Eller, L. Marguerite Vaughan

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 1987
MARGUERITE VAUGHAN ELLER
to Be Doctor Of Letters

Although something of a citizen of the world in the best sense of that term, Marguerite Vaughan Eller is honoured today for her generosity and service to this, our University. Nevertheless, it would be remiss to pass over in silence her very real and very many accomplishments. One whose pen is far more skillful and informed than mine has written that

Her knowledge of Mexican artifacts and of Eskimo prints and drawings is as impressive as the collections of each she has built up. That knowledge is the result, not of some academic or professional need to be expert, but of her prodigious curiosity about the world she lives in and the worlds other people have lived in. It also springs from a genuine and sophisticated appreciation of the finest, most beautiful artefacts a civilization produces.

But it is not for these things that we wish to make her our own this afternoon, to make her one of us in reality, as well as in spirit. Her life has been marked by the great generosity with which she has shared her many gifts with the people of New Brunswick. She has given much to her adopted province: to the town of St. Andrews where she has spent nearly every summer since she was a small child visiting from Montreal with her remarkable mother, Lucille Pillow; to the city of Fredericton, through her splendid gifts to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery which owes its present expanded and resplendent state to the generosity of the Vaughan and Aitken families; and, above all, to the University of New Brunswick, "For us, her commitment to the University of New Brunswick is manifest in the Vaughan Graduate Fellowships, the many works of art and priceless books she has donated, in a major contribution to the Third Century Fund campaign, and in her membership on our Board of Governors."

For these gifts it is only fitting that we should publicly signal our gratitude to and admiration for this generous woman. A Doctor of Letters is most appropriate for one whose life's interests have reflected all that is best in the culture and civilization of a people, and it is in that spirit that we offer her today our highest honour. In that spirit too we extend to her our best wishes on her recent marriage to Dr. Joseph Eller.

Insignissime Praeses, amplissima Cancellaria, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Margaritum Vaughan Eller ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradem Doctoris in Utroque Jure in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2