Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Laura Holland, whose compassion for the unprotected, made effective by abundant common sense and great executive ability, has been responsible in large measure for our provincial child welfare programme and has contributed greatly by thought and action to the increasing efficiency of our national welfare services. In presenting Miss Holland for this degree the Senate pays tribute to one who has not only exemplified the highest devotion to human welfare herself but who has also the rare faculty of inspiring a like devotion in others.
Mr. Chancellor, under direction of the Senate I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Mark Edgar Nichols, journalist and editor, a founder, former President and historian of the Canadian Press, a man whose vision it has been to conquer space by communication and by the written word to knit together a great Canadian community.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Arthur Lionel Crease, a beloved citizen and scientist of this community, some time Director of Mental Hygiene and Psychiatry at Essondale Mental Hospital, whose researches in preventive psychiatry have been stimulated and directed by his affectionate understanding of and devotion to his fellow man. The continuation of those researches in the prevention and cure of mental affliction has fittingly been provided for in the experimental clinic which bears his name. The Senate, in presenting him for this degree, delights to honour him both as medical scientist and as a great humanitarian.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Marion Lindeburgh, Director of the Graduate School of Nursing at McGill University, who has brought selfless devotion, infinite persistence and rare distinction of mind and character to her lifetime task of advancing the art and science of nursing. As the academic governing body of the first University in the British Commonwealth to institute a degree course in nursing, the Senate of this University in presenting her for this degree, pays tribute to her unconquerable spirit, her pre-eminence in this field, and gladly acknowledges the debt which contemporary nursing education owes to her.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Right Honourable Robert Gordon Menzies, a man whose exemplary qualities of mind, heart and high vision, illuminated by eloquence and wit, have prompted his fellow citizens to confer upon him the highest honour in their power to bestow – the Prime Ministership of our sister Commonwealth of Australia.
In presenting this candidate for this degree, the Senate of the University pays tribute to his pre-eminent personal qualities, to the first citizen of our sister dominion, to an unrivalled exponent of the value of the Commonwealth in world affairs and to – in the recent phrase of President Truman –‘one of the world’s outstanding democratic leaders of the day.’
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, JAMES BERTRAM COLLIP, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Western Ontario and Director of the Medical Research Division of Canada’s National Research Council. The Senate of the University, in presenting him for this degree, pays tribute to his contributions to medical science and to humanity through his fundamental work on the biochemistry of insulin, his isolation of the parathyroid hormone, and his pioneering in the field of endocrinology. In directing the application of scientific knowledge to the problems of aviation and military medicine during the late war he brought great credit to his country. Today we honour him equally for his own great contributions to medical science and for his influence upon the future development of Canadian medical research.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, RAY FLETCHER FARQUHARSON, a great humanitarian and physician, Professor of Medicine in the University of Toronto and a distinguished President of Canada’s Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Pre-eminent in the field of clinical research, esteemed for his wartime contribution as Chief Medical Consultant to the Royal Canadian Air Force, Chairman of our National Research Council’s committees on penicillin and on cortisone, he is honoured, by us, particularly as a great and sympathetic teacher and as an inspiration to all young Canadians entering the medical profession.
Mr. Pro-Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, George Sherman Avery, whose appointment at a remarkably early age to his present position as Director of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens is a tribute to his outstanding qualities as investigator, teacher, author and administrator. His pioneer work in the study of plant hormones, his direction of fundamental studies in related fields, and his successful use of the Brooklyn Gardens to stimulate both popular and basic studies, have gained him wide recognition in the combined fields of science and education.
In honouring him the Senate of this University acknowledges the value of his researches, the inspiration of his teaching, and the zeal and devotion with which he has pursued his botanical investigations in many countries ‘from the tree which grows in Brooklyn’ to the dwarfed evergreens of the Lapland tundra.
Mr. Pro-Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, John Richardson Dymond, sometime director of the Ontario Museum of Zoology and now Head of the Department of Zoology in the University of Toronto. Professor Dymond’s academic career as a classroom teacher and as a director of graduate research would in itself be sufficient cause for recognition, as many members of the zoological staff of this University can and do bear witness; but he has enriched and diversified his interest by his devotion to the public service (especially by sponsoring and promoting agencies for the conservation of natural resources) and by his long and honourable association with the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Canadian Institute, of which he has served as President.
In honouring Professor Dymond, the Senate of this University pays tribute to a great teacher, a distinguished scholar and to one whose great contributions to Canadian science and public service it is happy to acknowledge.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, William Bruce Hutchison, author and working newspaperman; equally adept at unravelling the intricacies of a federal budget, at shaping or sharpening local or national policies, or illuminating with imaginative power and insight, a relatively Unknown Country and the characters of its diverse peoples.
Born in Prescott, Ontario, widely travelled at home and abroad, formerly Associate Editor of the "Winnipeg Free Press" and currently Editor of the "Victoria Times", this eminent Victorian – if I can so describe so young a man – and pre-eminent interpreter of Canada has come to know his country and its people, as few do, and to write, as few can, of what he knows. Possessed of humour, humanity and a great pride in the history, heritage, physical panorama and people of Canada, he has interpreted West to East, the Fraser to the St. Lawrence, French-speaking to English-speaking Canadians; and Canadians and Canada – to the world at large.
In presenting Mr. Hutchison for this degree, the Senate of the University pays tribute to a writer of exceptional range and power, a shrewd observer and recorder of our national customs, and a humanist of high distinction and integrity.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Dr. Isabel Stewart Macinnes, Professor Emeritus of German in the University of British Columbia. After a brilliant course of studies that brought her to the M.A. degree, and beyond, in English, French, German, and History, at Queen’s University, Professor MacInnes took her Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of California. Her activity as a university teacher in Vancouver dates from the year 1911, when she became an instructor at McGill University College, the institution that was to be, four years later, our University of British Columbia. In her teaching Professor MacInnes combined, as few are able to do, acute perception with lucid and systematic expression, thoroughness in all things with a never failing sense of proportion, and the high austerity of the scholar with the considerate kindliness of the true humanist. In spite of two World Wars that rent our civilisation asunder, she never lost sight of that essential greatness, inherent in the German people, which is beyond the power of a Hohenzollern to destroy or of a Hitler to corrupt.
