Harrison, John Darley Braithwaite

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 1958
JOHN DARLEY BRAITHWAITE HARRISON
to be Doctor of Laws

The Canadian Institute of Forestry is meeting this year in Fredericton to celebrate with a week of particular splendour the fiftieth anniversary of our Forestry School -- a school rich in reputation and short by one year of being the oldest in Canada.

At this golden milestone on the road of New Brunswick and Canadian forestry it is right that we should honour two outstanding members of the Profession, and that of these one should be the Director of the nation's Forestry Services.

What is right, however, becomes a joy when the Dominion Chief Forester is a double graduate of our university, and is linked to Fredericton by marriage and to the old College on the Hill as a grandson of chancellor Harrison.

This distinguished alumnus, who gave four years of his early manhood to our forces in France, Belgium, and North Russia, had devoted his whole professional life to the federal Forestry Service.

The Service in its infancy required, and took where it could find them, men who were organizers. It took Harrison. His, then, of necessity have been the responsibilities for administering research, with few of the satisfactions of pursuing it.

The posts he has held make him a formidable list; from which, if select we must, let us name one wherein his country he lent his executive talents to the world in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

A career of great responsibilities greatly sustained is now to be crowned by his Alma Mater with her third and highest degree.

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