnegie Trust, have brought into being a new general course, supported by the same Trust, at the London School of Economics – a course she herself was chosen to direct.
Not only is she known for her ability to organize and develop projects and activities, she also has a keen mind for research and has engaged in many technical studies for the United Nations.
As Chairman of the West London Juvenile Court, she has proven herself as wise and compassionate in application as she is thorough and scholarly in investigation.
A social worker who moves on those high national and international levels where social policy is made, an indefatigable organizer and administrator, a true servant of distressed humanity, she now comes to you, Mr. Chancellor, to receive a tribute of honour from our University. I have the pleasure to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Eileen Louise Younghusband.
It is with mingled feelings of pleasure and regret, Mr. Chancellor, that we join today in doing honour to one of the most brilliant intellects to be associated with a Canadian university. There is the pleasure of awarding the academic symbol of well-merited praise; there is also the sadness that is inseparable from the cessation, or more correctly, the diminution, of services upon which we have come to depend. For what Dean Angus means to our University you know and I know, and so does many a person here.
How long a time he has been with us! It was in 1919 when he joined our staff – when the University was still a collection of temporary and overcrowded huts near the Vancouver General Hospital. Before that, he had taken distinguished degrees at McGill and Oxford, winning at the latter University the highly-coveted Vinerian Scholarship in Law. Throughout the First World War he served with the British and Indian Armies, and was a staff-officer with the 34th Indian Infantry Brigade in Mesopotamia.
In 1920 he was called to the Bar in British Columbia. In 1930 he became Head of His Department – the Department of Economics, Political Science, and Sociology --, and in 1948 Dean of the newly-created Faculty of Graduate Studies.
His record of professional achievement and of public service is too long for me to do it justice here: I can only touch on some of the high points. In 1949 Dean Angus was elected President of the Canadian Political Science Association, and in 1952 he became President of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1937 till 1940 he was a member of the Royal Commission of Dominion-Provincial Relations, and from 1949 to 1951 a member of the Royal Commission of Transportation. He served from 1941 to 1945 as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, and in 1955 was appointed Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of British Columbia.
Those who know him have been impressed by his strong sense of justice, his rapid and precise powers of analysis, his incisive judgement, and his inexhaustible stores of information. The best tribute to his powers as a teacher is the long list of his students who have gained distinction in Canada and throughout the world. And we trust that, whatever the public service may demand of his time, experience, and energy, he will still maintain every possible tie with university teaching and research.
That we may now honour a lifetime’s work in this service of our University and our Country, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, to receive the well-merited degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, our old colleague and friend, Henry Forbes Angus.
Of all the universities on this continent, Mr. Chancellor, there is not one, new or old, with which our ties are closer than they are with McGill; for whatever university studies were carried on in British Columbia, from their very beginning in 1889 to 1915, were sponsored and directed by that great institution whose chief executive is here with us today. The head of McGill University, by virtue of his office, would be assured of the warmest and most respectful of welcomes; and this welcome is intensified by the personal character, the academic achievements, and the public record of the present incumbent.
Dr. James was born in London, England, and educated at Oldfield Road School and at the Grocers’ Company School in that city. His first degree was the Bachelor of Commerce of the London School of Economics, conferred upon him in 1923. The next year he took his M.A., and two years later the Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania.
After many years as a brilliant teacher and administrator at the University of Pennsylvania, in the fields of Finance, Transportation, and Economic History, Dr. James was called to direct the School of Commerce at McGill. This was in September, 1939; and only a few months later he became the University’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor. To an unusual degree he has combined the academic life with the career of a man of action. He has been a most dynamic executive of the National Conference of Canadian Universities, of the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth, and of the International Association of Universities; he has also written standard works on the economic aspects of shipping and of shipbuilding, on pulp and paper research, on banking, and on a subject vital to us all and yet to most of us doomed to remain a mystery – the meaning of money. His counsel and experience are highly prized and eagerly sought by more groups and institutions than I can name here: the hospitals and the Fine Arts Museum of Montreal, the Canadian National Committee on Mental Hygiene, the Royal Economic Society, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, and a host of others, equally important and equally appreciative. So much has come out of his life – for the simple reason that he has put so much in.
In honour of a great economist, teacher, administrator, public servant, and national leader, our University presents him to you, Mr. Chancellor, that you may confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Frank Cyril James.
Mr. Chancellor, I now present to you Miss Jessie McLenaghen, the first person to supervise the teaching of Home Economics for the Provincial Department of Education.
After studying at the University of Toronto, Miss McLenaghen proceeded to Columbia University, where she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Science in Home Economics. She taught for some time in Saskatchewan, both in the public schools of Regina and also in the Saskatoon Normal School; in this institution, it is interesting to record, her Principal was a man later to be a member of our own teaching-staff – the late Dr. George Weir. Her success as a teacher of Home Economics won for her a position in Victoria, from which for twenty years she directed the teaching of this subject in British Columbia. Her travels throughout the Province were numerous, extensive, and arduous, and her zeal, competency, and energy availed greatly to defend Domestic Science during the forlorn Depression-years when it was nearly swept from the curriculum as a so-called "frill". She had much to do with the creation and maintenance of high standards, in the physical layout of classrooms, and in supervising the preparation and performance of Home Economics teachers. Toward all that was new and untried – and necessarily many things were so in those incipient stages --, she came, with what later experience revealed as a happy blend of caution and open-mindedness.
She has been recognized throughout Canada for her professional leadership and technical ability, and for the power to inspire students and colleagues alike. In 1941 the Canadian Home Economics Association, meeting in convention in Victoria, honoured her by electing her its first President.
And now our University, too, wishes to add its own special tribute to her as an educational pioneer: in its name I now present her to you, Sir, that the degree, honoris causa, of Doctor of Laws may be conferred upon Jessie Louise McLenaghen.
Among the sayings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mr. Chancellor, is one to the effect that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making money; he might well have included in his commendation the man who spends other people’s money competently and conscientiously. Here beside me is a man who has been doing this. As chief engineer of the B.C. Electric, Mr. Thomas Ingledow has supervised the spending, since 1946, of over $260,000,000 for the company’s three utility services. Nature has endowed him with a rare gift: the ability to combine imagination and receptiveness toward new ideas with a shrewd and critical caution.
