2001 Fredericton Encaenia - Ceremony B
Mulder, Nicodemus
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
Orator: Patterson, Stephen E.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 2001
NICODEMUS MULDER
to be Doctor of Letters
No, this Mulder has nothing to do with The X-Files. Nick Mulder is a management consultant based in Ottawa whose long career in the Canadian Public Service included service as deputy minister of four government departments. He is also, we may add proudly, an alumnus of the University of New Brunswick, one of the most successful graduates of his generation.
Nick graduated from UNB in 1962 with an Arts degree in economics. His yearbook entry refers to him variously as a "Mad Dutchman," a "quiet genius," an autocratic emperor, a world traveler and a "die-hard economist intent upon sallying forth to ruin the trade and commerce of Canada." Obviously there was some hyperbole here, but one can also catch a glimpse of the man who was eventually to become one of Ottawa's most powerful mandarins. Nick was born in The Netherlands and emigrated to Maugerville, New Brunswick when he was still a boy. He entered UNB with a prestigious Beaverbrook Entrance Scholarship in 1958, and he may be surprised to know that, housed in the Beaverbrook Manuscript Collection in the UNB Archives, is his hand-written note to Lord Beaverbrook, thanking him for his kindness and generosity, and, as he put it "hoping that this scholarship will not be wasted." One may well imagine that Beaverbrook, as tough on his fellow human beings as he sometimes was, would have been pleased with this one. Four years later, a considerably more confident Nick Mulder, now editor-in-chief of the 1962 Yearbook, was writing to the Beaver once more, to solicit his annual message to the students and to request his permission to use a new portrait of him. Something new, he said, would go with "the major revamping job currently underway in the rest of the Annual."
Those few words, "major revamping job currently underway," so innocently written nearly forty years ago, sum up Nick Mulder's career in a nutshell. Wherever he has gone and in whatever he has undertaken, he has focused on the dynamics of change: how to make sense of it, how to manage it, how to restructure to meet it, how to harness it. Given that his lifetime would be spent in an era of unprecedented change, he became for every government he served an indispensable man. After his bachelor's degree, he pursued graduate studies at UNB, the University of Illinois, and in Sweden. He then began his public career in New Brunswick as an economic advisor to the premier. When he moved on to the federal level in Ottawa, he emerged eventually as Deputy Minister of Supply and Services, of Employment and Immigration, of Environment, and of Transport.
His experience at Transport gives one just a hint of the sweep of his skill and imagination. During his tenure as Deputy Minister from 1994 to 1997, the Department underwent the most radical change in its 60-year history. These are the years of the new National Airports Policy in which most of Canada's airports were to be transferred to local airport authorities. Air navigation was transferred to Nav Canada in these years, a new national marine policy was developed, the coast guard was transferred to Fisheries and Oceans, and transportation subsidies were removed or drastically reduced. Ultimately, these were not his decisions to make, they belonging to those who were elected, but it fell to him to advise on and manage them all, and to restructure the Department so that it could meet its new mandate and define and respond to new issues. Out of it all, Nick Mulder emerged as a master of change.
In 1997, he left public life and assumed the presidency of Stentor, the alliance of Canadian telephone companies. Within two years, the alliance was transformed, effectively abandoning its collaborative role to permit its component partners to pursue their own course in the fiercely competitive and rapidly shifting environment of global communications. Under Nick Mulder's guidance, the old allies struck out on their own to form new mergers, alliances, and acquisitions. The objective was flexibility to deal with the new products, new technology, and new competition, all of which were redefining the very meaning of telecommunications.
Today, Nick Mulder manages his own consulting firm in Ottawa, offering clients his expertise in strategic planning, change management, and government relations. He finds time also for his community, serving as the chair of the board of the Ottawa Hospital and as treasurer of the World University Service of Canada, which he joined forty years ago as a UNB student. He has obviously never realized the dire predictions of his yearbook entry, has never been an autocratic emperor or advertently or inadvertently ruined the trade and commerce of Canada. On the other hand, his 1962 roaster was certainly accurate in imagining that Nick Mulder would one day wield power and shape Canada. With our warmest congratulations for a job well done, we salute Nick Mulder, economist, public servant, and brilliant manager of change.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
NICODEMUS MULDER
to be Doctor of Letters
No, this Mulder has nothing to do with The X-Files. Nick Mulder is a management consultant based in Ottawa whose long career in the Canadian Public Service included service as deputy minister of four government departments. He is also, we may add proudly, an alumnus of the University of New Brunswick, one of the most successful graduates of his generation.
