Cox, Kenneth Victor

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1979
KENNETH VICTOR COX
to be Doctor of Science

ln the entrance halI of the Old Arts BuiIding there is a panel inscribed with the monumental prose spoken by Sir Howard Douglas at the official opening in 1829. The inspirational address concludes with a prayer that the new college might "acquire and ever maintain a high and distinguished reputation as a place of general learning and useful knowledge".

lf we could provide a feedback loop in history and transmit the record of today's ceremony back through time, Sir Howard Douglas would approve of this award to Kenneth Cox, a practical scientific man, an excellent man of business, and one who worries about the future of humankind. Sir Howard would also, I think, be reassured that the college and its sons and daughters continue to strive to follow those inseparable twin stars of general learning and useful knowledge.

The Cox family is rooted deeply in the broad acres of Westmorland County and Kenneth Cox has moved through life, and still moves, between the old New Brunswick of the family farm and the new world of the electronic frontier. In the mid 1940's he had the foresight to recognize the inherent economic and service advantages of microwave radio systems. He took a career risk by condemning the conventional technology of the day as obsolescent and insisted that microwave radio be introduced on an extensive scale. He was one of the first anywhere, and one of the very few in New Brunswick, to recognize telecommunications as the cornerstone of a new society. We are now all experts on common or garden variety cornerstones: but it took vision and very special skills to lay that invisible cornerstone of radio waves that Kenneth Cox so successfully put into place.

The Dutch have a proverb: "Beware of the man who does only one thing. He is always formidable". In the late 1940's, Kenneth Cox was formidable in his grasp of communications technology and he pushed for changes which were not generally seen as needed at the time, but which placed the New Brunswick Telephone Company in the forefront of communications developments in Eastern Canada. As general manager after 1959, he showed that he could do many things and still be formidably proficient in all of them.

We salute Kenneth Cox for the benefits that have come to New Brunswick from his professional work and we welcome him, even more, for his humanity, his concern for the welfare of the whole community and, need I say, for the love he has borne towards, and the service he has given, this University. All of his children have been students of UNB, so he knows us in ways that he did not learn as a member of the Board of Governors or even as president of the Alumni Council.

Insignissime Praeses, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Kenneth Victorem Cox ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2