Under his direction, the B.C. Electric designed and built the first power-line on the North American continent for 345,000-volt transmission. Under his direction, Vancouver Island is being connected to mainland sources of power by new types of cable that will transmit record quantities of electrical energy at record voltages. Under his direction, his company will install a new gas-turbine generating plant of 133,000 horsepower – several times as large as anything of its type yet placed in service anywhere.
Mr. Ingledow has been President of the Canadian Electrical Association, and also of the Association of Professional Engineers of British Columbia; Vice-President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; a member of the Provincial Government’s Columbia River Basin Development and Advisory Committee; and a member of the Governors’ Power Committee, Northwest United States.
His influence has also been felt and appreciated in fields of public service outside his profession. He has been Vice-President of the Pacific National Exhibition, and is a member of the Provincial Board of the Canadian Red Cross; and special tribute must be paid to him for his work on behalf of the Vancouver Art Gallery, as whose President he is now serving for the fourth time.
To honour his contributions to the electrical and economic development of our Province and to community welfare and enlightenment, The University of British Columbia requests that you, Mr. Chancellor, now bestow the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, on Thomas Ingledow.
And now, Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you a man whose influence both as a teacher and as a man – an influence exerted during forty years of busy and productive professional life – has been a force for good throughout Western Canada. Of Dr. Hector MacLeod it can truly be said that he possesses the real teacher’s inestimable gift of being able to weave his own high standards into the fabric of other men’s lives.
Like many another illustrious Canadian, he was born in our country’s smallest Province, Prince Edward Island. After leaving Prince of Wales College he taught school for a time in Alberta, to which Province he returned in 1914 with an engineering degree form McGill – and also a graduation medal. From 1916 till 1919 he served in the First World War, first as a company commander in the 196th (Western Universities) Battalion, and later as Major in the Royal Garrison Artillery in France and Belgium. His military activities did not cease with the War: in 1921 he resumed command of the University of Alberta Contingent, Canadian Officers’ Training Corps, and directed its work, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, until 1924.
Before going overseas Dr. MacLeod had been at the University of Alberta as Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. From 1921 to 1924 he was in this Department as Associate Professor, and from 1924 until 1936 he was Professor and Head. In 1936 he came to our University here, first as Professor and Head of the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, and later as Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science.
In 1939 he was Technical Adviser to the Public Utilities Commission of British Columbia, and served till 1944; in this latter year he was appointed a member of the Provincial Power Commission. He was Research Physicist with the National Research Council, on a half-time basis, from April, 1942, to February, 1944, supervising, in co-operation with the Royal Canadian Navy, the Research Council’s Pacific Coast programme of ship-protection. For this extremely important contribution to the war-effort, Dr. MacLeod was honoured with a Royal decoration, the Order of the British Empire.
To a profound knowledge of his chosen scientific and technical fields, he has added the wisdom and scholarship that come from studies, wide and deep, in literature, philosophy, and the problems of the current world. His kindliness, his quiet and competent strength, his good taste and personal charm, have endeared him to students and colleagues alike.
In token, Mr. Chancellor, of the esteem with which he is regarded throughout the University, his professional groups, and the entire community, and in recognition of what he has been able to do with machines and with men, the University requests you today to confer the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, upon a fine engineer, inspiring teacher, and valued colleague, Hector John MacLeod.
Few of us here today, Mr. Chancellor, fail to realise the importance of the trained and conscientious engineer to our country in peace and in war. And I now bring to you, for a high academic award, a man whose professional record and public life are typical of the engineer at his best.
William George Swan was born in Kincardine, Ontario, in 1884, and educated at the University of Toronto. He spent several years in railway engineering before the First World War. As a divisional engineer for the Canadian National Railway, he was in charge, from 1910 to 1915, of the first hundred miles of main line from New Westminster to Yale.
As an expert in railroading, he served with the Canadian and British armies, and in addition to being twice mentioned in despatches was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the French Croix de Guerre.
After returning to civil life, he was for a time District Engineer for the Okanagan branch of the Canadian National Railway, and from 1920 to 1925 supervised extensive construction work as Chief Engineer of the Vancouver Harbour Commission. He then took up private practice as consultant in Vancouver, and he still heads the firm of Swan, Wooster and Partners. He was consulting engineer for two great British Columbia projects, the Lions’ Gate and the Pattullo Bridges.
During the Second World War he was active first as Director of Construction for the War Supply Board and then as Chief Engineer, Pacific Army Command.
In 1945 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire, and in 1948 the University of Toronto Alumni Medal for outstanding achievement in engineering. More recently he was the recipient of the Julian C. Smith Medal for achievement in the development of Canada.
He has rendered unusual service alike to his profession and to his community. Many years ago he became one of the charter members of the Association of Professional Engineers of British Columbia, and in 1921 was President of that body. His public service includes two years as Vice-Chairman of the Vancouver School Board, five years as Chairman of the B.C. Division of the Canadian Red Cross Blood-Transfusion Service and a very active and efficient Chairmanship of the Facilities Committee of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games.
His career of accomplishment is all the more impressive for the personal modesty that has accompanied it. In recognition of a great engineer I now present him to you, Sir, that to the list of our Doctors of Science, honoris causa, there may be added the name of William George Swan.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Very Reverend Dr. Henry Carr, who throughout a lifetime devoted to the education of Canadian youth has been an inspiring and challenging teacher, a fearless champion of Christian principles, and a leader of great vision and discernment. His qualities of heart and his spirit of real Christian charity have brought him the affectionate esteem of generations of students and of all those who have been associated with him during his illustrious career.
After his ordination to the priesthood in 1905, Dr. Carr taught at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto for more than twenty years, and a recent building on that college campus has been named Carr Hall in his honour. As Superior of the College he founded the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies which has attained outstanding recognition for its scholarship throughout the world. He brought to its staff such distinguished scholars as Sir Bertram Windle, Etienne Gilson, and Jacques Maritain.
In 1930 he was elected Superior-General of the Congregation of St. Basil. During his term of office he founded several educational institutions in Canada, including St. Thomas More College, which is affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan. After retiring from the headship of the College, he accepted an appointment at The University of British Columbia in the Departments of Classics and Philosophy. His latest assignment is to build and establish St. Mark’s College in affiliation with our University. His own past achievements are a happy augury for the new College’s ideals and standards.
