Graduation Address

"An Address by James T. Black, Ceremony B" (19 October 1986). (UA Case 69, Box 2)

Chancellor, President, Chief Justice, your Worship, fellow guests, members of the faculty, friends and parents of the class of '86–Graduates.

My congratulations to all of you who are now graduates of the University of New Brunswick. May the year '86 always be as significant a year for you as it had been for all the people of the Molson organization across Canada. For us it had been a very active year, and we have been amazed to discover how many pleasant ways there are to celebrate a 200th birthday.

I am extremely honoured, to be here with you, and as one of you today, and happy to be able to provide a linkage between two 200 year old Canadian Institutions. There are not many, as I’m sure you realize, that could be so linked.

As you now know, my son graduated from UNB in 1974 in Business Administration. He was active in student life—or so he told us. I’m not certain whether you have heard of it, or even know anything about it, but for two years during Winter Carnival he was very much involved with something called the College Hill Social Club. For a while I thought it was a kind of learned study and debating society!

(Obviously you know more about that sort of thing than I!)

I have been an interested spectator of University life for several decades. Some decades have been more memorable than others.

Not too many years ago life in our universities appeared significant because protest was the most evident student activity. The decade in which many of you were born was marked by many years of protest and campus unrest.

When young people protest there are always those who wonder why, and there are even those who tell us why.

In 1966, during the course of his Massey lectures on CBC radio, Paul Goodman, the American Philosopher and author of "Growing up Absurd," said that young people were not looking for power in their protest as much as they were looking for meaning.

My understanding of 'meaning' is 'having intention and purpose.'

Your university years may not have been marked by the protest known in the 60’s, but I like to think that what Paul Goodman said was true, true then, and true today, and that you are also looking for meaning.

Experience and things said when your life was beginning may seem a long time back, but for a lot of us that era is just the other side of yesterday.

Today I am going to speak to you about making life meaningful—for yourselves and all with whom you have association. I speak to you who are graduating in a time not so much of protest but of uncertainty.

Is there opportunity and a place for you? Of course there is.

With all the needs our world has you will find that place—your place—in the corporate world, in small business, in public service, in your particular discipline, or in your vocation.

In whatever area of activity you enter you will find that there is opportunity for something that our country needs—a vital entrepreneurial spirit. And let me say that the further we go down the road toward more liberal trade arrangements with our major trading partners, the more crucial will be the need for that spirit, and not unimportantly for supportive government attitudes and policies toward entrepreneurship generally, and small business creation in particular. Entrepreneurship training at University level, something which is not now readily available in Canada, would help too.

Perhaps because there is no single definition, I find it difficult to explain exactly what I mean by an entrepreneurial spirit. It is easier to describe the people who have it. They are daring men and women who believe in themselves and in what they do, who are looking for challenges, looking for interesting opportunities, and have the courage and the confidence to try something new or different.

Fortunately you are graduating at the time when there is great support of individual initiative—greater I suspect, than at any time in recent Canadian history.

In June of 1983 a student in third year at York University, (an upstart institution of a mere 20 years existence), busy doing an economics major, was looking for a 'summer thing' as she puts it.

One thing she enjoyed doing was baking cookies—particularly chocolate chip cookies— using her grandmother’s recipe.

The student, Paige Sillcox is her name, borrowed $2,000 from student venture capital.

Paige hoped that she could sell 800 bags of cookies by the end of the summer—each bag containing a dozen and a half cookies, and pay back her loan of June 1st and make some profit.

To her surprise, by the end of the summer Paige was selling 800 of these bags of cookies a week (hold up the cookie bag) and she was able to pay back her loan well ahead of schedule.

By that time her mother had kicked her out of the family kitchen, and Paige had managed to rent a bakery in the dark hours of the night when its ovens were not in production.

Although my academic colleagues might not like to hear me say it, I must tell you that Paige says that she was "Much more fulfilled making cookies than she ever was going to school."

Today Paige and her eight employees produce 1,600 bags of cookies every day. They are sold across Southern Ontario and in the North-Eastern United States.

When asked what her biggest problem is she says, "Staff, people! It’s hard to have eight different personalities in a small area."

That "small area" is now her own rented space, baking with ovens which she has purchased.

Paige also says that she is "really busy, really satisfied."

This young lady also believes that there are endless opportunities for entrepreneurial initiate, "As long as," she says, "One is realistic about time, commitment, and depth of involvement."

