Campbell, Duncan Chester

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1982
DUNCAN CHESTER CAMPBELL
to be Doctor of Science

If, as Lord Macaulay once said, "the object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion," then the orator will indeed have a difficult task in eulogizing Duncan Chester Campbell, for, in the words of Alexander Pope, Chet Campbell is "a friend to truth! of soul sincere, / ln action faithful and in honour clear." Persuasion appears to be unnecessary, for who, in what he himself called this "Horatio Alger city ... filled with opportunity," does not know him, or know of him? And, in recent weeks, newspaper reports of the fiftieth anniversary of Tractors and Equipment have almost pushed the Falklands crisis and an ailing Canadian economy into the background.

His career, therefore, will be familiar to most people in this audience: his schooldays in Saint John; his student days at U.N.B. where he was President of his class and emerged with a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering in 1934; the years which followed as a practising engineer and included airport construction in Newfoundland during the Second World War; his joining Tractors and Equipment in 1945, and the expansion of the firm under his energetic and astute guidance. Yet Chet Campbell has been no mere servant of the business of which he has been President for thirty years. He has been a Director of Central Trust and the New Brunswick Telephone Company. His influence has pervaded our society, and is symbolized, but by no means exhausted, in his Presidency of the Board of Trade, the Fredericton Rotary Club, the Curling Club, the Pony Club, the 'Y', and, of course, his dedication to the university with his years on the Board of Governors and in the Alumni Society. But in the many jobs which he agrees to do, he is never a figurehead, and all duties he assumes with a passionate determination to see them through to the end.

As a student at U.N.B., I understand -- although I have not seen this piece of information in print -- he was a member of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps, where his goose puttees and sagging trousers gave no indication of the meticulous and successful life to come. Perhaps, however, he has tried to atone for the unmilitary misdemeanours of his youth, because anyone who has driven up Smythe Street, past Tractors and Equipment, will have noticed his yellow caterpillars lined up on parade, as though they are forever awaiting an inspection by the Governor General. It is said, also, that, when he sows seeds in his garden, they come up in a perfectly straight line, standing rigidly to attention.

In the achievements of Chet Campbell's career, of course, we should not forget his partner -- not so much a business partner, as a partner in the total business of living -- his wife, Helen. According to The Daily Gleaner "he had had his eye on her since the days when they were both students at the University of New Brunswick." The name Helen, of course, is redolent of classical legend and beauty and has been celebrated by poets through the ages, and I am quite sure that had his own Helen been spirited away, he would have paraded Trojan horses as well as tractors. And, of course, the mention of horses leads us to another love of their lives. Chet Campbell loves the outdoors; he loves fishing, and hunting with a 12 gauge double-barrelled shotgun which, I believe, like his firm, will soon be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. More and more, perhaps, his thoughts turn to his farm at Lower Jemseg, to his Hereford cattle, to even more time with his children and grandchildren. Yet all this does not mean that he looks back nostalgically to the past and sees the present going to the dogs. He is an optimist; the future is always in the present and there is always a way ahead.

So, if the object of oratory is indeed persuasion, then Chet's achievement, in the words of Shakespeare,

... doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made
To set forth that which is so singular.

Insignissime Praeses, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Duncan Chester Campbell ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradem Doctoris in Scientia in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2