Although a scholar of outstanding attainment, Dr. Carr has never withdrawn from active participation in everyday affairs. While teaching, writing, and "administrating" he found the time to coach college football-teams that on three occasions won Canadian championships, and the true sportsmanship that he has always both shown and inculcated illustrates, no less than his copious erudition, what his beloved St. Thomas Aquinas would have called "the way of active life" at its best and highest. The Very Reverend Dr. Henry Carr.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you one of the world’s great pharmacists who is also brother barrister. Sir Hugh Linstead has been for thirty years Secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and has with great distinction upheld standards for the training and licensing of British pharmacists. He is now in his fourth term of office as President of the International Pharmaceutical Association, and has worked valiantly to co-ordinate the services rendered by his profession in the many member-countries. A long-time member of the British House of commons, Sir Hugh has worked with many government committees concerned with science and health. During the war-years he won Canadian admiration and gratitude for his interest in the welfare of Canadian pharmacists serving overseas. His efforts, through the Franco-British Pharmaceutical Commission, to bring about closer liaison between French and British pharmacists, led to the award of membership in the Legion of Honour; and his own country has rewarded his achievements with the Order of the British Empire and a knighthood. To these honours The University of British Columbia wishes to add its highest academic distinction. I now present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Sir Hugh Linstead.
I have the honour to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, a man who for nearly thirty-three years has looked after the interests of our Province in the greatest city of the Commonwealth.
Mr. W.A. McAdam was appointed, in 1923, Secretary to the Agent-General’s office in London; he became Acting Agent-General himself in 1934, and since 1941 has carried the main burden of representing British Columbia in London, giving advice and aid to those of us who travel in Britain and performing work on inestimable value for those of us who stay at home. He it was who organized the annual pilgrimage that pays tribute at the grave in Petersham where Captain Vancouver sleeps. He has won golden opinions alike from the people whose representative he is and the people among whom he lives and works. During the darkest hours of the Blitz he did much helpful and heartening work among the shaken and sorely-tried victims of the bombing, in which activity he was ably and unwearily assisted by his wife, herself a daughter of the Vancouver Island town of Duncan.
Those years from 1927 onward were for millions of human beings made heavy by economic depression, by the threat of war, by war itself, and by war’s disturbing aftermath. For what a man from British Columbia did to make things easier and happier for his fellows throughout that trying time, and for his distinguished service on behalf of our Province throughout his period of office, I present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, our Province’s representative in London, William Alexander McAdam.
Mr. Chancellor, it is a pleasure to present for academic honour a man whose long service – more than twenty-six years – in the House of commons at Ottawa has not only shown him to be one of our ablest parliamentarians, but has won for him the significant title, "the conscience of the House".
Angus MacInnis was born at Glen William in Prince Edward Island in 1884, but came early in life to the Pacific Coast. For three years he was business-agent for his fellow-workers, the street-railwaymen, and for two years a Vancouver school-trustee, and for five years an alderman.
He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1930, where he was associated with J.S. Woodsworth and Agnes MacPhail and became, two years later, one of the founders of the C.C.F. Party. I may also mention that in this year, 1932, he married J.S. Woodsworth’s daughter, who, as Grace MacInnis, has herself played a most distinguished part in the public life of this Province and nation.
Of the many occasions when he has stood out intrepidly for what he believed to be morally right, perhaps the one that will be longest remembered occurred in 1943. A proposal had come before a wartime Parliament that after the war all persons of Japanese origin in Canada should be banished to Japan, whether Canadian citizens or not. Even in the atmosphere of that time, Angus MacInnis opposed it, and the words in which he opposed it illustrate in clear and statesmanlike way the fabric of his principles and the strength of his conviction. He said:
"I advocate granting to those of Japanese origin in Canada all the rights and privileges that I have, on the sole basis that they are human beings. To deny them one iota of the rights and privileges enjoyed by, I shall say, individuals of the race to which I belong would be a denial of the brotherhood of man; a denial to fellow humans of rights and privileges which I enjoy for no better reason than that my race was here first. It would be an assertion on my part of the superior-race theory, for the eradication of which from the minds of men our young men are dying all manner of deaths in every part of the world. This world can only be at peace when all its people are free and equal".
It is the man who has made these beliefs the creed of his life and the code of his conduct whom I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, in order that the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, may be conferred on a defender of human rights and of our national honour – Angus MacInnis.
More than once in recent years, Mr. Chancellor, our University has been privileged to include among its honorary doctors some prominent figure in the public life of Australia. Today we are happy to strengthen these bonds by adding to our number and outstanding historian and university administrator, Dr. Stephen Henry Roberts.
It was at the University of Melbourne that Dr. Roberts obtained his first degree and then began those studies of Australian land-settlement which have not only made him an authority in that field but have also stimulated later research into problems of population, administration, and diplomacy in the Pacific. Four years of doctoral studies in London and Paris led to his pioneer dissertation of French Colonial Policy since 1870. The University of Sydney, his Alma Mater’s constant rival, wisely called him back to his native land. As Challis Professor of Modern History, then as Dean of Arts and Vice-Chancellor, he has given Sydney almost thirty years of devoted service, meeting with vigour and despatch the harassing problems that have confronted university administrators in the war – and post-war periods.
Seldom is it the good fortune of an overseas scholar to win from Old-World critics acclamation for a book on the contemporary problems of Europe. Our guest did that. Within two months of his publishing his book, The House that Hitler Built, in October, 1937, it had gone through four editions; it was praised by the Manchester Guardian and by many other journals as the produce of "a humane, sensitive, cultivated and penetrating mind". His warning, based on many months of travel and study in Germany, that Hitlerism could not achieve its aims without war, a warning forgotten of ignored by too many in the delirium of Munich, remained a matter of sober record and was borne out in the tragic years that followed.
And so, Mr. Chancellor, I present to you, for the degree, honoris causa, a scholar, teacher, administrator – and a prophet too: Dr. Stephen Henry Roberts.
I have great pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, in presenting to you a brother college-president, Dr. Sidney Smith of the University of Toronto, a man whose gifts of intellect, character, and energy have made him a leader for many years in Canadian university life.
After serving in the First World War with the 9th Canadian Siege Battery and the Royal Flying Corps, he returned to the classroom to distinguish himself as a student of the highest attainment and as a teacher of singular force and incisiveness. He lectured in Law at Dalhousie and Osgoode Hall, and became Dean of Law at Dalhousie in 1929. Five years later he became President of the University of Manitoba; in 1944, Principal of University College, Toronto; and since 1945 he has been President of the University of Toronto.
