President's Address

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT (24 May 1985 - UA RG 285, Box 2, File 6)

Your Honour, Mr. Premier, Distinguished Guests, Faculty, Students, Staff, and friends of the University.

On behalf of the Board of Governors and the Senate of the University of New Brunswick I should like to welcome everyone to this 11th Spring Convocation, especially the graduands. We're delighted you came. Believe me, it just isn't the same when you don't show up.

The University from which you will graduate today is about to commence celebration of its bicentennial. It all began two hundred years ago here in Saint John when Governor Thomas Carleton signed an Order-in-Council to establish a provincial academy of arts and sciences. That academy would in the fullness of time become the University of New Brunswick with campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, each with its own academic character and still evolving traditions, and sharing the benefits of a maturing relationship.

On the eve of our third century we have much and much reason to celebrate. Most tangibly and immediately, here on this campus, as a result of the generosity of the Summer Games Committee and the city of Saint John, we have a splendid new track and field facility. In less than three months the track and field stadium and this building will be filled with Canada's finest amateur athletes, competing in the 1985 Summer Games. The addition of the stadium to the campus and the improvements that will be made to the Athletics Centre in which we sit will be great assets to our intercollegiate sports program long after the last cheers have died away. These new facilities will help to make university life more interesting and our campus more attractive. And they are another, tangible proof that in its twenty-first year UNBSJ has come of age.

But there are other, even more important indications of that. In the development of its programs of instruction and research, in its administrative arrangements, in its response to the Saint John community, this campus has shown measured and continuous growth and purpose.

How appropriate and timely therefore that on Wednesday of this week the Board of Governors, on recommendation of the University Senate, gave approval to a set of recommendations from the Committee to Review Inter-Campus Relations that will, when implemented, give this campus the measure of autonomy commensurate with its stage of development. This greater autonomy, which includes a separate Senate for Saint John, reflects well upon the faculty, students, and administration here, but it is also a tribute to the understanding and trust of the members of the Senate and the Board who wish to see this campus flourish. The new administrative and governance arrangements which will be set in place will, I believe, allow for the continued maturing of relations between our two campuses in the context of a single University of New Brunswick in whose rich traditions, fine achievements, and promising future we can all take pride.

We have good reason to celebrate today, and we should and shall. But life is seldom unmitigated anything, and it would be remiss not to acknowledge the absence of two people today whose reason for not being here is bereavement. For Vice-President Condon it is the death this week of a close brother; for our Chancellor, Lady Aitken, it is the recent death of her husband, Sir Max Aitken, who was himself Chancellor of UNB for Sixteen years. Just as their thought and good wishes will be with us, so our prayers and solicitude will be with them.

they have both asked that I extend their warmest best wishes to all present, especially to the graduands. In doing so, may I also add my own and those of the entire University community.