Graduation Address

"Encaenia Address" (23 May 1997). (UA Case 67, Box 3)

Your Honor, Mr. Chancellor, Madame President, Mr. Vice-President, Fellow Recipient Dr. Iles, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen and especially the Graduates, their families and friends:

Good afternoon:

Today, Dr. Iles and I share the distinction of receiving honorary degrees from the University of New Brunswick. This campus holds a soft spot in my heart because of the special students and faculty I’ve met here. I welcome your invitation to share my thoughts with you on your day and at this incredible moment in my life. This is also a memorable occasion for me because these remarks are the first thing I’ve prepared for a university for years that I didn’t have to reference!

The youngest of my three grandchildren, put things in perspective one day when I was leaving home for a class at UNB. She said, "Nanny, where are you going?" I answered, "I’m going to school." She replied, "But what do you need to learn?" It wasn’t easy to explain to her that learning continues no matter how old you are, and that for me, the University of New Brunswick had become the focal point for the professional and practical advances I made in nursing.

My journal has taken me from the slate-pencil technology, to the computer, and my career that spans from the iron lung of the polio era, to the sophisticated life-support systems of the nineties. The superiority of machines taught me the value of humanness, and faith in the human spirit remained my constant during all that change. As a nurse, I have spent a lifetime trying to help people make sense of their lives. Far be it for me however, to suggest to you that I have found any easy answers.

I do know that we all start out with different beginnings and no matter what career path we choose, our knowledge of life is woven by people and experiences. People are gifts to our lives. They challenge us, question us and support us in our darkest hour. What we become, I believe, is a combination of what we give to others, what others give to us, the choices we make and the chances we take and of course, the consequences.

Our formal education is the magnet that pulls our knowledge together to make it useful for others. A solid background in the humanities and social sciences helped me draw on the other kind of resources that we have, but that our resumes don’t reflect. For example, it helps me to remember that a childhood can be rich and have nothing to do with material wealth. My gentle father gave me a love for music; taught me how to draw the ships of the Bay of Fundy and when we rowed the Magaguadavic River in search of natural treasures, I learned a respect for nature.

My good mother constantly stimulated my mind and we developed the habit of reciting poetry as we went about our daily chores. When I tended the garden to the "Song of Hiawatha" or mourned the fate of "Evangeline," I gained much more than an appreciation of words.

A work ethic was given to me by caregivers, and homemakers like my mother, and women who packed sardines at Connor Brothers’ Factory in Blacks Harbour or picked commercial blueberries on the Pennfield Plains—and from men—like my grandfather, who cut and polished the Red Granite from the quarries in St. George, and those who labored in the Pulp and Paper Mill.

I learned about giving to others in 1939, when the peace and quiet of our little town was disrupted. Young me, I knew went away to war and didn’t return. I watched resourceful women stretch rations and expand their roles. I learned that commodities and lives are at-risk when people don’t pull together.

I took a big chance on nursing but it was the right choice for me because it’s where science and human nature meet. I learned that a nurse’s caring involved a combination of actions, medical science and technology—but that caring is also a feeling.

My decision to move from a student nurse in hospital service, to a student nurse in education at UNB, advanced my ability to take my caring to another level. Timing and circumstances influence one’s choices and I couldn’t further my nursing education until the same year that my son entered UNB. Trust me. The only thing worse than being on campus with your mother, is being there with your son!

Because I was a child of the Depression, and a woman, I didn’t learn the significance of the phrase "Show Me the Money!" that gained popularity from the movie Jerry McGuire. Instead, early in my career, I identified with the altruism of Nurse Hana, a character in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Nurses, even in difficult times, continue to give patient-care services priority over personal gain.

Nurses, I soon discovered, were a misunderstood lot. The passive, institutionalized nurses that I read about, or saw in movies, were not from the nursing world I understood. Granted their history is the history of women, but New Brunswick nurses represent women, and men of many ethnic origins who expand their practices on land, sea and air. They are generalists and specialists who work as advocates, business managers, practitioners, educators and researchers. In this province, nurses set a unique example of Canada’s two main cultures sharing and consequently growing together. Nurses’ work however is often unseen, or their skills are unnamed, and a system doesn’t value what it cannot see. New Brunswick nurses are leaving the system, and our Province, which affects us all and I can’t ignore any opportunity to advocate for them.

