Taylor, Claude DeVere

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1955
CLAUDE DEVERE TAYLOR
to be Doctor of Laws

In Claude Taylor I present no unfamiliar figure. Born, bred and educated in New Brunswick, he has been well content to abide and work in his native Province and, since 1952, to be a Minister in her Government.

Two matters, however, about his appointment are less widely known and deserve here to be said. Ministers of Education we have had, many and conscientious, but all have been hampered by a second portfolio. Claude Taylor is the first to be assigned wholly and unequivocally to Education. For which, and because they would seem to have made a shrewd choice, his Government is to be unreservedly commended. For, to take the second point, he is the first Minister of Education to possess a teacher's background.

As a man the teachers know him, for he is one of them. Teachers and teaching he understands. With a lesser character familiarity could be a two-edged weapon. Not so with Claude Taylor. Coldly impartial yet disarmingly fair, he has made it always and abundantly clear that his Yea is Yea and -- often with the driest of humour concealed behind the straightest of faces -- his Nay, Nay.

The future in Education the world over, and not least in this Province, beckons with a thrill but is likely to be demanding. At this point in his career, when he has already given proof of his mettle, and when that mettle is surely destined for sterner tests, we do well at the Provincial University to set upon him this mark of our own esteem and of the well-merited confidence of his Province.

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