It gives me pleasure to present to you, Sir, one whose entire career as scholar, teacher, and administrator has been illumined by the maxim of the great poet of Germany, "Without haste, without rest", and no less by his other maxim, "Let man be noble, rich in helpfulness, and kindly of heart."
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche, a scholar, teacher, administrator, and statesman, whose work as United Nations mediator in Palestine ended hostilities between Jews and Arabs and won for him the highest award given in our time to an international conciliator, the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Bunche has nobly served his nation, the international community and all humanity, as a director of research in African problems, as United States Commissioner in the West Indies, as a representative of his country in the International Labour Conference and as an eminent international civil servant. In a world torn with suspicion, rivalry, recrimination, intolerance, and hostility, he stands out as an apostle of harmony, and one to whom the translation of the ideal into the practical is the chief task of world statesmanship.
Orphaned at the age of fourteen, he nevertheless made his way through the University of California, where he won distinctions both academic and athletic, and after obtaining his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Harvard, pursued advanced studies in four continents.
He is at once the gift of our age to the future, and the gift bestowed upon our generation, as a foretaste of a kindlier age that lies within our power to create.
In honouring him we are paying homage to the meaureless potentialities for good that are possessed by the perplexed and struggling human race. As a tribute both to the ideals and to their visible realization in a man of our time, the University of British Columbia is proud to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Ralph Johnson Bunche.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present Peter Alexander Clutterbuck, His Majesty’s High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in Canada. At an age no greater than that of many of our undergraduates here today, he served in the First World War with the Coldstream Guards and was awarded the Military Cross. In devoting to the peaceful activities of public service, abilities that had been revealed on the battlefield, and in emulating the distinguished career of his father, Sir Alexander followed two of the finest traditions of the British peoples. Between 1929 and 1931 he was a member of the United Kingdom delegation to the League of Nations Assembly; in 1933 he was Secretary to the Royal Commission on Newfoundland; at the beginning of the Second World War he was Deputy High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in South Africa; he served as Under-Secretary of State in the Government of the United Kingdom from 1942 to 1946, and was then appointed High Commissioner to Canada. In a tense and troubled period Sir Alexander has brought to the duties of a most responsible position a sensitive and virile appreciation of those traditions of public service, in peace and in war, which we have inherited from the United Kingdom and which we are proud to share with the British Commonwealth of Nations, with the United States of America and with all nations that cherish freedom. I now present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, a man who as soldier, public servant, and statesman has ordered his life in the spirit of those whose devotion we honour today. Sir Peter Alexander Clutterbuck.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Milton Fowler GREGG, a great Canadian whose brilliant and valorous services in two world wars are matched by a record of no less distinguished public service in time of peace. He served throughout the first of these conflicts in the Canadian Army overseas, and, in addition to other distinctions, was awarded the highest military decoration that the British Commonwealth can bestow, the Victoria Cross. His was the rare distinction, shared by the late Hampton Gray of our own University, of winning this honour while still an undergraduate. Formerly President of the University of New Brunswick, at present Minister of Labour in the Canadian Cabinet, he has also held the portfolios of fisheries and of Veterans’ Affairs. In the last-named capacity he came to know, as few men can know, both the sacrifices made by those who went to fight for Canada and the problems confronting those who returned to the daily life of a troubled post-war world; by countless poignant incidents he has been reminded of what our country owes alike to the living and to the dead; and this knowledge he has matched with sympathetic zeal and sagacious energy. In honouring him we also honour those whose toils and dangers he has shared and whose burdens he has made his own.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Honourable Stanley Woodward, the Ambassador in Canada of the United States of America, our ally in two World Wars and in the efforts to preserve peace and promote human welfare through the concerted efforts of the United Nations. More than one personal tie binds our distinguished guest with those men and women whose memory we are honoring today; he was a wartime member of the armed forces of his country; and he, like them, accepted the responsibilities of service which have been the price of freedom.
The long time friend of Canada, with many Canadian friends and interests, Mr. Woodward has brought to his present post a varied and valuable experience gathered from his tours of duty abroad, and at the State Department of Washington; experience which qualifies him in personal knowledge and intellectual conviction to contribute to the all important tasks of our time – the preservation of freedom under law, and the promotion of human welfare.
In honouring him we pay tribute to the traditions we share in common, we acknowledge the generous spirit – symbolized by the Marshall Plan – which has animated the people he represents in the exercise of their world responsibilities, and we seek to honour one who has qualified himself to uphold those traditions and discharge those responsibilities.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you, Mr. Christopher Spencer, merchant, philanthropist and ‘founding father’ of this University. As a merchant, the name of Mr. Spencer has become intimately associated with the economic life of this province; as a philanthropist he has given generously to a wide variety of services for the welfare and development of this region; as a founder of this University, he was one of that devoted and far-seeing company which included Robie Reid, S. D. Scott, R. P. McLennan, Campbell Sweeney, Denis Murphy and R. E. McKechnie. He served on the Board of Governors from 1919 to 1935, and since then he has demonstrated his lively interest and support in a variety of ways, among others by making it possible, through a scholarship programme, for many young people of this Province to proceed to a university education.
In recognition of his contributions to the economic, cultural and educational life of the province, I take great pleasure in presenting a pre-eminent citizen – Mr. Chris Spencer – for the highest honour this University can bestow – the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you a distinguished graduate of the University of Sydney, illustrious alike as jurist, statesman, and authority on international affairs, Percy Claude Spender, the present Ambassador of the Commonwealth of Australia to the United States of America, and the former Vice-Chairman of the United Nations General Assembly, who has served both his own country and the growing international community with high distinction.
A scholarship student in economics and law, he has given generously of his great talents and energy to promote the interests of his Alma Mater and of a wide variety of public services in Australia, in addition to engaging in the political life of that Commonwealth. He has served successively as Minister for the Army, Member of the War Cabinet and Minister of External Affairs, before taking up his present position in Washington.
