Graduation Address

"Encaenia Address" (22 May 1986). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Your Honour, Madam Chancellor, Mr. President, platform guests and colleagues, Class of '36, and fellow graduates:

I am enormously honored and tickled to be here, - I say that to you from the very depths of my being. There are many memorable moments which I will cherish from this gathering and one of them, however marginal, has already occurred. I have been called many things in my life, usually by way of epithet and pejorative abuse, sometimes vaguely friendly, but I feel as though I've reached a kind of pinnacle of my checkered career to be called "Stephanum Henricum Lewis". My wife is addicted to Latin. She and I and the entire family are beholden to you forever.

I also want to say how pleasing it is for me to share this platform with a number of good friends and associates: with President Downey, who prior to this incarnation was, as you know, at Carleton University where my father at the time was a professor, and I can remember my father talking often and affectionately of your now President - and sharing the honors today with colleague graduates like Bob Shaw, who has become now a positively legendary Canadian figure; and Harrison McCain. Why my knees are fairly quaking to rub shoulders in an incestuous spasm of affection with Harrison McCain! Capitalism and Socialism linked together at UNB! And he dressed in pink and on my left! You see what a good surrogate Tory I've become.

I have to begin, however, with a friendly disclaimer. There is about my position here, Mr. President, a certain fraudulence. I attended four post-graduate institutions of higher learning, all, as they would tell you, of celebrated notoriety. I attended them over a period of almost six years, and I managed never to acquire a degree. You cannot imagine, therefore, how exciting it is to have this conferral of retroactive legitimacy. And for those of you amongst the graduates today who are worried about your future lives, don't despair - if all else fails there's always politics. And indeed, if that should be a quaint exercise in futility as well and you wait long enough and you have sufficient patience, there's always some Conservative somewhere to rescue you.

I have been in this job of mine for 18 months, and if I may I want to speak with necessary brevity of it and relate it to this moment in time. I would love to be able to talk knowledgeably and thoughtfully and with utility about the 200 years of academe and intellectual excitement and immense value which has accrued to the University of New Brunswick, but I am unable to do so with authority and so I can simply share the celebratory spirit with you. Instead I just want to venture on some brief reflections and some momentary thoughts without any particular homilies about what the future may hold.

I have been in the job as Canada's representative at the United Nations for a year and a half. I am a shamelessly strong devotee of that organization. I love the work of Canada's representative. One learns twenty-four hours a day as though one were a student yet again. The range of issues and materials which come before Canada is positively encyclopedic. And to be a Canadian at the United Nations is to inherit an extraordinary reputation and strength which attaches to our country which goes right back to the days of the Pearsonian tradition and those famous twin pillars of Canadian foreign policy of peace-keeping on one hand and aid to the Third World on the other. Canada as a middle power, working in consort with a number of other thoughtful and advanced and civilized nations in the world; Canada as a power which has roots in the Commonwealth; Canada which by virtue of its cultural and linguistic traditions has special access to the Francophonique; Canada which is a non-nuclear power by choice, one of the three countries in the world in 1945 capable of constructing an atomic weapon and a country which deliberately chose not to do so, and whose decision at that time is honored yea unto this day; Canada which approaches issues internationally with moderation, and thoughtfulness, and often, in the context of this irrational world, an enormous integrity. And to be at the United Nations for Canada when there is that sense of the country is not only easy to do but obviously an enormous pleasure to do.

And as I have evaluated the welter of emotions and feelings which plunge in on one in that period of time of the last 18 months, there's something which strikes me more strongly than almost any other, and that's the role of what we quaintly call non-governmental organizations - individuals and groups of individuals who come and lobby at the U.N. and make their feelings and positions known and speak passionately from the heart and with enormous strength about a whole variety of issues and are undeterred by the length of time which it takes to effect social change but animated by the quest for a more decent international community. And they knock on our door, and they never leave us alone, and they argue with lucidity, and they bring documentation, and they move us to different positions. And it made me understand as I have never understood in my adult life the value of an individual supplication – the value of individuals and groups speaking to those who have authority and making their presence felt - and that's obviously more crucial in the international arena than it is in almost any you can enumerate.

So if I can say something to my colleague graduates it would be simply this: take a chunk of your life - a small chunk if need be - a passing chunk, something peripheral, something marginal, but some part of your life - and devote it to matters which affect the international community. Devote it to matters which speak to the creation of a finer international society. Spend a little time - a week, a month, a year - on an on-going basis or as a mere fragment, and attempt to improve the world which you and future generations inhabit.

If you're obsessed with the cause of peace, then join an Operation Dismantle, or a Project Ploughshares, or the Lawyers for Social Responsibility, or the Doctors for Social Responsibility, or the Social Workers or Psychologists, or all of the various professional groups who spend periods of their life and time struggling around the question of human survival and see it as a quest which is not merely incidental but is somehow central to the work that they do. They don't disparage it - they are not smart-alecky about it – they see it as an organic extension of being a citizen of the world. Or if you are obsessed with human rights, then join one of those magnificent church groups in this country which work for change in Central and Latin America, identify areas of egregious violation of human rights for individuals and attempt somehow to persuade others to change it, to shift the positions of government - or that magnificent organization Amnesty International – or Anti-Apartheid groups around the country. Think of what it would mean to one's intellectual emotional feelings at this point in time to have been associated with the great struggle to dismantle apartheid in South Africa and to create in that most ugly violation of the human condition a democratic and decent and more gentle multi-racial society.

Or if you're obsessed with questions of economic development, then spend some time with Oxfam, or Catholic Relief, or Lutheran Relief, or Save The Children, or UNICEF, or World University Service of Canada - all those multifarious associations which have plunged heart and soul into the saving of hundreds of thousands - over the years millions - of human lives, whether it is the direct response to the African famine or whether it is a longer-term commitment.

I spent just one year of my post-university career wandering around and working in Africa, and to this very day I feel the impact of that as almost nothing else. It transforms one's entire Weltanschauung. It makes you look at the world in fundamentally different ways.

Or if, as so many are these days, you're obsessed with environmental factors, then there are Pollution Probe organizations and there are Anti-Acid Rain coalitions, and there are Environmental Law associations, and there are all kinds of groups - legitimate, authentic, fervent - and with enormous commitment to improve the human condition. I beg you as a friend not to lapse into defeatism and passivity. You've lived the life of the mind. By God, when I think back to it, there was no more exhilarating portion of life. I urge you to use it.

No one's asking people to save the world - merely to use the resources and strengths of this country to civilize it and to make of international society something a little more decent, a little more just, a little more humane. There is no better consecration of a university education. There is no greater celebration of a 200th anniversary.

I congratulate you and I salute you and I wish you every imaginable success.

Thank you.