Nick graduated from UNB in 1962 with an Arts degree in economics. His yearbook entry refers to him variously as a "Mad Dutchman," a "quiet genius," an autocratic emperor, a world traveler and a "die-hard economist intent upon sallying forth to ruin the trade and commerce of Canada." Obviously there was some hyperbole here, but one can also catch a glimpse of the man who was eventually to become one of Ottawa's most powerful mandarins. Nick was born in The Netherlands and emigrated to Maugerville, New Brunswick when he was still a boy. He entered UNB with a prestigious Beaverbrook Entrance Scholarship in 1958, and he may be surprised to know that, housed in the Beaverbrook Manuscript Collection in the UNB Archives, is his hand-written note to Lord Beaverbrook, thanking him for his kindness and generosity, and, as he put it "hoping that this scholarship will not be wasted." One may well imagine that Beaverbrook, as tough on his fellow human beings as he sometimes was, would have been pleased with this one. Four years later, a considerably more confident Nick Mulder, now editor-in-chief of the 1962 Yearbook, was writing to the Beaver once more, to solicit his annual message to the students and to request his permission to use a new portrait of him. Something new, he said, would go with "the major revamping job currently underway in the rest of the Annual."
Those few words, "major revamping job currently underway," so innocently written nearly forty years ago, sum up Nick Mulder's career in a nutshell. Wherever he has gone and in whatever he has undertaken, he has focused on the dynamics of change: how to make sense of it, how to manage it, how to restructure to meet it, how to harness it. Given that his lifetime would be spent in an era of unprecedented change, he became for every government he served an indispensable man. After his bachelor's degree, he pursued graduate studies at UNB, the University of Illinois, and in Sweden. He then began his public career in New Brunswick as an economic advisor to the premier. When he moved on to the federal level in Ottawa, he emerged eventually as Deputy Minister of Supply and Services, of Employment and Immigration, of Environment, and of Transport.
His experience at Transport gives one just a hint of the sweep of his skill and imagination. During his tenure as Deputy Minister from 1994 to 1997, the Department underwent the most radical change in its 60-year history. These are the years of the new National Airports Policy in which most of Canada's airports were to be transferred to local airport authorities. Air navigation was transferred to Nav Canada in these years, a new national marine policy was developed, the coast guard was transferred to Fisheries and Oceans, and transportation subsidies were removed or drastically reduced. Ultimately, these were not his decisions to make, they belonging to those who were elected, but it fell to him to advise on and manage them all, and to restructure the Department so that it could meet its new mandate and define and respond to new issues. Out of it all, Nick Mulder emerged as a master of change.
In 1997, he left public life and assumed the presidency of Stentor, the alliance of Canadian telephone companies. Within two years, the alliance was transformed, effectively abandoning its collaborative role to permit its component partners to pursue their own course in the fiercely competitive and rapidly shifting environment of global communications. Under Nick Mulder's guidance, the old allies struck out on their own to form new mergers, alliances, and acquisitions. The objective was flexibility to deal with the new products, new technology, and new competition, all of which were redefining the very meaning of telecommunications.
Today, Nick Mulder manages his own consulting firm in Ottawa, offering clients his expertise in strategic planning, change management, and government relations. He finds time also for his community, serving as the chair of the board of the Ottawa Hospital and as treasurer of the World University Service of Canada, which he joined forty years ago as a UNB student. He has obviously never realized the dire predictions of his yearbook entry, has never been an autocratic emperor or advertently or inadvertently ruined the trade and commerce of Canada. On the other hand, his 1962 roaster was certainly accurate in imagining that Nick Mulder would one day wield power and shape Canada. With our warmest congratulations for a job well done, we salute Nick Mulder, economist, public servant, and brilliant manager of change.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
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