Graduation Address

"Address to Graduates" University Monthly 37, 6 (May 1918): 177-179. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduating Class of 1918:
Fifty years ago, at the Encoenia of 1868, being then a youth of eighteen years of age, I, as you are about to do, left these halls, after a very happy, and I think I may say with becoming modesty, a fairly successful University career. I had graduated in the Arts course, and the best perhaps that could be said for the education which I had received up to that time was, that I had learned something of how to learn, and when I entered upon the study of law, I found that the mental training which I had received here during my three years' course—the term then necessary to obtain a degree was three years—was of enormous advantage in enabling me to prepare for the practice of the law, in which I was determined to engage.

In my work as a lawyer, and in political life, I have found my college training of the greatest possible value, and I attribute it in large measure to whatever success I have been able to achieve along these lines. The fact that, as Lieut.-Governor of the Province, I have the privilege of presiding where I was at one time a student, and that I have had fifty years experience of a very strenuous life—of a life full of active combat, of many hard struggles, and have achieved a fair measure of success, affords, I presume, the justification for my being asked to address a few words to the graduating class.

A long and strenuous professional and political career ought to qualify one to give advice to those who are about to try and solve the problems of life, and yet how easy it is to fail in giving advice that will be of real practical value. It is easy to extol the virtues which are inseparately associated with success. It is easy to say that under all circumstances, honesty is the best policy, and that energy, perseverance and industry are essential to success. To tell you this is merely to state platitudes with which you are all familiar.

The vast majority of those who have in the past graduated from this and other similar institutions of learning, have, it may be taken for granted, been dimly impressed with the truth of these statements and have been resolved to live up to the standards thus set. Why then, have so many failed to achieve that success, which they have apparently so ardently hoped to attain. As I look back over these fifty years, I am deeply impressed with the recollection of many of my college chums, and of the members of succeeding classes who failed to achieve the standard of success which it was fondly hoped they would attain, who can truly be said to have fallen by the wayside. When they graduated they were the pride of their families and friends, by reason of their great natural ability and their splendid record at college. They had the ambition to succeed and their mental equipment was such as to warrant the hope that they would accomplish great things in the world. Why, then, did they fail? In the majority of cases, in my judgment, through the lack of will power—the will power which enables a man or woman to determine resolutely as to his or her best life work, and to strenuously refuse to be turned there-from—the will power to resist the numerous temptations to indulge, not alone in vicious pleasures, but in apparently harmless ones to such an extent as might interfere with the successful accomplishment of their life work. The will power to refuse to allow the attention to be diverted into too many channels—by having, to use a homely but
expressive phrase "too many irons in the fire"—the will power definitely to plan out one's career, and having done so, to go on year after year, with brave heart and untiring zeal, to make the career so chosen a successful one. Great natural talents, which enable a boy to shine at school and college, may, if they are too much relied on, prove a drawback in the long, hard pull along the pathway of life.

In my profession I have seen men of most brilliant natural mental gifts outstripped by men of much less natural ability, but possessed of an indomitable will power, and with an unlimited capacity for hard work. We often speak of some man as being a very able lawyer, and the frequenters of the court room are amazed at his grasp of the evidence, and the clear and convincing manner in which he presents the facts and arguments for the consideration of the jury and the court. If we inquire as to the secret of his success, we will find that in his office or his home he has spent many a tiresome hour mastering every detail of his case, and for forensic triumph is often much more due to his untiring industry than to what are usually spoken of as natural talents.

So, if I were asked to state the four things most essential to success in life, I would say: First, development of the will power; second, hard work; third, hard work, and fourth, hard work.

You, the members of the Graduating Class of 1918, are now about to pass the great upstanding milestone of your career. As your mothers and fathers have watched your course thus far with tender love and prayerful interest, which have inspired you to earnest effort in order to bring happiness to the loved ones at home, so from this time your Alma Mater will watch your career with deepest interest. My hope is that, as the years roll on, the class of '18 may be pointed to as a class of true and noble men, and true and noble women, inspired by the loftiest ideals, who shall have brought enduring happiness to themselves and their friends, and rebected credit upon those who have trained them for life's duties, within the portals of this sacred temple of learning.