1987 Saint John Convocation
Davis, Samuel
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Taukulis, Harald K.
Citation:
CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 1987
SAMUEL DAVIS
to be Doctor of Laws
We see before us a man who, though not an academician, shares with our previous candidate a notoriety for humour, scholarship, and philosophy. Samuel Davis, engineer, municipal politician, community leader, is an admirer and seeker of knowledge and wisdom. He has an agile mind and revels in mental gymnastics, a characteristic that has served him well over the years whether he is designing aircraft or working at puzzles of the mathematical and logical variety, a pastime of which he is particularly fond.
His interest in the pursuit of knowledge is reflected in his admiration for great thinkers of the past. In a visit to a museum at Oxford University, he insisted that he be shown the blackboard upon which Albert Einstein had scrawled some of his momentous formulae; this board was not, at that time, on public display. To many individuals an artifact of this sort is merely one fragment of the flotsam and jetsam of bygone days, worth a curious glance at best; for Sam Davis, the object evokes the spirit of the genius whose thoughts it once held.
He is a man with a strong sense of history, a man for whom the preservation of evocative memorabilia has been a serious undertaking. Witness his dedication to the New Brunswick Museum, an institution for which he has served as President and Chairman. In an article expressing concern for the continued existence of such small repositories of local relics he wrote:
Only one year after his graduation from U.N.B., he earned a Master of Science degree in structural engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was later employed by Noordyn Aviation Limited in Montreal as their stress analyst and aerodynamicist. There he redesigned the Norseman Bush Plane, a workhorse aircraft from many Canadian organizations. A postage stamp struck to commemorate this aircraft depicted a model flown by Saskatchewan Air Medical and carried that group’s acronym -- S.A.M. -– as part of the identification letters on its fuselage. Observers report that Sam Davis expressed great delight at seeing his first name coincidentally portrayed on the aircraft that he had helped to create.
The local community has benefited from his civic efforts, which have included stints as city councillor, deputy mayor, and mayor. He has played a strong role in the revitalization of the city’s downtown area including the Market Square Project, and is noted for his insistent advocacy of sensible civic planning.
Sam Davis has long been a part of local history, perhaps more than he knows. If you build a bonfire on a bank of the Saint John River some dark and windless night, and if you listen very carefully, you may hear operatic arias being sung by the ethereal spirits that flit among the trees. Should you manage to corner one of these sprites and inquire whence it learned these pieces, it may tell you "why from Sam Davis, of course, who sang them here with his young friends in the shadows of years long past."
We more tangible beings of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John take great pleasure in honouring him this day with the degree Doctor of Laws.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2
SAMUEL DAVIS
to be Doctor of Laws
We see before us a man who, though not an academician, shares with our previous candidate a notoriety for humour, scholarship, and philosophy. Samuel Davis, engineer, municipal politician, community leader, is an admirer and seeker of knowledge and wisdom. He has an agile mind and revels in mental gymnastics, a characteristic that has served him well over the years whether he is designing aircraft or working at puzzles of the mathematical and logical variety, a pastime of which he is particularly fond.
His interest in the pursuit of knowledge is reflected in his admiration for great thinkers of the past. In a visit to a museum at Oxford University, he insisted that he be shown the blackboard upon which Albert Einstein had scrawled some of his momentous formulae; this board was not, at that time, on public display. To many individuals an artifact of this sort is merely one fragment of the flotsam and jetsam of bygone days, worth a curious glance at best; for Sam Davis, the object evokes the spirit of the genius whose thoughts it once held.
He is a man with a strong sense of history, a man for whom the preservation of evocative memorabilia has been a serious undertaking. Witness his dedication to the New Brunswick Museum, an institution for which he has served as President and Chairman. In an article expressing concern for the continued existence of such small repositories of local relics he wrote:
"...they give stimulus to the social and cultural life of the neighborhood by providing the vehicle where the history and heritage of the area may be exchanged and exaggerated. The wonderful thing about it is that the arrival of a strange horse-shoe nail at the municipal museum can cause more discussion, excitement, and controversy than the arrival of a solid gold statue of MacKenzie King through the roof of the Royal Ontario Museum."He is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, call of 1938, with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. As a student, he was appalled at the lack of interest shown by his classmates in the college yearbook. Rather than see it flounder, he took over as its editor and revitalized it to such an extent that the basic pattern set by the 1938 version served as the model for many future yearbooks.
Only one year after his graduation from U.N.B., he earned a Master of Science degree in structural engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was later employed by Noordyn Aviation Limited in Montreal as their stress analyst and aerodynamicist. There he redesigned the Norseman Bush Plane, a workhorse aircraft from many Canadian organizations. A postage stamp struck to commemorate this aircraft depicted a model flown by Saskatchewan Air Medical and carried that group’s acronym -- S.A.M. -– as part of the identification letters on its fuselage. Observers report that Sam Davis expressed great delight at seeing his first name coincidentally portrayed on the aircraft that he had helped to create.
The local community has benefited from his civic efforts, which have included stints as city councillor, deputy mayor, and mayor. He has played a strong role in the revitalization of the city’s downtown area including the Market Square Project, and is noted for his insistent advocacy of sensible civic planning.
Sam Davis has long been a part of local history, perhaps more than he knows. If you build a bonfire on a bank of the Saint John River some dark and windless night, and if you listen very carefully, you may hear operatic arias being sung by the ethereal spirits that flit among the trees. Should you manage to corner one of these sprites and inquire whence it learned these pieces, it may tell you "why from Sam Davis, of course, who sang them here with his young friends in the shadows of years long past."
We more tangible beings of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John take great pleasure in honouring him this day with the degree Doctor of Laws.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2
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