1959 Fredericton Encaenia

Gaherty, Geoffrey Abbott

Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)

Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.

Image
Image Caption
L to R: Walter Muir Whitehill, Pierre Dansereau, John Everett Robbins, Geoffrey Abbot Gaherty, K.C. Irving
Second Image Caption
Source: UA PC-4 no.7ac; Photo by Joe Stone

Citation:

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1959
GEOFFREY ABBOTT GAHERTY
to be Doctor of Laws

Montreal Engineering Ltd. is a very powerful genie in a very Canadian bottle. It casts its magic and triangular mantle across our two continents. The base thereof runs from Calgary to Newfoundland, the inverted apex reaches down through Mexico and the Caribbean into Salvador, Bolivia, and Venezuela. It has extensions in Iceland and
India. If the pou sto of this fabulous firm is, as the name implies, Montreal, its Archimedes is Geoffrey Gaherty.

Few are its far-flung enterprises on which he does not exert his leverage; fewer those in which he is not an expert.

His career has been one quest for power -- steam, hydro, and atomic. The brain which with workaday vision created a new valley for the Ghost River, and thereby made its flow so economical that it fed en route not one but four power stations, had earned, one would think, some inexpensive relaxations: golf perhaps, or fishing, or -- in the name of respiration -- rather less tobacco. Geoff Gaherty's joys are even simpler. His most Pleasant recreation is holidaying within the sound of an unharnessed waterfall, which invariably keeps him awake all night until he has thought out a plan for its development. I am creditably informed that his wedding trip was taken in the Rocky Mountains -- beside a possible hydro site. The party consisted of 14 people, mainly hydraulic engineers, although it did include the bride; and the scheme, if not the honeymoon, was finished off in no time. Which is eloquent of the power potential of the youthful Mrs. Gaherty.

He believes in young engineers, and to them and to the institutions which train them he is a bountiful giver -- to none more than to his University, for which our Mechanical, Civil, and Electrical Departments have cause to be grateful.

What perhaps is stronger testimony to his regard for us and to ours for him is that he has some fifty of our graduates now working for Montreal Engineering. He pays them the only real professional compliment, that of inviting their suggestions. And they have returned it by sticking with him almost to a man.

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

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