Frazee, Rowland Cardwell

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1983
ROWLAND CARDWELL FRAZEE
to be Doctor of Laws

Not one of the memorable and beloved men whom we honour today has had the advantage of being born a native "herring-choker," but they have all struggled manfully to overcome this handicap; no one with greater success than the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Bank of Canada who at the age of five recognized his mistake and moved from our sister province of Nova Scotia to St. Stephen. Since that happy day his path has been onward and upward.

It was in St. Stephen that in 1939 he joined the Royal Bank, and it was in England in 1942 that he joined his distinguished New Brunswick regiment -- the Carleton and York. With his regiment he fought bravely through its campaigns in Italy and Europe, was wounded twice, and emerged at 23 as a Major.

On his return he once again detoured through Nova Scotia where he took a degree in commerce from Dalhousie and then decided to rejoin his chosen bank. He appears to have had no impossible goals in mind for, in another context, he has said: "I love this work but my first thought was that I might make it to manager of the Fredericton branch."

Make it he did to Fredericton where he met and married a lovely New Brunswick girl with but one drawback -- she was a teller in the Bank of Nova Scotia. Clearly this was simply yet another handicap to be overcome in his rise to the lofty eminence from which today he presides over the fortunes of Canada's largest chartered bank.

We have had "Foresters once" and "Foresters twice" and still we cannot escape from the forests of Canada, for "Rowlie's" world of high finance is a world where "bank paper" calls the shot. Our sister campus joins us tomorrow in another oblique tribute to paper when it honours a native of Saint John and close friend of our own man, A. Murray Vaughan, who is Chairman of the British American Bank Note Company. In honouring such men of business we recognize their manifold contributions to our nation, and seek to underline the ties and links which must and should bind business and the universities together in a common enterprise.

We cannot stop to reckon up or tell over the many important positions in business and public service held by Canada's most distinguished banker, but I must draw your attention to his most recent honour, his election as Chairman of the respected and influential Business Council on National Issues; as Chairman of that body he has spoken and will continue to speak with an authority and integrity which command a hearing not only in Canada, but in the international world beyond our borders. Although technically we must not count him as a native New Brunswicker, Rowland Frazee has become one of his adopted province's best ambassadors.

Insignissime Praeses, amplissima Cancellaria tota Universitas, praesento vobis Rolandum Cardwell Frazee ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradem Doctoris in Utrogue Jure in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2