Because of his early distinction as a scholar and the later fulfillment of those scholarly hopes, in manifold contributions to Australian affairs and world affairs; because of his distinguished qualities of mind and heart, this University is proud to confer upon him the title and degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you an eminent scholar and a teacher of great distinction – Harry Ashton. As many of this audience already know, Dr. Ashton came to this University in its opening year – 1915 – and for the following eighteen years he served it with brilliance as the head of the Department of French. Possessing that richest of all possible academic combinations – polished scholarship and rare teaching ability – he quickly established those standards of excellence which are the foundation of our modern language instruction. His wisdom, his deep love and understanding of French literature and language, his sharp wit, his humanism, and his sympathetic guidance of promising students not only endeared him to those who studied under him but also inspired an unusual number of them to proceed to higher studies with a distinction that brought credit to themselves, honour to the University, and pleasure to him. In his own special area of study – the literature of seventeenth century France – he became, through his writings, a recognized international authority; and in 1933 he returned to his Alma Mater, Cambridge, where he taught until 1946, at which time he came once again to this campus to teach for two years in the difficult period following the war.
In recognition, therefore, of his attainments as teacher and scholar, and with special gratitude for the part he played in our birth and in the early years of our growth, the University is most pleased to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, upon its good friend, - Harry Ashton.
I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Roderick Langmere Haig Haig-Brown, a Canadian author admired and loved by a wide range of readers at home and abroad.
To children, he is the delicate interpreter of nature and wildlife, and the weaver of tales of adventure in Starbuck Valley or on the deep waters of the Pacific.
To practitioners of the contemplative man’s recreation, he is the complete angler of the new world, a worthy disciple of the kind and gentle Isaac Walton.
To admirers of the familiar essay, he is the author of The Measure of the Year, a work written with the sensitivity of a poet, the mind of a philosopher, the vision of a naturalist, and the literary power of a Gilbert White of Selbourne.
Through his shrewd observations of nature and man, he has developed for himself a way of life and a philosophy that makes use of the materials of history and tradition, to chart a course of our society now and in the future. Nature is to be lived with and enjoyed, not to be used merely for barter, or wantonly destroyed. Man can learn tolerance and increase his capacity for good from close observation of, and contact with nature. To him "a country is not words, but feeling, not logic, but ideas and much faith." In addition, through his own career as soldier, conservationist, and magistrate, he has allied the life or the writer, to that of the man or action. Mr. Chancellor, it is an honour to present one who has contributed, and is contributing, so much to the realization of a truly Canadian way of life – Roderick Langmere Haig Haig-Brown.
Read his convocation address....
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, ANNIE SARAH HODGES, a woman whose personal qualities and public achievements are both, in exceptional degree, engaging, individual and impressive. As a practising journalist and active participant in public affairs, Mrs. Hodges has demonstrated her far ranging interests, her quick sympathy, her independent and incisive judgement.
As the first woman every to hold the ancient and honourable office of Speaker in any of the legislatures of the British Commonwealth, Mrs. Hodges has brought to the execution of her responsibilities clear perception, humanity, impartiality, and a deep devotion to the public service. Upon no public servant can the honourable title of Doctor of Laws be more fittingly conferred than upon one whose task it is to preside over the counsels of the Law Makers.
Upon no person can it be more appropriately conferred than upon one who presides over the ever-changing process of the law with firmness, independence and a deep humanity.
Our University once again has the privilege, Mr. Chancellor, of paying tribute to a citizen of our great neighbour, a man whose outstanding ability and indefatigable energy have competently borne not only the burdens of an extensive practice but also the heavy executive responsibilities of many a legal, charitable, and religious organization, in his own beloved State of Ohio and in the United States at large.
In honour of the Bar of this friendly nation and in personal recognition of a leader in our great common law tradition, I now present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the President of the American Bar Association, Howard L. Barkdull.
The Senate of this University has directed me to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Georges Chresteil, Batonnier of the Order of Advocates of Paris. In him we honour a brilliant jurist, a lover of books and of gardens, an incarnation of those civilized qualities that make French humanism; but above all we salute a fearless opponent of injustice, a vigilant and eloquent defender of human liberty, and a man who drew from his stores of scholarly quietude the strength that transmutes vision into victory. In him we pay homage to the noble legal tradition that he has so valorously upheld – a tradition that reaches back through the ages to those great mediaeval jurists whose works brought glory to the French tongue and formulated for the French and for the Anglo-Saxons the lofty concept of liberty espoused to law.
Three centuries ago a great English poet, writing a treatise on education, declared that young men should so be trained that they might come forth out of a long war "renowned and perfect commanders in the service of their country"; they should also, he said, in time of peace "dive into the grounds of law and legal justice".
Mr. Chancellor, the eminent person whom I now present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, superbly embodies both these Miltonic ideals. In the First World War he served with distinction in France and Belgium, rising to command the Seventh Canadian Infantry Brigade. On his return to civil life he not only performed that dive into legal matters which Milton advocated, but continued swimming in that arduous element. If any proof were needed that a good lawyer can be a good soldier and a good citizen, we could well point to him as an example.
In conferring this degree on John Arthur Clark, President of the Canadian Bar Association, we are honouring one who, in Milton’s words, has performed justly, skillfully and magnanimously the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, a man whose boundless energy a crowded and successful career has neither exhausted nor monopolized, and whose genius for organization has been directed to public office wherever the need has shown itself.
We ask you, Sir, to adorn with the highest symbols of academic recognition a skillful judicial administrator who discharges with great skill and ability the duties of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Wendell Burpee Farris.
Mr. Chancellor, in a world in which the concept of freedom under law is frequently mistrusted, and much misunderstood even when admired, it is proper that we should pay tribute to the part which British institutions have played in its development and to the character and quality of those who are its guardians.
The record of John William Morris, as distinguished scholar, as gallant soldier, as eminent advocate, and as advisor to the Government of the United Kingdom as well as to many institutions in his native Wales, illustrates the quality required of those who represent the high tradition of the Common Law in the land of its origin.