An author and an editor of legal publications, he served as Secretary to the important Commission that investigated uniformity of law throughout Canada, 1929 to 1934. But his influence has been felt far outside the field of purely legal studies. The National Film board, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Association of Canadian Clubs, and many other national and international bodies have shared the invigoration of his counsel and the inspiration of his leadership. Dr. Sidney Smith is and has been for many years one of Canada’s public figures – one of those from whom press and public seek counsel on great national issues – and one who, in his concern for the proper development of Canadian life, whether asked or not, frequently advises, and even admonishes, both press and public. He is in fact a lawyer with a national brief (and even more remarkable, a most modest fee structure) and an educator with a national mission. Today our University honours his enrichment of our country’s educational and cultural life by requesting you to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon Dr. Sidney Earle Smith.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Dr. Clarence Meredith Hincks, a native of Ontario and an internationally-known figure in the field of mental hygiene.
As a young physician in Toronto, nearly half a century ago, Dr. Hincks was impressed by two things he was constantly observing: first, the far-reaching and often disastrous effect of emotional disturbances among children and adolescents; and, secondly, the appalling extent of public ignorance and apathy where mental illness was concerned. Unlike many of us, for whom all too often sympathy fails to be translated into action, he set about doing something. He introduced into Canada a scientific system of intelligence-testing; along with Dr. C.K. Clarke, then Dean of Medicine at the University of Toronto, he established our country’s first mental hygiene clinic; and he it was who brought into existence the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, the first training centre in Canada for psychiatric personnel.
In 1918 he was a co-founder of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, later known as the Canadian Mental Health Association, and two years later he helped to organize the International Committee for Mental Hygiene, a body which was soon to exert a beneficent influence all over the world and eventually to become the consultative mental-health agency of the World Health Organization. From 1930 to 1939 he was also General Director of the National Committee for Mental Health of the United States.
Though he has steadfastly avoided being dramatic, or doctrinaire, Dr. Hincks has set in motion a vast number of projects relating to mental health and its preservation, and to mental illness, its cure, prevention, and research into all its problems. In addition, he has been instrumental in collecting literally millions of dollars in the United States and Canada for Psychiatric and mental-health therapeutics. In fact McLean’s Magazine – which I never consider to be misleading – stated that these sums were in the hundreds of millions. In view of this I think it would be well to add him to our Fund Raising Campaign Committee.
Widely acclaimed for these and many other like achievements, he has impressed a host of people by something more – his modesty, his deep humanity and his constructive sympathy. In a world where mental illness has long been, and alas, has not yet ceased to be, a target for superstitious fear, for prejudice, and even for callous derision, he has continually reminded us of the claim that the mentally ill and those threatened with mental illness have upon their more fortunate fellows.
For his vision and his sympathy, no less than for the energy, the wisdom, and the success of his practical work, I now bring to you, Sir, a man whose life has been one long steady ministration to the troubled human mind – Clarence Meredith Hincks.
Mr. Chancellor, it is for us a pleasure as well as a privilege – and here I may be allowed to modify the usual formula a little – to add the name of our University to the list, and a long list it is indeed, of the universities that have conferred honorary degrees upon Edgar William Richard Steacie, a distinguished scientist and the President of the National Research Council; they range all the way from Dalhousie in the east to Manitoba in the west. We shall now have the pleasure of making his academic honours extend, as his own scientific work already does, a mari usque ad mare.
Dr. Steacie was born in Westmount in the Province of Quebec, and obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy from McGill University; he also pursued post-doctoral studies in Frankfurt and Leipzig and at King’s College, London. His early professional years were spent in the Department of Chemistry at McGill University. In 1939 he became the Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Research Council, in 1950 Vice-President of the Council, and in 1952, its President. From 1944 to 1946 he was Deputy-Director of the British-Canadian Atomic Energy Project. He has also been President of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Chemical Institute of Canada, and Vice-President of the Faraday Society and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. He is the author of several books and a formidable list of scientific papers. He has also served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics and of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry.
Dr. Steacie enjoys an international reputation for his work on free radicals, which perhaps I should hasten to explain, are certain entities in chemistry, and not political non-conformists out on bail.
In honour of a great Canadian man of science, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Dr. Edgar William Richard Steacie.
Mr. Chancellor, the scholar whom I now present to you, has a threefold record of achievement in three countries: a man of letters, a teacher, and a university administrator, in Britain, Canada, and the United States.
After serving in World War I with the Royal Artillery, Professor Davis was first with the University of Leeds as Lecturer in English, and then a professor in the English Department of University College University of Toronto. After a number of years as Professor and Chairman of the Department of English at Cornell, he was from 1940 to 1949 President of Smith College. Several honorary degrees and his admission, in 1948, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences indicate how greatly his services have been appreciated on the North American continent. In 1949 he returned to his Alma Mater, Oxford, where he now holds a professorship.
He is especially renowned for his critical work on Jonathan Swift. He has edited the writings of this author with an erudition both brilliant and painstaking. His numerous contributions to literary journals deal not with Swift alone but with many scholarly and intellectual subjects, and exemplify the truth of Swift’s own words: ‘Now, ‘tis certain, the institution of the true critic was of absolute necessity to the commonwealth of learning".
Professor Davis is no stranger to our campus, as a few months ago he visited us to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture. And so our University is not so much forming a new tie as strengthening one that already exists, when it asks you, Mr. Chancellor, to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Dr. Herbert John Davis.
Mr. Chancellor, it has often been said that the highest function of a university is to widen the dominion of light and to push back the frontiers of darkness. In far more than a purely figurative sense this has been the achievement of the man whom it is now my privilege to present to you.
When Mr. Robinson, at the time of the First World War, enlisted in the Canadian Army, his age – and this is something worthy of notice, be we old or young – his age was less than our Freshman average here: he had not completed his seventeenth year. He served for two years in France and was a very youthful sergeant-major when he suffered multiple wounds and loss of eyesight.
Released from the Army, he was trained at St. Dunstan’s in physiotherapy, which he practised in Canada for nine years. As early as 1924, he received the Harmon Foundation Medal for outstanding achievements in the first two years of blindness. In 1929 he became Superintendent, for British Columbia and Alberta, of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and attained his present position in 1941. He served through the Second World War as General Chairman of Auxiliary Services, and in 1940 organized the first rehabilitation programme for discharged military personnel. From 1942 till 1945 he was Chairman of the Citizens’ Defence Committee in British Columbia. In 1948 and 1949 he was President of the Vancouver Rotary Club – the club that has provided $150,000 for an International House on this Campus. Between 1953 and 1955 he served as President of the American Association of Workers for the Blind, Incorporated, and as Trustee of the American Foundation for the Blind; a year later he was Governor of Rotary International for British Columbia, Western Washington, and Alaska. He can look back upon a quarter-century of membership in the Canadian Association of Social Workers, a quarter-century of constant effort on his part, not only to aid handicapped people, but to win for the community the great services that the handicapped have within their power to contribute.