I owe nursing the privilege of sharing people’s inner most thoughts, and I was humbled by the courage of women and men who I saw make the most out of little scraps of life. Through the confusion of alcoholism, the stigma of mental illness and the unfairness of cancer, I saw the invincible human spirit prevail. But it is time to look beyond a nurse’s humanness.

Nurses will be your primary caregivers when you are sick and aging. In our province they have already demonstrated their caring concern. What people need to recognize now is their struggle to maintain their independent decision-making. Nurses still have to earn the respect of colleagues, as they manoeuvre around obstructions with diplomacy and a sense of justice. We also need to revive our brilliant history of Public Health Nursing. Public Health Nurses focused on prevention, education and purposeful change; from this work I also learned, that beyond talking and listening in one’s daily life, there is a great need for negotiation, partnering and alliance-building both within and between groups and communities, and in many business that’s what a healthy relationship is about.

As the keep of New Brunswick Nursing History, I am reminded that at every turn of the economy, nurses were called upon to contribute to the life of our people. This was not however, always a solo effort but rather a process where all parts and persons were inter-related. Beginning in 1888, nurses of the Saint John General Public Hospital recognized the great need for cooperation between co-workers. They knew, way back then, that talking is useless if no one makes decisions.

One way or another, we are all in the "people business." Today it is more important than ever for people to have choices—particularly when they are ill. Nurses learned long ago that everyone benefits from a system that focuses on workers who are willing to share their competencies and concepts. Nurses today know when to be leaders and when to be followers.

There are times however, when everything changes and we never face life the same any more, and all the preparation you have for life is thrown into chaos. Two such times for me involved respecting the rights of both parents by helping them die, from cancer, at home and without life support systems. This sadness helped me better understand my spiritual beliefs—something that we all experience, sooner or later.

I am in awe at the high tech world we live in and proud that New Brunswick stands tall in this arena. But there is no facsimile reality for life and we must be vigilant lest we lose sight of our people skills, or forget that this province’s greatest natural resource is its people. Sophisticated, high tech systems risk becoming dysfunctional without the caring interaction of women and men.

This is not the day however, to dwell on the serious issues of the world. This is a time for celebration to commemorate an important plateau that you’ve reached in your life-learning. No matter what choices you make, or chances you take, I hope you will share your knowledge. What you know and how you use it—humanistically— will be your main security in a very complex and fast-changing environment.

On New Years’ Eve 1999, my wish for you is that you will be employed, and in New Brunswick. I hope that you will have found the resources you need in your particular field, to develop your creativity, and to reward your diligence. I hope that you will be active in both your alumni and professional association and, if you have decided to take a life’s partner, I hope that you are as lucky as I am.

In 1949 when I taught eight grades in a one-room school in Charlotte County, for $48.00 per month, I relied on my trusty carbon copier. In June, when I represent UNB nurses at an International Conference in Vancouver, I will present research on nurse imagery on C.D. ROM. Today I am also in a position to help other UNB nurses through their wonderful Master’s Program.

The voices of nurses from the University of New Brunswick are being heard nationally and internationally. In most arenas of health care, they have already "been there and done that" but, for many of this Provinces’ nurses their efforts and capabilities remain unrecognized. I share my honor today with them, and with other women, many of whom are nurses, whose contributions to society given free and freely, day after day, make New Brunswick a better place for us all.

A group of students at Oxford University heard that a famous author was charging his publishers $1.00 per word. They sent him a dollar bill with this request "Please send us your best word." The author kept the dollar and sent back a one-word telegram which read "Thanks!"

At this moment, I can think of no better word to express my feelings to UNB, its Board of Governors, to nursing colleagues, my supportive family, Raymond, Matthew and Leslee, and my faithful friends. Congratulations alumni sisters and brothers, and my deepest "Thanks" for this day.