I therefore present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, one who possesses the proud title of Lord Justice of Appeal – Sir John William Morris.
Mr. Chancellor, I am directed by the Senate to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Gordon McGregor Sloan, Chief Justice of British Columbia.
Ever since his return from the First World War Chief Justice Sloan has played a distinguished part in the legal, political, and economic life of our Province. Widely known for his reports on the forest and fishing industries, he is still better known for his sagacious and equitable handling of human problems. In presenting Mr. Justice Sloan for this degree the Senate of the University wishes to recognize the qualities of mind, heart and character which have prompted his many contributions to the professional and public life of this province.
It is most fitting, Mr. Chancellor, at this time when we are celebrating the official opening of our new building for the Faculty of Law, that I should present to you a man whose time and energy have been devoted to the study and the teaching of law in Canada and to its administration, both in this country and among the nations of the earth, the Right Honourable Louis Stephen St. Laurent, Prime Minister of Canada.
A career as distinguished as his, personally, professionally and publicly, is exceptional enough to satisfy even the most ambitious but when it is visited upon a man whose private conscience had prompted his public service it becomes a matter for public congratulation. Among his many distinctions, those most relevant to us here tonight are that he has served as Batonnier General of the Bar of the Province of Quebec, President of the Canadian Bar Association, and is now serving as its Honorary President – for life – or I presume – during good behaviour. He has held in the Canadian Cabinet the portfolios of Minister of Justice and Secretary of State for External Affairs before assuming his present responsibilities. He is a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. He took an active and influential part in the development of the United Nations and he was a leading architect of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when it became apparent that such a defensive alliance was necessary for the protection of western civilization.
In recognition of the contributions made to Canada and to the world by one who himself embodies and unites the Gaelic and the Celtic strains of our ethnic and cultural heritage, the University now seeks to add one more to his many honours by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Reginald Hibbert Tupper, an honoured soldier, and a barrister of profound learning, whose sensitive response to the claims of public service is an inspiration to all who know him.
He has a very special and particular right to be remembered and appreciated at this formal ceremony for our Faculty of Law. As Dean of that Law School which was the forerunner in British Columbia of such a Faculty, he laid the foundations for the later institution, and it is largely because of his planning and his activity that the transition was so smoothly accomplished. And now the Faculty of Law, along with the rest of the University, delights to honour that wisdom and that devotion.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Sir Stanford Cade, a most distinguished surgeon, medical administrator and research scientist, who manages to combine a rare faculty for creative research with that of recognizing and stimulating the research capacities of others. The author of many publications dealing with surgery and the use of radium, he has played a pioneer’s – and more than a pioneer’s – part in the world-wide attack against the ancient and terrible scourge of cancer. As a scientist he has given generously of his own knowledge and energy; as a medical administrator he has co-ordinated and directed the efforts of others throughout the Commonwealth and Empire. Like the fabled Prometheus, his hands wield for mankind’s sake the potent and mysterious elemental fires, and it is our pleasure at this time to offer the unconstraining shackles of honorary membership in this University, to this Titan among surgeons, and pioneer in a rapidly developing frontier of human welfare.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Brian Wellingham Windeyer, Director of the Meyerstein Institute of Radiotherapy and Professor of Therapeutic Radiology in the University of London. A graduate of the Medical College of the University of Sydney, Dr. Windeyer has had a brilliant career as research scientist and as pathfinder in medical education. Possessed of exceptional qualities of imagination, mind and heart, he has devoted those qualities to the development of a new branch of medical teaching, to the training of humane scientists, and to the alleviation of human suffering.
In honoring him, the Senate of this University wishes to pay tribute to a medical scientist of great distinction, and a teacher of exceptional quality; and to recognize the contributions he has made in his life and work to the academic and practical use of radiotherapy.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Denis William Brogan.
Few achievements, Mr. Chancellor, can win for an historian greater glory than goes to him who, through keen psychological insight, sapient perception of causes and effects, and masterly powers of expression, has been able to interpret the very soul of a nation. And this task Professor Brogan has brilliantly accomplished not once but three times. A Scotsman of Irish ancestry, he is the author of a famous book The English People – a work which, though written primarily to explain to Americans a great enigma, may be read with profit by every Englishman; he is universally regarded as one of the greatest authorities on the United States, its people and its institutions, and he possesses a superb knowledge of France and French history past and present.
The student who would understand something of the genialities, the asperities, the intricate or naïve anomalies of the English social structure, who would seek a guide through the bewildering jungle of American politics, or whose feet wander along that labyrinthine way which is strewn with the criss-cross footprints of French Administrations, may well look to Professor Brogan for guidance and orientation. This scholar’s works on social subjects are conspicious not only for a vast and detailed erudition, but also for a judicious reconciliation of two elements which for many people remain incompatible – the practical and the ideal. He has the happy gift of clothing permanent truths of history and statesmanship in a truly Protean variety of forms; of showing that ideals without intelligence can be as dangerous as intelligence without ideals, and that the raw materials of things as they should be consist, inevitably, of things as they are here and now. A fervent believer both in the power and in the duty of individual thinking, he has never ceased to warn mankind against the irrevocable surrender of authority, and against the delegation of sovereignty to any dictators, however efficient their performances, however benevolent their professions, however plausible their claims to infallibility. For his achievements in showing what three mighty peoples have done and may yet do, I ask you, Sir, to honour him in the name of the University of British Columbia.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you a native son of that great Province of Ontario which has given so much to our national life – a contribution in which he has taken a conspicuous role. After serving in the Canadian Army in the First World War, he devoted himself to the study and the teaching of history. Since 1925 he has been a member of the Faculty of the University of Toronto, where he now holds the position of Professor of History, and Editor of the University of Toronto Press. The author of widely-used textbooks dealing with Canada, especially with aspects of national growth and of democratic institutions, he is even better known as an editor of scholarly publications and as an energetic organizer of historical research. Few men have done more to co-ordinate the intellectual activities of Canadian historians with those of our country’s social scientists, editors, publishers, and the public in general. He has shown himself the opponent of complacent ignorance and of selfish parochialism, both in the life of Canada and in international society. Positive without being dogmatic, scholarly without pedantry or asperity, he has succeeded in making many friends for the studies that are so dear to his heart. In recognition of his constructive work in the intellectual life of Canada, I present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Professor George William Brown.