Canada has officially recognised his services: in 1936, when the Department of National Defence appointed him to the honorary rank of captain; and in 1943 when, for services in the defence of Canada, he was awarded membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. But what he has done for his fellows goes far beyond our borders. He was invited to be one of the principal speakers at a World Council held at UNESCO in Paris in 1954; he presented his ideals there for the economic security of the blind, and this philosophy has been accepted by the World Council as an ultimate Twentieth- Century goal.
It is a great thing to endure disaster with fortitude and serenity, and greater yet to draw from disaster the power to guide and to inspire, and to kindle a torch for one’s fellows at the heart of darkness. I ask you, Mr. Chancellor, in the name of our University and of our community, to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, and to honour thereby competence and kindliness, leadership and lofty vision, in the person of our fellow citizen, Merrill Chapman Robinson.
Mr. Chancellor, we are happy to have with us as one of our guests of honour today Professor Doris Saunders of the University of Manitoba. A graduate of that institution, where she was a Gold Medallist in English and Philosophy, she also obtained at the University of Oxford the Diploma in Education and the research-degree of Bachelor of Letters. She is at present Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba, where she is recognized as a specialist in the literature of the Eighteenth Century; she is in particular an authority on the famous pioneer work of English lexicography, the Dictionary of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Her activities, however, reach out far beyond those of the lecture-hall, the study, and the library. She has served on the University of Manitoba Senate and was from 1933 to 1945 the Dean of Junior Women. From 1943 till 1945 she was President of the Winnipeg branch of the University Women’s Club, and in 1951 President of the Women’s Branch (Winnipeg) of the Canadian Federation of University Women: at Zurich in 1950 and last year in Paris. It has been well said of her that she has added much to Canada’s cultural and intellectual growth as well as giving staunch support and guidance to university women throughout the country.
At a time, Mr. Chancellor, when the University Women’s Club in Vancouver celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, The University of British Columbia is pleased to present, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, a widely-respected leader of Canadian University women, Professor Doris Boyce Saunders.
It gives me great pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you one who might be fittingly described as the Dean and Dean Emeritus of the Provincial Civil Service, John Villiers Fisher, Economic advisor to the Government of British Columbia, a man of great force of character, of high devotion to the public service and of exceptional administrative capacity.
Well grounded in economics in the European tradition, he, like so many others of his generation, put aside academic and civilian pursuits for military service during the First World War, after which he came to British Columbia, where his talents were first devoted to statistical and economic research. He helped steer the province through the years of the great depression, with increasing degrees of responsibility, becoming in 1933 the Assistant Deputy Minister of Finance, a position which afforded him exceptional opportunities, the problems its development presented, and the importance of Dominion-Provincial relations in the full realization of those potentialities.
In 1946 he became Deputy Minister of Finance, and moved into a sphere of responsibility which enabled him to capitalize on the knowledge and acute judgment he had developed.
As a member of the Civil Service Commission since 1946 he has been particularly concerned with the systematic training of a competent staff for the government services. It can well be said of him that he blazed the educational trail that the University – under his inspiration – is now following in the field of Public Administration.
He worked manfully and successfully in straightening out and improving the finances of hard pressed municipalities and he has ardently and effectively presented the Province’s case in all negotiations on Dominion-Provincial fiscal relations.
In recognition of the energy, foresight and capacity of a devoted public servant, the University of the Province he has served and is serving with such distinction, commends him now to you, Sir, that you may confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on John Villiers Fisher.
Mr. Chancellor, it is with particular pleasure that I now present to you a man who, in his industrial capacity, has contributed greatly to the wealth and well-being of his adopted country, and who in his personal capacity has served our community with great diligence and equal high distinction.
Harold Scanlon Foley was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, received his higher education at Notre Dame University, and entered the world of business in the State of Florida, where he began to develop that thorough knowledge of the forest industry, which now characterizes him, by first hand experience of its many aspects.
It is characteristic of Mr. Foley that when he came to Canada, he took his place fully and unstintingly in Canadian life, became one of the leaders and pioneers in the pulp and paper industry and at the same time one to whom the community looked for assistance and advice.
He has been for years President and now Chairman of the Board of the Powell River Company and of the Powell River Sales Company, and has aided with his counsel and experience the Directorates of the Bank of Montreal, the British Columbia Power Corporation, and the Great West Life Assurance Company (to name only a few); he has also illustrated his broad humanity in a great number of community activities. His help and encouragement are gratefully acknowledge by the Community Chest services of Greater Vancouver, the British Columbia Cancer Foundation, the Boy Scouts Association, the Canadian Red Cross, and the National Council of Hospital Auxiliaries of Canada. He has shown a broad and humane recognition of the rights of labour and the responsibility of management, and the rare ability to combine zeal with tolerance.
He has played an important part in the development of educational facilities in this province, including the raising of funds for our affiliated institution, St. Marks College. In recognition of these services he has been made a knight of the order of St. Gregory.
As a fitting tribute to a pioneer in the industry of our province, to a statesman in the affairs of our community, to an enlightened and wise friend of learning, I now present to you Harold Scanlon Foley, of Powell River and Vancouver, for the degree, honoris causa, of Doctor of Laws.
It is with keen pleasure and heartfelt gratitude, Mr. Chancellor, that I bring forward to you to-day a great industrialist, a practising humanist, and a man whose sympathies are as generous as the boundaries of his adopted country, Canada.
Mr. Leon Koerner comes of an Austrian family who were distinguished in both industry and public service. He was educated in the sound traditions of Central Europe to play his part in both these spheres. When World War I broke out, he served his country with distinction as an artillery officer. After the collapse of the Dual Monarchy and the dispersion of its domains, he found himself a citizen of the newly-formed Republic of Czechoslovakia. There, in the period between the two great wars, he rose to eminence in the forest industry of that country, and was one of the founders of the European Timber Exporters’ Corporation.
