Graduation Address

"Canada’s Role Lauded During Convocation" Telegraph-Journal (23 May 1987). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Canada has set a remarkable example for other countries in dealing with conflict resolution, Dr. Connor Cruise O’Brien said in his convocation address to the University of New Brunswick in Saint John on Friday.

O’Brien, an Irish diplomat to the United Nations, scholar, and writer on world problems, spoke to a full auditorium composed of resplendent dignitaries, graduates, their families and friends.

Around the world, Canada is seen as bringing a friendly, creative, disinterested mind to bear on issues, he said.

"Your country has played a greater role in relation to its size and resource, than any other country in the world."

At the UN, O’Brien described Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson as playing an "extraordinarily constructive role" in resolving the 1956 Suez crisis.

While conflict resolution usually means solving disputes through military force, he said there are other ways of solving problems.

"We should be thinking not so much about resolution, but deflection and displacement."

Reasoned methods don’t necessarily work, he said, referring to his own war-torn country, and sometimes reason precedes even greater conflict.

Some of Canada’s own successes derive more from "graduated, inspired unreasonableness" than from reason, O’Brien said. He suggested the bilingualism issue was defused, when it evolved into a debate over language.

In Saint John, inevitable, friction arose between the newly arrived immigrants and the Loyalists. And for their part, he said the Loyalists probably felt much the same about the American revolutionaries as Reagan must feel about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

"These, and other divergent communities here in Canada, did not see eye to eye, but managed to live together in constructing this country."

Turning to the graduates, O’Brien told them he was inspired by their university’s intellectual capacity and the students’ "joyous attitude" toward learning.