Again I have the honour, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you a distinguished son of Ontario and graduate of the University of Toronto, Professor Lower of Queen’s University, one of the ablest Canadian historians of our time. Unlike many Easterners, he by no means confines his interests to the regions between the Great Lakes and the Ottawa River, but is conversant with both the historic past and the economic present of the Maritimes and the Western Provinces. His studies of one of our main national industries, lumbering and its ancillary activities, have revealed both a thorough knowledge of a vast and complicated subject, and a patriotic desire that our national resources may be used with wise economy and a sense of responsibility toward later generations. This same love of his country and this desire for its welfare and progress permeate all his writings. Extensive as is his knowledge of Canada’s national resources, it is not in them that he sees the foundations of her existence, but rather in courage, tolerance, and magnanimity. To him, Canada is revealed as a supreme act of faith, as the incarnate resolve of a great people to build for itself an abiding habitation. For his eloquently-expressed belief in Canada and her people, and for his service in peace and war in support of that belief, he has been chosen, Sir, by the University of British Columbia to receive high academic honour. I now present to you for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Professor Arthur Reginald Marsden Lower.
It is my privilege, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you a scholar and teacher whose personal modesty and professional distinction have made him beloved and revered in academic posts in his native Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the special field of his studies and interest, the ever-troubled, ever-hopeful land of Poland. After receiving his degree in Classics from the University of Manitoba in 1905, he was among the first Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, and later became one of the first Anglo-Saxons since the Renaissance to qualify as Doctor of Philosophy at the ancient University of Cracow. As teacher he has contributed most generously to the scholarly and extra curricular life of Wesley College of the University of Manitoba, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and the University of London; in the last-named becoming successively Reader, Professor, and Head of the School of Slavic Studies. In 1950 he was appointed Visiting Professor in our own Department of Slavonic Studies, and during the past three years has contributed greatly out of the richness of his experience to the firm establishment of those Studies in this institution. As scholar he is an authority of international repute in matters Polish, and was for five years the editor of the University of London’s SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW. His keen appreciation of Polish character and civilization, coupled with his illuminating scholarly studies, won for him in 1936 the Laureateship of the Polish Academy of Letters. Nor have his contacts with Central Europe ever been exclusively academic. From 1920 to 1927 he was engaged in relief-work in Poland with the Y.M.C.A. A man whose Christian sympathies and humanistic appreciations transcend the boundaries of space and speech and creed, he has spent a lifetime in the service of civilization and the advancement of human kindliness. For his unshaken hope and unflagging energy as interpreter of culture; as servant of human need, and as Christian educator, I present to you, Sir, to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, William John Rose.
Mr. Chancellor, in presenting to you for academic honour a distinguished visitor from our nation’s capital, I feel that we are helping to pay tribute to a sound perspective of international relations, and to show that these are something more than guided missiles or explosive language around a council-table. A famous poet once represented Canada as saying of herself,
"My speech is clean and single,
I talk of common things –
Words of the wharf and the market-place
And the ware the merchant brings".
It is to this concept of international relationships that our guest has devoted much of his career as a public servant. A native of British Columbia, educated in Vancouver, Japan, Victoria and at McGill University, from which he graduated with first class honors in Political Science and Economics, he entered the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service at an early age and held posts in Russia, Roumania, and Germany. His reports, published a quarter of a century ago, are models of commercial intelligence, whether they discuss the prospects of Canadian overshoes in Denmark or describe the type of marine engine most popular with Turkish fishermen; nothing that was relevant was too small to deserve systematic and conscientious study. In 1932 he became Director of the Commercial Intelligence Service of Canada, in 1940 Deputy Minister of Trade and Commerce. Since then he has served as Canada’s diplomatic representative in Russia and Switzerland, as High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, and in various high posts in the councils of the United Nations. His public career has been inspired by devotion to the idea that nations live by commerce rather than by conquest, and that they are most truly themselves when they supply one another’s needs, without fear or hatred, in the market-places of a world at peace. In recognition of the soundness of this concept and of the sanity and balance of the man who has served it, I present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Leolyn Dana Wilgress, Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs.
I have the pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you for an honorary degree a graduate of our own University, Dr. Alfred Rive, who since 1946 has been our country’s High Commissioner in New Zealand. After serving with the Western Universities Battalion in the First World War, he entered the University of British Columbia, where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1921. His university record is one more illustration of the fact that brilliant and industrious work as an undergraduate is a sound basis for success in the wider world. He was the winner of several scholarships and of the Historical Society Gold Medal. Keenly interested in English literature, he was one of the earliest creative writers among our undergraduates. After obtaining his degree with first-class honours in Economics and History, he continued his studies at the Universities of California and Cambridge, and was on the faculty of Yale University from 1926 to 1929. In 1930 he joined the Department of External Affairs, and served for several years on the staff of Canada’s representative to the League of Nations and later as advisor to the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Assembly. In recognition of the qualities of head and heart that have made him a distinguished servant of Canada in peace and war, at home and abroad, I now request of you Sir, in the name of University and his, that you confer upon him the degree honoris causa of Doctor of Laws.
Read his convocation address....
It is my privilege and pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Frank Ebenezer Buck, former supervisor of Campus Development and Professor Emeritus of Horticulture, a man in whom energy, principle and humanity coexist in exceptional degree. From the year 1920, when he first came to us, right up to the present he has served the University in a double capacity – as a conscientious and efficient teacher in the Faculty of Agriculture and as a landscape architect and consultant, whose aim has been to create, to preserve, and to develop a University campus not unworthy of its marvelous natural setting. Nor has the assiduous pursuit of these two activities exhausted Professor Buck’s energy and enthusiasm. He has matched his achievements as a scientist with his record as a public leader. He was one of the original founders of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturists and has been the University’s representative on the Council of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia, a President of the Town Planning Commission of Vancouver, a most active member of our city’s School Board, and of many other boards and committees devoted to community service. Had our academic badge of honour been some form of personalized coat of arms, the armorial bearings conferred upon Professor Buck would certainly have had to include, somewhere amid their quarterings, the picture of a bee, for that alone could have symbolized alike his tireless, fruitful and ubiquitous activity. Yet equally fitting is it that the doctoral insignia should adorn his shoulders as his works have adorned our campus and to this end I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, Frank Ebenezer Buck.
