Fellows, Edward Spencer

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1980
EDWARD SPENCER FELLOWS
to be Doctor of Science

The foresters of the University of New Brunswick have, as it were, carved their initials on the trees of the world, and few have carved them to such good effect as Edward Spencer Fellows.

Ted Fellows was born in the East of England -- in the village of Pulham in the county of Norfolk -- a county which breeds men of the soil and has the reputation of regarding as strangers all who were not born within its boundaries -- men of few words who do not accept friendship lightly but who, when they do, will never let you down. All who know Ted Fellows will know that when he agrees to do something he does it, and will feel, perhaps, that he has carried with him, for well over fifty years, the Norfolk virtues of his youth.

After attending the London Polytechnic Institute, he came to the University of New Brunswick and graduated in Forestry in 1930 -- the same year as graduated that other distinguished recipient of an honorary doctorate, Donald Fraser, although their subsequent paths were widely divergent.

When Solanio, in The Merchant of Venice, cries, "Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time," he may well have been thinking of Ted Fellows -– "strange" that is in the sense of wondrous. To read the curriculum vitae of our distinguished alumnus is to embark on a fifty-year journey of forest development. After graduation, and thirteen years with Forest Products Laboratories, he served on various forestry commissions and as consultant to governments and industries in New Brunswick, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, the United States, Great Britain, and several countries on the continents of Europe and South and Central America. For three years he served the United Nations in Greece. Needless to say, he has published many papers and given many lectures.

Among the many offices which he has held, have been those of President of the Canadian Institute of Forestry, Member of the Executive Council of the Professional Institute of the Civil Service of Canada, and, closer to home, he has been President of our own Associated Alumni and a member of our Board of Governors and Senate.

His contemporaries remember him, in his undergraduate years, as a quiet, good-humoured man who never danced, but went to all the university dances -- as bartender. In spite of this vocation, however, he acquired no liquid assets from the operation and, as one of his fellow-students said, "he entered, and left, college sober."

He has been an avid photographer for fifty years, is an equally avid collector of recordings of classical music, and he has an enormous collection of gadgets. It is even said that, when A to Z Rentals runs out of a piece of equipment, they immediately phone Ted Fellows.

We salute Ted Fellows -- for what he has done for his profession, for the manner in which he has enriched the life of his country, his province, his city and his university, and for his integrity as a man.

Insignissime Praeses, tota Universitas praesento vobis Eduardum Spencer Fellows ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2