Graduation Address

"UNB Graduates Largest Class In Its History" Telegraph Journal (20 May 1977). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

"To many of you, I believe I have to offer sympathy – sympathy on the lack of a job in which you can put your capacities to work," Dr. Dunton told graduates in his address.

"The employment prospects for new graduates this spring are probably the worst than at any time since the 1930s. And they were pretty bad then. I know from personal experience."

He urged graduates not to lose heart and to keep looking hard as well as be ready to take any chance to start that came along.

"Today, the integrity of Canada is threatened as it never has been before," he said. "The government of the largest and second most populous province is determined to do everything it can to withdraw that province from confederation."

"The majority of the people of Quebec do not yet agree but I believe we must realize there is a clear and imminent danger of separation, with all the disruption that it would cause. Whether the break takes place or not will depend on how some million of Quebecois make their personal decisions in the near future."

He said there were three ways people viewed Canada. First, Dr. Dunton told the graduates one view of Canada is as an essentially English-speaking country although the French Canadians have some rights in Quebec and a token place in Ottawa on language. This view also assumes Anglophones have important privileges including a dominant economic position in Quebec.

That, he said, offers no hope of keeping Canada together.

He said a second view is that Quebec is the sole stronghold of French-speaking people and all the rest of Canada should be "nonsense English-speaking." But this view also increases the chance of separation on territorial lines.

He said he believes the only hope for Canada lies in an equal partnership between French and English-speaking Canadians, but it cannot be an equality in numbers or in weight.

He told graduates that under an equal partnership, there would be a real place for French in federal institutions, French would be the main language of work in business in Quebec and francophone minorities in other provinces would have the same rights and privileges as the Anglophone minority in Quebec.

"The individual decisions of the uncommitted Quebecois are bound to be deeply affected by their perception of the Canada in which they are asked to continue membership," he said. "Does it offer a truly fair deal to French-Canadians, individually and collectively? Is the talk of partnership real or false?"

He said the rights of francophones outside Quebec will have an important bearing of how people in the province now uncommitted to separation view the prospect of a fair deal within Canada.

Dr. Dunton praised New Brunswick for what he termed "a major contribution to confederation" when declaring French an official language in the province and castigated Ontario for not taking a similar step for its francophone population.

"Indeed it may turn out that Quebec is lost to Canada because English-speaking Canadians have been so slow in recognizing the needs of a recognizably fair partnership," he said. "This will be sad, because it will represent the failure of a majority to go far enough quickly enough to meet the needs of a weaker minority."

He said he believes there is still hope for saving the integrity of Canada, but it does not lie in vague speeches "about the glories of unity." Instead, he said, "it depends on English-speaking Canadians in every possibly way showing, by action and concrete statement, that they want a fully fair deal for French-speaking Canadians in and outside Quebec."

"Perhaps," he said, "instead of Canadian unity we should start talking about Canadian duality – a recognized equitable duality. From such an enduring duality could and should come immense strength and quality for a potentially great country."