I have the honour to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, a man who is known across Canada as a wise and moderate counsellor and conciliator, whose zeal in upholding the rights of labour is balanced by his farsighted concern for the welfare of our nation as a whole. He has long been connected with the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, which elected him as its Vice-President in 1931 and as its President in 1942. His wide experience and his practical wisdom have made him a tower of strength to many a national advisory committee on apprenticeship, on unemployment, and on other matters of vital concern to Canada and the world. I use that last phrase advisedly: it is no mere cliché when it is applied to a man who for many years has served in the higher councils of the International Labour Organization. He has been a member of the National Research Council for several years, and we at this University benefited greatly from his wise advice and fresh viewpoint during the time he served us as a member of our Board of Governors. In recognition of his contributions to Canadian labour, commerce, and industry, and of his work as leader, consultant and guide, the University desires to grant him here on our Pacific shores an honour that he has already received on the Atlantic coast, and to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on Percy Robert Bengough.
Nearly nineteen centuries ago, Mr. Chancellor, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work." A bishop, St. Paul goes on to say, must be vigilant, sober, apt to teach, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. What the Apostle’s requirements for an archbishop would have been, we have not been informed. However, Sir, we are acquainted with the career of the Church dignitary whom I now present to you, Archbishop Duke. Like many of us here today, he can claim the double felicity of having been born and educated on the Atlantic seaboard and of having made his home beside the Pacific. Since the year 1931 he has been Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver, and has revealed to men of all creeds his personal interest in our city’s multifarious life – its joys and sorrows, its work, its pastimes, its unemployment, its poverty, its sins, its present and its future. He has displayed a special concern for children and their education, and a never-failing readiness to encourage his younger workers in their missionary and social activities. His pronouncements on moral questions have been followed with interest and emotion by Catholics and Protestants alike, as they realise how sincerely he lives according to those high standards.
In presenting to you the Most Reverend William Mark Duke for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, may I venture on a few words of the traditional language of universities, a tongue once spoken, and indeed still to be heard, in the ancient city beside the Tiber?
Tibi, Domine, laetus adduco virum doctissimum atque reverendissimum, Gulielmum Marcum Duke, ut a manibus tuis honorem academicum, quo nihil maius, nihil clarius, nihil honestius possumus conferre, feliciter pro meritis suis accipiat.
(Translation: I have the pleasure to present to you, Sir, a most learned and distinguished gentleman, William Mark Duke, that in accordance with his merits he may have the good fortune to receive an academic honour as great, as distinguished, and as illustrious as it lies within our power to bestow.)
I have the honour to present to you, Mr. Chancellor, a leader of a great Canadian industry, a man whose career has been in sober fact what half a century ago would have furnished writers like Horatio Alger with material for fiction. The year 1915 saw him, still in his teens, joining the Ford Motor Company of Canada as a very junior clerk; on the first day of the year 1950 he became its President. After serving in the First World War with the 241st Essex-Scottish Battalion, he held various positions of ever-increasing responsibility in a great and growing corporation. In the Second World War he headed the technical group maintained by Ford of Canada in London, England, and worked in liaison with the British and Canadian Armies during the arduous and complicated period of planning that led to victory for the Allied cause in Western Europe. During the last four years he has travelled extensively, studying trends and conditions abroad, not only in Europe, but in Australia, New Zealand, India, and Malaya; he has been as eager to find new markets for Canadian products as he has been to maintain at a high level the manufacturing standards of his own factories. Many as are the demands on his time, he has not been too busy to devote his services to organizations working toward youth-welfare, industrial safety, and fraternal co-operation between one racial or religious group and another. I now present him to you, Sir, in order that our University may confer upon a great industrialist and public-spirited citizen, Rhys Manly Sale, the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
It is an honour for me, Mr. Chancellor, to present to you a man whose contacts with the life of our Province are both romantic and realistic. He is the son of a Frenchman who came out from Savoy in 1864, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and who after seeking gold in the Interior of British Columbia acquired some land near Merritt. He himself was born in Victoria and received part of his education at St. Louis College in New Westminster, but it is with the Interior that his long and useful career is inextricably interwoven. Few men are as conversant as he with the outdoor life of the Kamloops region and with its scientific, economic, and human problems. In that life he has been an aggressive attacker, a staunch defender, an indefatigable peacemaker, and a calm, genial observer.
It was under his leadership that the Nicola Valley’s regional grasshopper-control became an efficient agency twenty years ago and a guidance to harassed farmers as far away as Egypt. Equally vigorous was the movement he conducted against scrub, mongrel livestock, which he strove, and strove successfully, to replace with fine-bred cattle. In an area where competition for grazing-land reaches an intensity beyond the comprehension of most city dwellers, he not only worked out amicable arrangements with his own neighbours, but when among other men feeling ran high over the allotment of field and stream his decisions as an arbitrator won speedy compliance and lasting respect. He it was who fostered the idea of a range-research centre, which, established in a small way near Kamloops in 1934, was placed on a firmer basis after the Second World War.
Though he would perhaps disclaim the style and title of scientist, he has a true scientist’s passion for accurate and systematic recording. His diaries and scrapbooks, scrupulously kept since boyhood, are a veritable history of British Columbian ranching.
This man has called forth the best in others because he has not been satisfied with less than the best in his own aims and achievements. He has combined the traditional French qualities of sound conservatism and good craftsmanship with open-mindedness toward what is good and modern, and with the North American’s power to deal with the unexpected. He possesses immense energy without the lust for quick returns, and he can reconcile devotion to principles with loyalty to individuals. I present to you, Mr. Chancellor, this outstanding British Columbian, Lawrence Peter Guichon, that you may confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
Nearly two thousand years ago, Mr. Chancellor, the Roman poet Ovid represented Phoebus Apollo as saying about himself, in his capacity, as the God of Healing, opiferque per orbem dicor – "throughout the world I am called the Bringer of Aid".
