Bliss, Isabel St. John

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1962
ISABEL ST. JOHN BLISS
to be Doctor of Laws

Bliss and Fredericton - how interwined the city with the family, and the branches thereof with one another!

Bliss Carman loved these green lands and enshrined them forever in English literature. No poetess, but loving them as deeply, Isabel Bliss has enshrined the literature in the hearts of a generation of her pupils - a process enlivened by her more worldly general knowledge and occasionally peppered (it is whispered) by statistics of professional sport.

Fredericton saw her birth, schooling, and graduation. Twin first-class honours presaged the scholar; skill with sympathy, integrity with a sparkling wit, the teacher. But by inheritance must have come her love of the countryside and of all young things. These respond to her as she to them. Children, shy as herself, reach out to her in passing. Adoring students, kindled by the steady flame of her learning, carry the glow within them for the rest of their lives. Colleagues and companions describe friendship with her as a rich and benign experience.

This embodiment of scholar, teacher, counsellor, and friend continues unflaggingly to head the English department at Western College. But for a season she has come home - to her Alma Mater for the honouring she merits, and to her birth-place for the vacation she craves.

Let us wish on her that when Fredericton has recreated her spirit, and her brain has assimilated the batting averages of the New York Yankees, she will return rejuvenated and echoing the elegy of her great first-cousin:

"We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low."

From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.