He began – he had to begin – a new chapter in his career when the Nazi annexation of his country drove him into exile. With what he could salvage he came to Canada in 1939, a bare half-year before the outbreak of the second world war. With confidence in himself, in the future and in his new homeland, he, in association with his brothers, put his European experience to work in the founding of Alaska Pine, which was to become one of the great forest industries of Western America. Perhaps his most significant achievement was to find a commercial use for what had frequently been treated as waste, western hemlock, the Cinderella of our forests.
His success has been outstanding, but more impressive is his devotion to the land of his adoption – a devotion revealed in, but not limited to, his support of countless charitable and cultural organizations. In 1955 he and Mrs. Koerner established the Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation for the purpose of assisting higher education, health and welfare and cultural activities in Canada. In him our University and our Community have found a consistently imaginative helper, advisor, and friend, and one who, in his giving thinks not of what has been accomplished but of what is still to be done.
Many years ago the University found a place in his heart; she now seeks to give him that place among her graduates which he has already won among her friends. And so she bids me present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Leon Joseph Koerner.
I fully realise, Mr. Chancellor, that no one whose association with our University goes back into the past as far as yours does, can fail to appreciate how much we have owed, and in fact continue to owe, to that noble seat of Canadian learning, Queen’s University. If our initial standards were high in such Departments as German and Geology, we can be grateful to Queen’s for so auspicious a beginning. And so we are especially pleased that the Head of that institution has found it possible to be with us today and to receive from us an academic honour.
Dr. Mackintosh’s connection with his Alma Mater has been as long as it has been illustrious. Following his undergraduate days, while he was still in his twenties, he was appointed Director of its School of Commerce and Administration, and four years later, he became the Sir John A. Macdonald Professor of Political and Economic Science; in 1946, he became Dean of the Arts Faculty, and in 1951 he came to his present position as Vice-Chancellor and Principal. Many learned societies have found him a tower of strength; he has, for example, been President of the Royal Society of Canada, of the Canadian Political Science Association, and of the National Conference of Canadian Universities. However arduous his work as a university teacher and administrator, he nevertheless, in that mysterious way known only to the energetic, found time to perform many wonders in the public service of Canada. His work on the Royal Commission of Dominion-Provincial Relations and in the Ministry of Finance won for him both royal and professional recognition. He is conversant, as few people are, with Canadian economic conditions and with what other nations expect from a young, vigorous, and richly-endowed country in a changing world.
And so, Mr. Chancellor, it is our privilege to honour alike a great university and a great national leader of thought and action when we confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon Dr. William Archibald Mackintosh, Principal of Queen’s.
Mr. Chancellor, it is certainly no stranger to you or to our University that I present to you in the person of William George Murrin; but, familiar as you are with his character and his work, you will, I know, be glad to join in my tribute to them both.
Mr. Murrin spent his early years in England, where he was trained as an electrical engineer. In the year 1913 he became General Superintendent of the British Columbia Electric Railway here in Vancouver. From 1929 until 1946 he was President of the British Columbia Power Corporation. A great deal of the electrical development of this Province is due to his skill and energy. An equal obligation is acknowledged by the numerous industrial and financial organizations that have had him on their board of directors and by the social and cultural bodies who have profited by his guidance and support. The former group includes the Bank of Montreal, the Union Steamships, and the Dominion Bridge Company. The latter include the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Little Theatre, the Symphony Society, and the Canadian Arthritis and Rheumatism Society. Special mention should also be made of the "Boy Scouts", which recently conferred on him one of its highest awards for long and distinguished service.
But the service that gives us the greatest pleasure to mention is the tireless and enlightened work that he performed with our own Board of Governors. He gave his best to the University during the trying years of World War II and the difficult period of post-war expansion, and his work has been mortised and cemented into the very fabric of the institution.
And now, Mr. Chancellor, we wish to honour the willingly-undertaken labours of a good servant of the University and of the community by conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on William George Murrin.
It is with great deference that I now bring before you a man who in his own person represents a persistent theme in Canadian folk-lore: that theme which connects the direction and development of our great financial institutions with persons of Scots ancestry. Mr. James Stewart’s career is a classic illustration of that theme.
Scotland was his native land, and in Scotland, at Kinnoull School and Perth Academy, a sound education gave direction, method, and inspiration to his native qualities. Dr. Johnson once declared that much can be made of a Scotsman, if he be caught young. Canada caught Mr. Stewart young: at the age of twenty she had him with her as a junior clerk in the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Sherbrooke, Quebec. After wide experience in Eastern Canada, he was transferred to Mexico City, where he served seven years, the last three as Manager. In 1947 he returned to Canada to become General Manager, in 1949 Director, in 1952 President, and in 1956 Chairman of the Board – a position he still holds. From 1949 to 1952 he was a Vice-President of the Canadian Bankers’ Association. But his work and his interest have extended far beyond Canada: he has travelled widely in Europe, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, and the Far East.
Nor have his great gifts and administrative capacities been confined to the world of banking. Mr. Stewart has given generous and distinguished public service to Canada in a wide variety of capacities. He received Royal recognition for his wartime services when he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He has served on many voluntary societies devoted to the improvement of the health and well-being of his fellow man. Most recently during 1955 and 1956 he served as a member of the Royal Commission on Radio and Television Broadcasting, an onerous task for which his personal knowledge of Canada, no less than his financial acumen, uniquely fitted him.
In recognition therefore of services to the development of our country in many fields, and in equal recognition of the human qualities which inspired these contributions, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, a great banker and fine citizen, James Stewart.
Mr. Chancellor, our University is honoured today by the presence of a most illustrious visitor, a man whose abilities and interests, in their number, their fulness, and their diversity, must awaken, in all who are historically-minded, memories of those princes of the Renaissance who were at one and the same time scholars and men of action, commanders of armies and directors of commerce, diplomats and fosterers of culture.
I am pleased to recall, as I am sure you must be also, that His Royal Highness the Prince of the Netherlands made the study of law his special field for six early formative years before proceeding to executive positions in commerce. In 1937 he married Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, and in 1940 assisted in the gallant but foredoomed attempt of his adopted country to repel a brutal and unprovoked invasion. Throughout the tense and anxious years between Dunkirk and the Normandy landings, he was one of the leaders and organizers of Allied fighting-power; and as Supreme Commander of Netherlands Armed forces he took a prominent part in the liberation of Holland.
He has worked with energy and with success to aid his country’s recovery from the ravages of invasion, occupation, and counter-invasion. He has greatly contributed to the post-war expansion of Netherlands trade. He has been indefatigable in the advancement of arts and sciences and of all manner of humanistic and humane activities. That such men as he are to be found in the councils of the nations is a consoling thought and a happy omen in these unquiet and ever-changing times.