These words spoken by and about a mythological character, might well be used to describe one of the distinguished guests whom we are honouring here to-day. Dr. George Brock Chisholm in his life and career has well illustrated that it is possible to espouse both scientific and humane values; and to serve loyally both one’s own country and the whole human family.
As a young man, he served as a combatant soldier in the First World War, rising form private to captain. He graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1924, and after advanced training, applied his skill to the practice of psychiatry.
In the Second World War he was successively Director of Personnel Selection and Director of Army Medical Services. In 1944 he was called upon to become the Deputy Minister for Health in the newly combined Federal Department of Health and Welfare. In 1946, when the World Health Organization was founded, both Canada and Dr. Chisholm were honoured when he was selected to launch this potentially important body as its first Director General.
That the potential importance of the World Health Organization became actual was in no small measure due to the qualities of mind and heart, and the indefatigable energy of Dr. Chisholm as a man who has advocated "a full partnership of the biological and social sciences looking to the emergence of a unified Science of Man which would provide for a concerted rather than a segmental attack upon his problems".
It is the tireless exponent of this ideal, a man who may truly be called "Help Bringer for the Whole World", that I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, George Frederic Strong – physician, medical administrator and leader in marshalling community resources for the relief of suffering and for human rehabilitation.
Born in Minnesota – a state noted for its contributions to the art of healing – Dr. Strong received at the University of that State the thorough training in Medicine, which his native ability has put to such excellent use. The energetic and effective leadership he has given in many areas of his profession has already resulted in his election to the positions of President of the Vancouver Medical Association, the British Columbia Medical Association, the North Pacific Society of Internal Medicine, President Elect of the American College of Physicians and – this year – President of the Canadian Medical Association.
Although a specialist in the field of Internal Medicine, with particular interest in Cardiology, he has contributed greatly to the establishment of the British Columbia Medical Research Institute, the British Columbia Cancer Foundation and the Western Society for Rehabilitation.
In recognition therefore of his professional attainments, his administrative capacities, and his personal contributions to the relief of suffering, I now present to you, Mr. Chancellor, Dr. George Frederic Strong.
Mr. Chancellor, long ago the Roman writer Ovid, abandoning his habitual flippancy, used the phrase malum immedicabile cancer – "cancer, an incurable evil". To-day we have with us a medical scientist and a gifted woman who has spent her utmost efforts to take from the description of this disease the word incurable.
Dr. Ethlyn Trapp was born in New Westminster, the daughter of a well-known and well-respected pioneer family. After graduating from the Medical School of McGill University, she did post-graduate work in radiation-therapy in Paris, Stockholm, Manchester, and London, and is now one of the leading radiologists of the North American continent.
In 1946 she was the first woman to be elected President of the B.C. Medical Association, and in 1952 was the first woman to give the Osler Lecture. In this latter year she was also elected President of the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
She is one of those who has been instrumental in developing modern cancer-treatment throughout this country and this continent, and has been inspiringly and consistently unselfish in giving skill and effort and support in combatting a terrible ravager of mankind.
In recognition of her achievements and of the generous and unselfish devotion from which they arose, I now present to you, Sir, for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Dr. Ethlyn Trapp.
Mr. Chancellor, to-day our University is greatly honoured by the presence of one of Canada’s most illustrious sons, our first Canadian-born Governor-General.
He has been a great national interpreter, who has lucidly revealed the very essence of Canada and the Canadian spirit, first, to the people of the United States where he was our country’s official representative from 1932 to 1935; secondly, to the people of the United Kingdom, where as Canadian High Commissioner from 1935 to 1946 he both saw at close quarters, and also participated in, the joint war effort; and, thirdly, to the people of Canada themselves.
As scholar, diplomat and servant of the fine and liberal arts, he has shown that a strong spirit of Canadian nationality is thoroughly compatible with, and indeed a vital element in, both Canadian readiness to accept an international outlook and Canadian membership in the Commonwealth of Nations.
Our guest, Mr. Chancellor, is aware, because of his own experiences as student, as teacher, and as educational administrator, how potent an influence is exerted by universities on the spiritual life of a nation. And his own words reveal this insight; the gifts of a truly liberal education, he has well said, are "intellectual honesty and a respect for ideas; mental alertness; clarity of thought and precision of expression, suspicion of the catchword, a critical sense which can detect the superficial and can distinguish the real from the spurious, the excellent from the second-rate; quickened sensibility and an awakened imagination; the ability to discern beauty and enjoy it."
In the name of The University of British Columbia, I present to you for the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Queen’s representative in Canada, and one of Canada’s great representatives in the world, the Right Honourable Vincent Massey.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, HUGH NEIL MacCORKINDALE, a man who over the past forty years has well served the educational life of this province and this city.
Coming to Vancouver in 1914 as a young graduate of the University of Toronto and teacher of mathematics, his association with the Vancouver school system has been continuous but for his service in World War I, with the Canadian and Imperial Armies.
As a teacher in this city, his exceptional energy, ability and forthright incisiveness early marked him for administrative responsibilities, and he was successively vice-principal, principal and superintendent of schools.
During twenty-one years in this latter office, his leadership has done much to win for the Vancouver school system a recognized place in the vanguard of primary and secondary education on this continent. A firm believer in sound scholarship, he has always striven for high standards of accomplishment, and has encouraged the professional aspirations of his teachers.
Holding that in a democratic society all young people should grow up in friendly association regardless of their educational aims, he has worked energetically for the combined, composite high school. Being persuaded that the child is significantly influenced by his physical surroundings, he has worked hard to improve school buildings and classrooms.
The significance of his work has gained the recognition of the teachers of this province, who this year marked him for the highest honour they can bestow – the G.A. Fergusson Memorial Award for Outstanding Service to Education in British Columbia.
