1996 Fredericton Encaenia - Ceremony B
Wade, Jennifer A. Prosser
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
Orator: Patterson, Stephen E.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 1996
JENNIFER WADE
to be Doctor of Letters
When Jennifer Wade graduated from UNB in the 1950s, she might easily have chosen the road that most of us choose: job, family, personal satisfactions and a comfortable detachment from the world's problems. But she is not that kind of person. Instead, she devoted her life to human rights work, most of it as a volunteer, fighting for the underdog and speaking for the inarticulate.
A number of early experiences shaped her resolve. She was in London taking her MA in English when she first became acquainted with the newly formed Amnesty International. The way it exposed human rights abuses throughout the world suggested to her that her creative writing skills could give voice to her own developing conscience. Later at the University of California at Berkeley she experienced the Free Speech Movement, and then, while teaching writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the Civil Rights Movement. By now, she was a wife and mother, but the struggle for racial justice captivated her. She joined a civil rights organization, wrote reports for them on violence and racism, and met Martin Luther King. To some white southerners, an outsider who worked with blacks was considered a communist; one day she found her car spray-painted with the words "Limey commie."
The risks, however, have never deterred her. Since then, wherever, she has gone, she has defied convention, challenged the status quo, and taken up the cause of the powerless. In New York City, Halifax, and Vancouver, she worked with immigrant families; in Pakistan, she helped build schools and find books for libraries. Everywhere she has made children her primary concern: she has worked for the Canadian Save the Children Fund and Children's Aid, written about the crisis in foster care, and through the Elizabeth Fry Society, has championed the cause of the children of women prisoners.
Today, she continues her work in Vancouver which has been her home for a number of years. Writing, editing, and teaching have been her career, but her human rights work dominates her life. She remains active in Amnesty International, which she helped found in Vancouver twenty-some years ago. She co-ordinates a group focused on human rights abuses in China, and argues that trade gives countries like Canada a lever to demand change. She frequently represents Vancouver groups at United Nations seminars, serves on the National Board of Directors of the Elizabeth Fry Society, and speaks and writes regularly on social and humanitarian issues. In 1994, she received the Renate Shearer Human Rights Award for "outstanding contributions to human rights."
What drives people like Jennifer Wade to shoulder the world's problems and make them her own? Where does it come from? Perhaps from her parents who practiced medicine in India before its independence; perhaps it was her own early life experiences as a child in India surrounded by poverty and injustice. Perhaps, too, her high school and university years in Fredericton contributed the Maritime trait of caring and sharing. Interestingly, she herself identifies Rev. Arthur Forbes of St. Paul's United Church as a memorable influence. But in the end, it is what is within that makes Jennifer Wade the remarkable person she is. She has a conscience, and she challenges the conscience of everyone she meets.
Martin Luther King once aptly explained why we need people like this. He was in jail in Birmingham when he wrote: "Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myth and half-truths to the unfettered realm of constructive analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
Jennifer Wade is one of these "nonviolent gadflies." In recognition of her years of selfless devotion to human causes, we honor her today.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
JENNIFER WADE
to be Doctor of Letters
When Jennifer Wade graduated from UNB in the 1950s, she might easily have chosen the road that most of us choose: job, family, personal satisfactions and a comfortable detachment from the world's problems. But she is not that kind of person. Instead, she devoted her life to human rights work, most of it as a volunteer, fighting for the underdog and speaking for the inarticulate.
A number of early experiences shaped her resolve. She was in London taking her MA in English when she first became acquainted with the newly formed Amnesty International. The way it exposed human rights abuses throughout the world suggested to her that her creative writing skills could give voice to her own developing conscience. Later at the University of California at Berkeley she experienced the Free Speech Movement, and then, while teaching writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the Civil Rights Movement. By now, she was a wife and mother, but the struggle for racial justice captivated her. She joined a civil rights organization, wrote reports for them on violence and racism, and met Martin Luther King. To some white southerners, an outsider who worked with blacks was considered a communist; one day she found her car spray-painted with the words "Limey commie."
The risks, however, have never deterred her. Since then, wherever, she has gone, she has defied convention, challenged the status quo, and taken up the cause of the powerless. In New York City, Halifax, and Vancouver, she worked with immigrant families; in Pakistan, she helped build schools and find books for libraries. Everywhere she has made children her primary concern: she has worked for the Canadian Save the Children Fund and Children's Aid, written about the crisis in foster care, and through the Elizabeth Fry Society, has championed the cause of the children of women prisoners.
Today, she continues her work in Vancouver which has been her home for a number of years. Writing, editing, and teaching have been her career, but her human rights work dominates her life. She remains active in Amnesty International, which she helped found in Vancouver twenty-some years ago. She co-ordinates a group focused on human rights abuses in China, and argues that trade gives countries like Canada a lever to demand change. She frequently represents Vancouver groups at United Nations seminars, serves on the National Board of Directors of the Elizabeth Fry Society, and speaks and writes regularly on social and humanitarian issues. In 1994, she received the Renate Shearer Human Rights Award for "outstanding contributions to human rights."
What drives people like Jennifer Wade to shoulder the world's problems and make them her own? Where does it come from? Perhaps from her parents who practiced medicine in India before its independence; perhaps it was her own early life experiences as a child in India surrounded by poverty and injustice. Perhaps, too, her high school and university years in Fredericton contributed the Maritime trait of caring and sharing. Interestingly, she herself identifies Rev. Arthur Forbes of St. Paul's United Church as a memorable influence. But in the end, it is what is within that makes Jennifer Wade the remarkable person she is. She has a conscience, and she challenges the conscience of everyone she meets.
Martin Luther King once aptly explained why we need people like this. He was in jail in Birmingham when he wrote: "Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myth and half-truths to the unfettered realm of constructive analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
Jennifer Wade is one of these "nonviolent gadflies." In recognition of her years of selfless devotion to human causes, we honor her today.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3
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