In recognition of far-reaching achievements by a great representative of his people, the University of British Columbia, assembled here in Special Congregation, now desires, Sir, that you confer the style and title of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon His Royal Highness the Prince of the Netherlands.
The Senate of this University is a staid and responsible body, vigilant to discern and recognize talent and distinction in others, slow to indulge itself by recognizing the talent which illuminates its discussions.
But once or twice a century, on University birthdays or Centennial holidays, when the rarity of the occasion matches the qualities it delights to honour, the Senate feels it should present for recognition some of those who have made our high days and holidays a subject for rejoicing.
First among those today is Albert Edward Grauer, scholar, athlete, teacher, administrator, industrialist, financier, patron of the arts and education, one of those "Gentlemen Adventurers" who influence markedly the development of new vigorous civilizations, and who are interested actively and naturally in the life of the mind, the body, the imagination, and in the world of affairs.
Because in part of what he has done for the development of Canada, but more for what he is, a practising and successful generalist in an age of specialist, a gentleman who finds adventure and poetry in both thought and action,
The Senate commands me now to present him to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Albert Edward Grauer.
I now present, Mr. Chancellor, in the person of Dean Walter Gage, the most and best beloved of our University family. He is, in a sense, the physical embodiment of this University’s academic conscience, and a man whose scholarly attainments and standards of teaching are equalled only by his concern always to do justice to colleagues and students alike. But it is the devoted loyal and tireless servant of this University and friend of its many thousands of students that we really acclaim today and I am more than usually happy to present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, WALTER HENRY GAGE.
It is with particular pride and pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, that I now present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, one of the University’s first law givers. She helped to draft the original constitution of the Alma Mater Society and, as an alumna, that of the Alumni Association. Though now content, it is said, to be associated with law in its interpretation, her wide range of public services reflects the humanity, compassion and respect for learning which have made Evelyn Story Lett, a woman, a graduate and a citizen whom we are proud and happy to honour.
In the name of the Senate and representing I am sure, everyone who has been associated with this University, I present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Evelyn Story Lett.
The high repute of Stanford University; its hospitality in accepting for postgraduate study many students from this University would in themselves be ample warrant for wishing to do honour to that institution; but the fifth President of Stanford University, a former director of the Huntingdon Library and Art Gallery, historian on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, lends distinction to any array, and we thought it time to register a claim to his company, though it must be admitted he has older roots beyond the mountains. In Ontario, where he was born and trained, and in Alberta, where, as teacher and athlete, he first showed the versatility and resourcefulness that destined him for high office. The Senate is proud to ask you to honour a fellow Canadian and the cause of higher education to which he has given so much as teacher, consultant, commissioner and administrator, by conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon John Ewart Wallace Sterling.
It is an honour to have the Chairman of the Council of our affiliated institution, Victoria College, with us today. He was a wise councillor on our Board of Governors for twenty two years, and a lifetime worker for the advancement of higher education in British Columbia.
For the valour which earned him the Military Cross in war, for the dedicated performance of public duty we would expect of a Rhodes Scholar, for the wisdom and fairness which illuminates the jurist, for the services which he has rendered to his Province as a legislator, his city as an alderman and his College and his University as a Governor and friend, I ask you, Mr. Chancellor, to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Joseph Badenoch Clearihue.
Mr. Chancellor, there is an old saying that it is better to travel than to arrive. Mr. Justice Lord’s career illustrates the point that those who enjoy life’s voyage most, also arrive. His enjoyment of duty, his delight in friends, his devotion to country, province and university, have carried him from Students’ Council, to King’s Counsel, to the governing Councils of the University, and from the Bar to the Bench. They have also given to his advice and counsel a warmth and sympathy, a tolerance and understanding, which all who have been touched by his life will ever be grateful for.
In recognition of both his accomplishments and his concern for people and institutions, we ask you now, in the name of the University, to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Arthur Edward Lord.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you, one who has created for himself an enviable reputation as a master builder and community servant. Firmly moulded – or physically fortified – by early exposure to the Winnipeg climate, he proceeded to prove his energy and initiative by qualifying at the University of Manitoba in the two related sciences – or arts – engineering and architecture. Since that time he has contributed much, not only to the physical but also to the economic and social development of our country.
Firm of purpose, clear sighted, possessed of a unique record of unselfish service to the common good, I ask you now to confer on a good and constructive citizen of British Columbia and Canada, Ralph Carr Pybus, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, it was once said about a celebrated American educator that you would have the essentials of a university if you had a boy at one end of a log and Mark Hopkins at the other. I fear, however, that those of us whose task it is to administer a university a century later than Mark Hopkins are compelled to be, if not more modest, at least more realistic. However brilliant and devoted a university’s teaching staff and research personnel may be, however competent and forward looking its administration, its material equipment does matter a very great deal, and foremost among that equipment are the buildings in which the members of the institution work, study, plan, - play and relax. And so it is fit and proper that the University of British Columbia should recognise the work and the imagination of a man who fathered the plan for its physical growth and designed its later development.
For the vision that was his in the years of hope deferred, and remained his in the years of modest fulfillment, for the kindly tolerance with which he has dealt with demanding clients, and with inadequate resources, but above all for the persistent spirit of high adventure which characterizes him and his relationship to his calling, I ask you now to confer on Charles Joseph Thompson the title and degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, the University within which Francis Joubin received his undergraduate and graduate instruction, and which provided him with some of the associations he needed for his education, is glad to recognize in him the extent to which real education is the result of individual effort – and individuality.
Dr. Joubin’s theories, which when applied were largely responsible for the finding and successful development of some of the world’s most important uranium deposits, were formed during his undergraduate and graduate years at this institution.
The fact that theories were formed during that period is not so remarkable. Undergraduates from time immemorial have formulated theories, philosophic, scientific, social, aesthetic, good, bad and indifferent.
But for the patient hard work involved in refining and testing his theories, for the persistent self-reliance, in holding on to them, over the years, for resourcefulness in seeking opportunities to apply them, for remaining unshaken in the face of disappointment, for the strength of his individual sense of commitment to them, I now present him to you for one more degree, that of Doctor of Science, and this time honoris causa, Francis Renault Joubin.
Mr. Chancellor, as Canadians we count it a high honour to claim membership in that association of free peoples, the Commonwealth of Nations, and, as members of that Commonwealth, to pay allegiance to our gracious Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, the symbol of our common unity. As Canadians also we are proud of the great tradition of freedom under law which is part of our British inheritance.