In further honouring him, this University pays tribute to his wide and distinguished experience in both teaching and administrative capacities, and to the energy, persistence and insight which have characterized all his fields of activity in the public service.
Mr. Chancellor, on behalf of the University Senate, to the deliberations of which he has contributed generously and effectively over many years, I present Hugh Neil MacCorkindale, Superintendent of Schools of this city.
Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, The Honourable Joseph Roberts Smallwood, a son of the oldest of British Colonies, a proud Dominion, and an architect of the extension of Canadian confederation "from Cape Race to Nootka Sound".
In honouring Joseph Smallwood, this University on the Pacific wishes to pay tribute to the history of our sister province on the Atlantic, to the qualities of her people, and to the sense of history in the imagination of our guest, who contributed so much to the fulfillment of a British North American dream.
That the dream was fulfilled says much for the mutual respect, friendship and goodwill existing between the people of Canada and Newfoundland, but it says much also for the vision, persuasiveness and persistence of those who took the initiative in advocacy. Mr. Smallwood brought to this task a lifetime spent in knowing intimately the settlements and people of Newfoundland, in mingling imagination and practicality, and in practising the role of interpreter as editor and author.
For his vision and for the efforts with which he aided his vision to come true, the University now presents to you, The Honourable Joseph Smallwood, Premier of Newfoundland.
It is with the utmost pleasure, Mr. Chancellor, that I present to you today’s special guest of honour, a man renowned for the illustriousness of the office which he holds, for the responsibility which is his as head of a great group of Christian churches, and no less for his personal qualities and achievements as scholar, statesman, and citizen of the world.
Of his career it may be truly said not that he has sought out honours as that honours have sought out him. After a sound training at that celebrated school, Marlborough, he proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford, where his scholarly work in Classics and Theology still left him time for one of the university’s greatest athletic activities, rowing. After being Assistant Master at his old school from 1911 to 1914, he became at the unusually youthful age of 27 Headmaster of Repton School, and held this post through the trying years 1914 to 1932. In the last-named year he was made Bishop of Chester; in 1939 he was translated to the See of London, where his tenure of office virtually coincided with the Second World War, and led to the high position that is now his.
The most noteworthy feature of his career, it has seemed to many observers, is the mental flexibility with which he was to reshape his entire life at the age of 45, when at the call of duty he turned from an educational post and took on the heavy and unfamiliar duties of his first bishopric. This mental flexibility, this readiness to be guided by the needs of the present and the hope of the future rather than by any mere precedent however venerable, won for him recognition far outside his own communion, as when he was elected a President of the World Council of Churches. He sees the Christian world as a mighty host of moral and religious forces that are to be employed, in a world darkened by suspicion and envy, hatred and despair, for the glory of God and the development of mankind. He comes to us as the exponent of a great principle, that nothing so well conduces to real spiritual unity as a genial recognition and a wise direction of that diversity which is one of the Almighty’s most valuable gifts to the human family throughout the world.
And now I present to you, Mr. Chancellor, to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher.
To those of us who regard the British Commonwealth as a leader of the world along the paths of co-operation and mutual respect, there comes a very great pleasure when we have the opportunity to honour a man who has rendered loyal and efficient service in more than one of the Commonwealth’s component countries. Tonight we honour such a man in the person of Australia’s High Commissioner to Canada. And if these two countries feel keen satisfaction that one more distinction is added to those he now possesses, their pleasure is shared by a third Commonwealth nation, the land of his birth and youthful years. It was in New Zealand that our illustrious guest was born, and it was from the University of New Zealand that he received his first degree. He lectured in Economics and Commerce at the Universities of Tasmania and Melbourne for many years, and became Vice-Chancellor, as well as one of the leading founders, of the Australian National University. From academic circles he was summoned to many arduous tasks in the public service of Australia, notably as Economic Consultant to the nation’s Prime Minister, and as Australian Minister to China. His career has been a fine blend of public activity and scholarly productiveness: he has written copiously and authoritatively on finance, employment, inflation, marketing, and other important aspects of economics, and also found time to be visiting lecturer at three of the greatest Universities of the English-speaking world, Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. In our own country he has been honoured with the LL.D. by McGill, and in the United States with the degree of Doctor of Letters by Harvard.
We now have the pleasure and the privilege to add to his long list of distinctions the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, and to add to our academic community the High Commission of Australia, Sir Douglas Berry Copland.
If any proof were needed that the main highways of the world now run right past Canada’s doors, a most significant piece of evidence would be the man who now stands in a place of honour upon this platform tonight, Major-General Victor Odlum. He can in truth claim to be a citizen of the great world. Born in Cobourg, Ontario, he spent three years of childhood in Japan, and came to British Columbia sixty-five years ago. Before the turn of the century he had embarked upon a military career that few, if any, in Canada can match: he served for three years with the Canadian contingent in the South African War; he served throughout World War I with the highest distinction, and in 1916 had risen to be Brigadier-General; he served again in the darkest years of World War II against the Axis Powers, retiring from the Canadian Army with the rank of Major-General.
In the pursuits and activities of peace his record is a stirring example: he has been Canadian High Commissioner to Australia, Minister to China, Ambassador first to China, and latterly to Turkey. Less spectacular, but no less honourable or appreciated, are his activities in fields more local and limited – as a member of the Provincial Legislature, as a member of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, of Union College, and of our own University; and as a wise counsellor, experienced director, and tireless worker in a host of organizations devoted to public benefit, from the Little Theatre and the Association of Canadian Authors to the Vancouver Welfare Association and the Canadian Red Cross, and from the Boy Scouts to the Institute of International Affairs. A country which can produce such a citizen has long ceased to be parochial. In his own person he has taken Canada in peace and war to the outside world, and brought back to his native land a multitude of shrewd observations and stimulating ideas. And through all his many activities, responsibilities, and experiences he has remained modest and approachable, genial and humorous. If any institution can fittingly recognize the essentially youthful elasticity of mind that defies the crowding years, it surely is a university. And most fitting is it that our own University should honour a great citizen and exemplary public servant by conferring on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.