1964 Fredericton Convocation
Koerner, Walter Charles
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.
Citation:
CONVOCATON, OCTOBER, 1964
WALTER CHARLES KOERNER
to be Doctor of laws
From our Western shore comes another who defies analysis, being likewise a "Compleat" personality.
He, basically, is a timber man. But to state that his career was rooted in lumber, blossomed into forestry, and was crowned by a fortune in wood-products is to epitomize Hamlet and squeeze out the Prince of Denmark.
Born in what became Czechoslovakia, he had absorbed a liberal European education before entering commerce at the age of twenty-two. It was doubtless this humane schooling which opened his mind, as it later opened his purse, to the cultures of other races. His knowledge of the West Coast Indians and his collection of their artifacts are unsurpassed. Ten years in the family lumber business brought him extensive travel, the command of five foreign languages, and an unrivalled awareness of 'his new country's forest problems. These, as Government Economic Director of Forestry, he had more than solved when the Munich crisis of 1938 forced him and his two brothers to abandon all and emigrate to another land, where low-grade timber seemed to predominate not only in the forests but also in the pates of the forests' exploiters.
The Koerner story now becomes a legend. In British Columbia they found Douglas Fir, which was scarce, selling for $57 a thousand board feet, whereas the plentiful Western Hemlock, which was seldom cut for lumber at all, went for only $7. The Koerners treated this prolific forest orphan with their own European air- and kiln-drying process, incidentally throwing new light on the proverb of the rose and its scent. The despised hemlock, now shrewdly marketed as Alaska Pine, proved miraculous as plywood, all-round lumber, and a source of dissolving pulp. In sixteen years the name Koerner had become synonymous with Croesus.
How wealth, guided by culture, can endow a university needs no telling to us, who have in Dunns and Beaverbrooks our own fairy god-parents. The West coast Cinderella in her turn was now to be touched by the Koerners' magic wand, and Walter's own special benefaction to U.B.C. was to match a grant from the Canada Council, and build a new wing for the University Library.
As always with him, he built in spirit no less than stone. From his ingrained devotion to learning came the inspiration to establish for it a circle of patrons, whom he entitles Friends of the Library and whom he alternately shames and spurs into contributing those special collections and other priceless desiderata beyond the reach of the regular budget.
We also are blessed with our Friends -- of Gallery, Playhouse, and Orchestra. But when our Library rises on the campus it, too, will need its Friends. Let us pray for the advent of a Walter Koerner in the East to create of a gaunt edifice a living heart of scholarship.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
WALTER CHARLES KOERNER
to be Doctor of laws
From our Western shore comes another who defies analysis, being likewise a "Compleat" personality.
He, basically, is a timber man. But to state that his career was rooted in lumber, blossomed into forestry, and was crowned by a fortune in wood-products is to epitomize Hamlet and squeeze out the Prince of Denmark.
Born in what became Czechoslovakia, he had absorbed a liberal European education before entering commerce at the age of twenty-two. It was doubtless this humane schooling which opened his mind, as it later opened his purse, to the cultures of other races. His knowledge of the West Coast Indians and his collection of their artifacts are unsurpassed. Ten years in the family lumber business brought him extensive travel, the command of five foreign languages, and an unrivalled awareness of 'his new country's forest problems. These, as Government Economic Director of Forestry, he had more than solved when the Munich crisis of 1938 forced him and his two brothers to abandon all and emigrate to another land, where low-grade timber seemed to predominate not only in the forests but also in the pates of the forests' exploiters.
The Koerner story now becomes a legend. In British Columbia they found Douglas Fir, which was scarce, selling for $57 a thousand board feet, whereas the plentiful Western Hemlock, which was seldom cut for lumber at all, went for only $7. The Koerners treated this prolific forest orphan with their own European air- and kiln-drying process, incidentally throwing new light on the proverb of the rose and its scent. The despised hemlock, now shrewdly marketed as Alaska Pine, proved miraculous as plywood, all-round lumber, and a source of dissolving pulp. In sixteen years the name Koerner had become synonymous with Croesus.
How wealth, guided by culture, can endow a university needs no telling to us, who have in Dunns and Beaverbrooks our own fairy god-parents. The West coast Cinderella in her turn was now to be touched by the Koerners' magic wand, and Walter's own special benefaction to U.B.C. was to match a grant from the Canada Council, and build a new wing for the University Library.
As always with him, he built in spirit no less than stone. From his ingrained devotion to learning came the inspiration to establish for it a circle of patrons, whom he entitles Friends of the Library and whom he alternately shames and spurs into contributing those special collections and other priceless desiderata beyond the reach of the regular budget.
We also are blessed with our Friends -- of Gallery, Playhouse, and Orchestra. But when our Library rises on the campus it, too, will need its Friends. Let us pray for the advent of a Walter Koerner in the East to create of a gaunt edifice a living heart of scholarship.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
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