1964 Fredericton Encaenia
Squires, William Austin
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 1964
WILLIAM AUSTIN SQUIRES
to be Doctor of Laws
He graduated from U.N.B. in 1927, in Arts but with Honours in Natural Science and Chemistry. Of healthy body and the questing mind of a born naturalist, his student days found him always fit for track or team when mightier athletes were wilting from exams and lack of exercise. No star in his English courses, he wrote and continues to write an English limpid in style, acute in observation, and appealing by its inherent interest.
Of his seventy-six published articles sixty-nine cover a wide sweep of natural history, many describing the flora and fauna of his native Fredericton. For twenty-six years he has been Curator of Natural Science at the New Brunswick Museum and has produced 85 numbers in 15 volumes of Nature News. Coupled with his own bubbling enthusiasm these unpretentious pamphlets have done more for teachers, pupils and public than many a text-book, and have led to the organization of the Naturalists Clubs of Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. The notes, quoted widely in American journals, have elicited a subscription from Bulgaria and a request for publication from Pekin.
It is fitting to remind ourselves that Squires, the student of nature, can turn his pen to other themes. His recent book, The 104th Regiment of Foot, enthrones him in the public eye as an historian. As valuable but far more obscure is his patient research into the place names of New Brunswick. Teaming with his former classmate, Arthur Wightman, he is amending where mis-named, and naming where no name is, the geographical features of our province. The University owes a particular debt to these two alumni for bestowing on five orphan mounts the names of Robb, Bailey, Jack, Raymond, and Cox, to the last of whom Squires was pupil and, later, assistant.
With him a boyhood hobby became a lifetime interest. His researches began in Grade IV when, at the age of ten, he instituted a record of spring migrant birds. Maintained for fifteen years, it blossomed into the superbly illustrated monograph No. 4 of the Provincial Museum: The Birds of New Brunswick (1952). Armed nowadays with film, he
has caught, among other masterpieces in colour, an intimate sequence of the Crested Flycatcher. It is of course utterly appropriate that this ardent ornithologist should have married a Bird! Mrs. Squires is, he will assure you, a local Bird*. And a warm-hearted, public-spirited spouse she is, mother of four, devoted companion and, needless to add, a confirmed birdwatcher.
*She has no resemblance to, or affinity with, that other and, alas, ubiquitous species, The Double-crested Henpecker.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
WILLIAM AUSTIN SQUIRES
to be Doctor of Laws
He graduated from U.N.B. in 1927, in Arts but with Honours in Natural Science and Chemistry. Of healthy body and the questing mind of a born naturalist, his student days found him always fit for track or team when mightier athletes were wilting from exams and lack of exercise. No star in his English courses, he wrote and continues to write an English limpid in style, acute in observation, and appealing by its inherent interest.
Of his seventy-six published articles sixty-nine cover a wide sweep of natural history, many describing the flora and fauna of his native Fredericton. For twenty-six years he has been Curator of Natural Science at the New Brunswick Museum and has produced 85 numbers in 15 volumes of Nature News. Coupled with his own bubbling enthusiasm these unpretentious pamphlets have done more for teachers, pupils and public than many a text-book, and have led to the organization of the Naturalists Clubs of Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. The notes, quoted widely in American journals, have elicited a subscription from Bulgaria and a request for publication from Pekin.
It is fitting to remind ourselves that Squires, the student of nature, can turn his pen to other themes. His recent book, The 104th Regiment of Foot, enthrones him in the public eye as an historian. As valuable but far more obscure is his patient research into the place names of New Brunswick. Teaming with his former classmate, Arthur Wightman, he is amending where mis-named, and naming where no name is, the geographical features of our province. The University owes a particular debt to these two alumni for bestowing on five orphan mounts the names of Robb, Bailey, Jack, Raymond, and Cox, to the last of whom Squires was pupil and, later, assistant.
With him a boyhood hobby became a lifetime interest. His researches began in Grade IV when, at the age of ten, he instituted a record of spring migrant birds. Maintained for fifteen years, it blossomed into the superbly illustrated monograph No. 4 of the Provincial Museum: The Birds of New Brunswick (1952). Armed nowadays with film, he
has caught, among other masterpieces in colour, an intimate sequence of the Crested Flycatcher. It is of course utterly appropriate that this ardent ornithologist should have married a Bird! Mrs. Squires is, he will assure you, a local Bird*. And a warm-hearted, public-spirited spouse she is, mother of four, devoted companion and, needless to add, a confirmed birdwatcher.
*She has no resemblance to, or affinity with, that other and, alas, ubiquitous species, The Double-crested Henpecker.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
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