I’m interested in her success and her self discovery—Her personally meaningful achievement, because her greatest challenge now is not the making and distributing of cookies.

Her challenge today is making meaningful, for the eight people working for her, the preparation of ingredients, the baking, the packaging, and the shipping of cookies.

This example of entrepreneurial spirit involves the creation of a new small business. But I believe that there is a need for, and room for, that same entrepreneurial spirit in the world of large business as well.

The enlightened entrepreneurial spirit—in however small or large an operation—must also be responsible.

You will discover as you progress successfully in whatever area achievement you may choose, that progress in business, in a profession, in a vocation—progress in any field is accompanied and conditioned more by responsibility than by power.

Many young people dream of success, of wealth. How I wish that they would also dream of the responsibility which accompanies success.

A foreman on the plant floor may often have more power than a highly ranked executive. Difficult as it may be to visualize, the executive many have more responsibility, may have more influence, but usually has less power. If the system is to work well, if their combined activity is to succeed, therefore, both the foreman and the executive must be committed to making everything they do meaningful. 'Meaning' which we have defined as 'having intention or purpose,' is not something we find lying around. It is something we make. 'Meaning' is what we give to life. It starts right where we are with what we do everyday.

'Intention or Purpose' are qualities you can give to everyone with whom you associate. For you and they cannot discover meaning in isolation.

Young Paige Sillcox says that she wishes she could do everything herself—all entrepreneurs wish that—but she cannot, so now she has eight employees for whom cookie production must be made meaningful.

She has discovered, incidentally, what most entrepreneurs learn, that if you want to give an entrepreneur a headache, give him or her lots of personnel.

Surveys of North American business tell us that the greatest challenge facing anyone in business, at any level, is the people factor, and in particular the challenge of working successfully and productively every day with those beside them, or senior to them, or with those who are junior to them.

Men and women in our world want, more than anything, job satisfaction, and some sense of independence.

They want to know that what they are, uniquely, is seen to be of value. They want to be respected for what they do.

And people respond directly to respect and appreciation. Lack of respect diminishes us, both when we receive and when we transmit it. Respect or appreciation, given or received, reinforces our sense of worth in this world. And making people feel worthwhile is not just another nice idea. It is a vital economic strategy.

To some, personnel problems may be their biggest headache, but working with people and being able to help develop their skills is also to so many, a great opportunity to give meaning and purpose to life.

An entrepreneurial spirit lends itself well and most obviously to a business situation—and this is the environment most people associate with entrepreneurship. But those same qualities are just as vital to success in a wide range of community projects, and non-business activities, as they are to a pure business venture.

Like many others, I have been able to become active in a number of organizations committed to furthering the well being of many facets of life in Canada.

At Participation House, our work was directed at keeping severely handicapped young adults with cerebral palsy out of an institutionalized way of life by helping to provide them with home-like accommodation and meaningful work opportunities.
Helping to introduce high school students to the free enterprise system and to entrepreneurship through the junior achievement programme has been another especially enjoyable and worthwhile experience for me.

And serving as chairman of the Niagara Institute was rewarding in a different way. The Niagara Institute is an organization which tries to bridge the gaps in understanding between business, government and labour leaders, and in that way to help find solutions to, or at least reach consensus on, some of the major issues facing our community. Some of that work may yet prove to be of benefit to many of you.

A lot of what I have seen done in these organizations has been very entrepreneurial and that work has been as full of meaning for me as I believe it has been of intention and purpose for those directly affected. What stands out for me from these experiences are:

• The courage of handicapped young adults coping cheerfully with a world greatly—and to the non-handicapped—frighteningly—different from the most of us are familiar with;


• The resourcefulness and competence of interested teenagers; and


• How minor, and even trivial, the real differences between different constituencies in the community seem once a way has been found to raise the constituency curtains.

If a meaningful, purposeful life is what you want, then in whatever you do, I encourage you to cultivate a responsible entrepreneurial spirit!

I have heard it said that "Life is 10% of what you make it and 90% how you take it." Well, I don’t think that’s good enough.

I know you can’t control all aspects of our life, but I’m absolutely positive you can do better than 10%. By making things happen! By challenging the status quo. By doing something creative, innovative or meaningful!

Along the way you will have an excellent opportunity to share with others the excitement and meaning you will have found for yourself.

May your life be filled with challenge, and with lively and meaningful response.

Thank you President and graduates for the privilege of speaking to you this evening.