Graduation Address

Donald F. McAlpine

29 May 2026 Encaenia address, University of New Brunswick, Saint John

Mr. Chancellor, Madam President, members of the Board of Governors, families, and most importantly, graduates.  I’ll start with a quote. “Everybody, I suppose, likes to dream…There is one matter on which I love to dwell more than upon any oth­er, and that is the great survey…to make known [New Brunswick’s]… scientific phenomena down to their minutest features…the geology, meteorology, botany and zoology of the province." These words, published nearly 125 years ago, are those of notable New Brunswick natural scientist, historian and cartographer, Dr. William Francis Ganong. Yes, of Ganong Hall fame. I’ve been exceedingly fortunate in my life in that I’ve had the opportunity to help realize something of Ganong’s dream through my work as curator of zoology at the New Brunswick Museum. Like Ganong, I’ve had the privilege of traveling some of the most beautiful waterways in some of the most remote parts of this province, observing, recording, and eventually writing and publishing about a variety of New Brunswick life-forms.  Of course much has changed since Ganong traversed the rivers and high ground of New Brunswick, but thankfully representative forests and wetlands are now protected through provincial legislation and non-profits like the Nature Trust of New Brunswick and others. 

Increasingly, I find myself thinking back to 1965.  I was nine, and having perhaps exhausted my mother’s patience with raincoat pockets full of earthworms rescued from the streets and a bedroom populated with old bird’s nests, dead insects, live snakes, and random animal bones, she took me to the New Brunswick Museum. What to do with this boy? He never sat still, he struggled to learn to read.  I remember being ushered into the office of the great New Brunswick birdman, Dr. Austin Squires.  Everything in that room seemed to be of consequence – the shelves of books, the amazing skeleton of a 6-legged frog in a jar, a small microscope amidst stacks of dried plant specimens, and a glass of clear fluid on a shelf- well, perhaps not that glass on the shelf. I still feel the sting of embarrassment, after I asked breathlessly what it was and the man looming over me explained, with just the hint of a smile, that it was glass of water - in case he got thirsty. Later, I would meet Dr. Stanley Gorham, the New Brunswick Museum Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, who would distinguish himself producing the first modern checklist of the then 3,500 or so species of world amphibians. Although little lauded at the time, such checklists are now central to species conservation efforts.  How he managed such a feat pre-internet and with the limited resources available to him at the provincial museum at the time remains a testament to tenacity. The task occupied him for decades, while he gave me free run of the museum’s zoological collections.  The naturalist David Christie succeeded Austin Squires, shortly after which I became a fixture at the Museum.  It was a red-letter day when I was finally compliant with the sign in the elevator that stated “must be at least 12 years old to operate” and could get myself to the top floor of the old Douglas Avenue building where the natural history collections were housed without trudging up three flights of stairs.   By the time I was 14 I had a key to the massive oak doors that fronted the Museum so I could get into the building to work in the herbarium on weekends when the Museum was closed. By then I was joining David for bird counts, crawling under the fence at Saint John’s Howes Lake dump at daybreak to count gulls in -20 degree weather.  

The pattern here?  I had a lot of help finding my way. The idea of the self-made man or women is a myth.  You’ll need help on your journey too. Perhaps you’ve already found that help here at UNB, but if not, seek it out where you can. Accept it. Acknowledge it. Some five decades after squeezing under that fence at the dump with David, I toured a young frog biologist around the collections of the New Brunswick Museum. With the opportunity to examine life’s diversity in all its glory laid out in front of him, he described it as his “Come-to Jesus-Moment”.  I would urge each of you to search for your own Come-to-Jesus-Moment.  While you may not find it, as I have, in a pocket full of earthworms or a festering whale carcass, I believe that in subsuming the ego to something greater than the self is where true happiness lies. In closing, l return to the words of Dr. Ganong - “A man’s [or a women’s] ideal relationship to his [or her] community is not to make his [or her] living from it, but to do it the greatest possible service”.  Thank you for this great honor, and I wish each of you the very best in your journey ahead.