Today, The University of British Columbia is deeply honoured by the presence here of one who, in her family, represents the nobility of our traditions and who, in her personal capacity, adds grace to nobility and zest to solemnity in discharging a multitude of duties and high responsibilities among which are numbered that of presiding over the destinities of our sister institution, the University College of North Staffordshire.
For her sense of royal and public duty, no less than for the radiance which adorns it, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Her Royal Highness, The Princess Margaret.
I am privileged, Mr. Chancellor, to bring before you a distinguished British scholar and historian. In conferring distinction upon William Conrad Costin, our University on its fiftieth birthday pays tribute to the University of Oxford, our sister institution which has already passed its seven hundredth anniversary. As Fellow, as Proctor, as Tutor, and now as President of that ancient and beloved College of St. John which has nurtured generations of young men, including two others whom we are honouring in these celebrations, as well as many more from our own Province, William Conrad Costin has always been faithful to values that are truly humane in letters, manners, thought and outlook. Servant of his country in two world wars, keeper and enlarger of the Oxford inheritance, historian and interpreter of both east and west, devoted friend of students, he is eminently qualified for our highest distinction and the Senate asks that you now confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on William Conrad Costin.
Mr. Chancellor, we are told in books of ancient history that long ago in the city of Rome a Vestal Virgin spent many years in learning her duties and many more in imparting her knowledge to others but that all her years, whether as teacher or as pupil, were devoted to keeping alive the sacred fire. Born into a very different world, the distinguished guest who stands with us here rose, after long academic and practical training, to be President of Princeton University and served in that capacity for twenty four years. Yet throughout his long and rigorous service he has ever been ready to put his extensive knowledge of economics and political science at the disposal of the Governments of his own and other countries. After his retirement from the Presidency in 1957 he has served as consultant and adviser to universities in Australia and he has been engaged in a task that inspires, if I may say so, peculiar fascination and curiosity – the study of the proper functions and responsibilities of a University President. Like the ancient prototype he has imparted knowledge and maintained the sacred fire.
It is for such service to the cause of learning, both before and after retirement from the Presidency of one of the greatest universities on this continent, that I now present to you Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Harold Willis Dodds.
Mr. Chancellor, the presence of this renowned Scot reminds me of Plato’s famous wish that philosophers could be entrusted with government or else that rulers could be philosophers. An academic training at Oxford, an apprenticeship as teacher at Sheffield, Cardiff and Exeter and as Vice-Chancellor at Liverpool, was the experience he brought with him when he returned to his native heath to preside over the University of Glasgow. Since then commissions and tribunals, national and international, have also sought his help and benefited from his counsel. In honouring him we honour a great Scotsman, a great Scottish University, and a great tradition of humane and humanistic discipline. He belongs to the world of workshop and marketplace as well as to the world of library, laboratory and lectureroom. The University of British Columbia now has the privilege of conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Sir Hector James Wright Hetherington.
Again it is my privilege to present to you Mr. Chancellor, a most distinguished scholar and educational administrator from the British Isles, Douglas William Logan, who for the last ten years has been Principal of the University of London, a position which he reached while still in his thirties.
A double first at Oxford – in Greats and Jurisprudence – a student at Harvard, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge – this is the record of a brilliant mind. It is no surprise that in the grim days of war the Government of Britain turned to such a man and heaped responsibility upon him. Neither is it surprising that in peace he was recalled to academic life, eventually to assume the demanding responsibilities of the Principalship of the University of London. As a contributor to the legal journals he remains an active scholar, and as President of the British University Sports Board, he reflects his approval of the classical ideal of educating the whole man.
For his contributions to the world of scholarship, to sound educational theory and practice, and for the human qualities which have made him a leader in the community of the Commonwealth, I now ask you Mr. Chancellor, on behalf of the Senate, to confer upon Douglas William Logan, the title and degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, it is not always as fully recognized as it should be that, just as Montreal apart from Paris, is the greatest city of the French-speaking world, so Montreal has one of the greatest of that world’s universities. The duties of its Rector are, and inherently must be, arduous and demanding and we are deeply grateful that Monsignor Lussier has come across the continent to share in these special days of celebration with us, even to the extent of being our Congregation Speaker this afternoon.
After the discipline of an early training in Montreal and Paris he soon became a prominent academic leader in the Province of Quebec and inevitably rose rapidly, first to the Principalship of a normal school and then, to the Headship of the University of Montreal. Three universities in English speaking Canada, as well as the Council of Christians and Jews have already recognized his work as educator, administrator and public servant.
The University of British Columbia, pleased and proud to join in such a chorus of honour and appreciation, now requests you Sir, to convey the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon the Right Reverend Monsignor Irénée Lussier, Rector of the University of Montreal.
Of all Canadian universities Mr. Chancellor, none is more closely related to our own than is McGill, for the University of British Columbia was in its early days a far-off, yet appreciative daughter of McGill. The pleasure that we have in welcoming and honouring distinguished visitors from McGill is today as lively as always, especially when we have with us a man, who, as Professor of Mathematics and more recently as Registrar, was for twenty seven years vitally identified with the life of that institution. The talent which he brought to the service of his country as instructor in the Navy, to his university as professor and secretary of the Senate, can now be called upon more widely, for last year he was summoned by all Canadian universities to become permanent secretary of their National Conference.
He has already been honoured by other universities in Eastern Canada and, now, to show that he is appreciated by the west as well, I present him to you Sir, that the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, may be conferred on Thomas Henry Matthews.
Mr. Chancellor, there is an ancient complimentary phrase that describes a man as "a citizen of no mean city". This phrase can certainly apply to one who has been President of the University of California, an institution which is a city, or perhaps a federation of city states, in itself.
Dr. Sproul may well be described as one of the Titans of the modern academic world, having served the University of California for over forty years and from 1930 to 1958 as its President. His life has not been that of the "traditional" scholar nor has he travelled a sheltered path. Rather he has walked the public highway and been a leader, a consultant, a zealous and efficient worker for causes as varied as the California Association for Adult Education and a diplomatic mission to Korea. He knows better than most what are the burdens of administration, whether economic or governmental, charitable of academic; few men have accepted them more cheerfully and few have discharged them more capably.
In honour of a long record of service to humanity and to education, The University of British Columbia presents to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Dr. Robert Gordon Sproul.