President's Address

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT (30 October 1983 - UA RG 285, Box 1, File 4)

Madam Chancellor, Mr. Premier, Your Worship, Mr. President Emeritus, Mr. Chairman and members of the Board of Governors and of the Senate, members of the faculty and staff, members of the graduating class, prize-winners, ladies and gentlemen:

Although during its twenty-nine year history fall convocation in Fredericton has been a movable feast, this is the first time since 1976 that is has taken place elsewhere than at the Aitken Centre. We have made the change this year because, as splendid as the Aitken Centre is for spring Encaenia, when there is no artificial ice there and with five thousand people in attendance, it is a less congenial venue for the smaller fall convocation.

Neither on campus nor in town, however, is there an auditorium suitably large to accommodate the one thousand or so people we normally expect to attend the fall ceremony. For that reason, and to avoid the likelihood of having to limit attendance, we have chosen this year to have two convocations. This afternoon we shall confer degrees and award prizes to students in the faculties of Arts, Sciences, Law, Nursing, the Master of Education program and the four-year Bachelor of Education program. This evening we shall reward students in the faculties of Engineering, Computer Science, Forestry, Forest Engineering, Business Administration, Physical Education, Secretarial Studies and the one-year Bachelor of Education program.

We are pleased to be holding these ceremonies here in the Playhouse. The Playhouse is an important cultural institution in the life of this city. As such, its activities are a personal enrichment for many members of the University community and a complement to some of the University's own activities.

But there is another connection between the Playhouse and UNB which makes it an appropriate place to hold these convocations. The University, the Playhouse, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (which, splendidly expanded and improved, reopened yesterday) are linked not only by location and complementarity of activity but through a common benefactor - Lord Beaverbrook, and by extension, the Aitken family and the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation. We are pleased, Madam Chancellor, that through you, whose gracious presence always enhances our convocations, the Beaverbrook connection lives on.

The propinquity of these three institutions, and the events of this weekend, present a ripe occasion for us to celebrate the arts. Many things about Fredericton have pleased and impressed me since I came to live here three years ago. Nothing has impressed me more, however, than the variety and vitality of its arts and crafts. Best of all is the way this creative activity has been absorbed into the life of the city. A remarkably large number of people here practise an art or a craft, and none the less seriously or exactingly for not being professional artists. As a consequence original works of art are owned and proudly displayed by people who, in another environment, might have neither the means nor inclination to own them.

I believe that UNB has contributed significantly to this enviable state of affairs. Through its presence, and more particularly through the Art Centre and artists such as Pegi Nichol McLeod, Lucy Jarvis, Bruno and Molly Bobak, and Marjory Donaldson, the development of artistic talent and a local culture congenial to that talent has been encouraged and facilitated. And no one has done more to assist the Art Centre and to encourage painting than the woman we seek to honour today - Molly Lamb Bobak. Of course, the fact that she is also one of Canada's finest living painters was not at all a deterrent to our decision.

The value of the arts has been variously defined, and too often in such highflown language as to leave us feeling inadequate but unconvinced. Let me tell you simply and briefly why I believe they matter.

Someone has said that the secret of happiness lies not so much in having what we want as it does in learning to want and value what we have. For the most part life is not lived on the mountain tops or in the valleys, but on the plains of the commonplace. People worry sometimes about whether they can cope with great success or great failure, with great good fortune or with disaster. The truth would seem to be that people do indeed cope well with these rare experiences when they occur. Coping with the commonplace would seem to be the more difficult challenge. Familiarity doesn't so much breed contempt as indifference, indifference to the beauty and charm and intrigue of the people and things we deal with every day.

Ah, you say, it's all very well to talk about appreciating and valuing what we have, but how do we do it? How do we sustain a sense of wonder and enjoyment about things and people around us? How do we, as William Blake put it, 'see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower'?

I believe with Northrop Frye that the way we can do it is through educating our imaginations. Stocking our minds with the ideas, concepts, images and experiences that will permit us to sort out the authentic from the pseudo and respond accordingly. It is, in a sense, the true purpose and process of education. And in this process of educating our imaginations, I believe literature, art, and music - according to our interests and abilities - play an essential part. Who, having truly engaged Wordsworth or Bliss Carman, E. J. Pratt or Wallace Stevens, can ever see nature again as humdrum? Who, having truly encountered Boticelli, Blake, or Bruno Bobak, can ever be ho-hum about the human form again? Who, having truly listened to Mozart, Brahms, or Beethoven, can fail to hear and be enchanted by the music of the spheres? I'm not saying only the classics will do. For some the Beatles will touch where Brahms can't reach. For each of us, the avenue will be different, but the objective will be the same: to render us more aware and appreciative of the infinite variety and intrigue of the people and the world about us.

In extending to you who graduate today my warm congratulations and best wishes, may I, in the spirit of the day and the occasion, leave you with the benediction of a man for whom, at a dramatic moment in his life, routine reality was wondrously transformed and who, from then on, strove to make his life itself a work of art. The words are thos of Saint Paul to the Philippians: 'Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.'