Alumni Oration

"The Alumni Oration" University Monthly 31, 7-8 (May-June 1912): 327-328. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

On rising to address the large audience at the Encaenial Proceedings, Hon. George E. Foster was greeted with much applause. He began by disclaiming all right to the title of Orator, although his efforts were to be named an Oration. After getting on good terms with his audience, Mr. Foster referred to the fact that forty-seven years ago he first met his Alma Mater, and that he rejoiced that he had been offered an opportunity of revisiting the place which had many charms for him.

He had entered the walls of the university with little baggage, but that little had included his hopes, his aspirations and his ideals. Those items of baggage, although they had been sorely knocked about during the half century which almost had elapsed since the time mentioned, he still had with him.

He particularly urged the graduates never to lose their ideals. They were about to enter a greater university in which they should strive to do their best, and let them remember that they owed a duty to themselves, but more particularly to society.

Canada was a great country. He had seen her grow since his college days from a mere number of segregated communities. She was facing great problems which could be solved truly, only through the exertions of the rising generations. Let them remember that theirs was a trusteeship on which depended the circumstances of life of unborn generations.

Hon. Mr. Foster made a forceful appeal for plainer living than that now in vogue. He denounced the present age as one of needless extravagance on the part of those who possessed wealth, although a large portion of the world's inhabitants were living in poverty.

He regretted that the University of New Brunswick had not yet among her graduates men sufficiently endowed with this world's goods to give a considerable portion to their Alma Mater, and he expressed hope that fortune would see fit to produce in the graduating class before him a number of millionaires. It was too late in life for him to hope for riches, but if he should obtain such he would say that a portion would go to his college.