Graduation Address

"Convocation Address" (16 October 1994). (UA Case 69, Box 3)

The Return of the Native

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and President, Members of the Senate, Professors and Students of today, Vice Chancellor, Professors and Students of my student days, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.

"The Return of the Native" by Thomas Hardy – that was one of the books in Professor Gibb’s English course for sophomore engineers when I entered as a "freshie-soph" at UNB in 1963. The title intrigued me because I had come to UNB on a scholarship from DEMBA, the ALCAN owned bauxite producing subsidiary in my home country, and I had entered into a gentleman’s agreement that I would return home –this native would return.

In the British colony that Guyana then was, we expected to attend one of the universities in the United Kingdom. Canada was not well known and little was known of UNB then. I was told by the DEMBA-ALCAN officials that I would find New Brunswick a bit cool but it would be good for developing character.

The difference in climate is perhaps the most obvious difference in the new setting in which many foreign students such as me, found ourselves—we were students from newly independent, developing, mostly tropical Third World countries. It is a tribute to the students and teaching body of the University at the time that I and many other foreign students were well taken care of: we retain many fond memories of our years at UNB, and formed friendships which lasted many years, even unto today. Many memories of my four years at UNB return at this time—allow me to remark on two of them.

My English secondary school education in the colonial setting of British Guiana, had predisposed me to perceive education as the process of separating wheat from chaff, a process for producing gentlemen—academic qualifications identified those to whom the society should pay homage and bring tribute. In my first days at UNB I perceived another approach to education—that education should be vocational; we should learn how to perform better, to do the jobs society needed, and in so contributing to society we earned our wages. We should learn also how to function better in society—how to be a good citizen.

When offering summer jobs to forth year engineering students companies looked for good students, to whom they might offer employment after graduation. I acknowledged that I would be returning home and therefore was not considered further. Even so I felt disappointed on each occasion, but I was happy to accept a late offer to be a Relief Operator, on shift, at the Irving Oil Refinery in Saint John. This turned out to be a key experience for my career as an Engineer Manager on a plant – it provided me with the workers’ view of a chemical plant. That experience also provided me with the first call to bridge differences. Towards the end of the summer the members of my shift told me about the apprehension and discussion at the refinery, about employing a coloured person where hitherto there had been no black employees. They invited me to return and work at Irving Oil after graduation and help bridge the gap between the coloureds and whites, and between graduate staff and non-graduate workers.

Graduation came surprisingly quickly, on May 16, 1967. My gentleman’s agreement was kept—I returned home and began working on June 19. I did experience some loss. I had left an environment I had become accustomed to and which has many comforts to offer. Returning home meant foregoing possibilities for a much wider scope of academics, professional and personal development. My pay although twice that of Guyanese graduates in other employment in Guyana was only half of what Canadian graduates were being offered for the same job.

Nevertheless, my spirits were high. Guyana had become independent in 1966 whilst I was at UNB. There was an assumption of continuous rapid development. The interior was said to be overflowing with natural resources. Since there were no roads, there would be much bush flying. All my savings from my refinery job went into learning to fly during my last year at University.

Things did not turn out as expected. The 70’s and 80’s were for this returned native, a period of growing despair, when the only rational, logical thing to do was to emigrate, and perhaps a quarter of the Guyanese population did just that.

Looking back, it is obvious that the demands of nation building were perceived only dimly, if at all. The Principal at my high school, an Englishman whom we enjoyed describing as the last of the old imperialists, had argued that "the colonies think that they are ready for independence as soon as they have one native who could be Chief Justice—but they are not ready until there are a dozen such persons." Such cautionary counselling was seen as an attempt to delay independence or worse as an affront to the native people. Today I would have to admit that there is much truth in his argument. Our history has illustrated well, that there must be a number of equally capable persons in society whom by their presence restrain and contain those in office. There must be sufficient numbers of such people that one or two would speak out when things are going wrong, oblivious of any likely personal loss.

It was perhaps asking too much for us to grasp then that as independence arrived and as enterprises, many foreign owned, were nationalised, the base on which the country and the enterprises were ordered, was shattered and new social understandings had to be engendered. Government and management by native black persons, with whom many citizens had walked barefoot on muddy roads to school, had to be founded altogether differently from the governing and management of the departed white foreigners who were known to natives only in their positions of authority, and who might have been placed there by divine action.

We could not comprehend then, in any substantial way, that an efficient civil service, a profitable company were not static situations buy dynamic ones. They were not gees which would lay golden eggs, each day, indefinitely, but were most like a fine juggling display. In assuming the offices of Government and the management we, native leaders, were taking the place of the foreign jugglers, and the quality of the performance would be ours.

No doubt each country has its own peculiar history and Guyana is no exception.

Guyana was very much a country in the making, people from many lands having been thrown together relatively recently to produce sugar. Becoming a nation was not on the specification list at that time. The motto of our new nation –"One People, One Nation, One Destiny"—reflects a yearning, an aspiration, a need, not a fact. In all societies, people tend to group themselves around any difference such as race, region, ways of making a living, religion, or other cultural habits. In Guyana all of these differences nearly always ran together and reinforced each other.

The common struggle for political independence did not provide enough cement to hold Guyanese natives together as independence was granted. The common struggle yielded to intense rivalry between the descendants of the African slaves and the descendants of security which political power might provide. In the context of the cold war of the sixties and the aversion of the Western Powers to our present President Dr. Jagan, the largely Afro-Guyanese grouping had won then maintained power by jerrymandering and fiddling successive elections.

The temptation to carry out or to tolerate a little wrong, to compensate for a big wrong of the past or likely wrong in the future, is often too difficult to resist, but too many times yielding to this temptation leads to even greater disasters. The jerrymandering and fiddling of elections in Guyana led inevitably to a culture of make-believe and pretend which pervaded the whole society. Rather than positive growth, there was negative growth. Wages and salaries which were half of prevailing North American ones when I began working, declined to one twentieth. These were times which severely tested the resolve of this native son to stay on, having returned, not only because of the rapidly declining standard of living but because of the apparent waste of one’s life.

Why did this native stay on? Corny as it might sound, I kept hoping for a change for the better, and an opportunity to contribute to the rebuilding. Over the years I had stayed away from explicit political activity but I had gained some notice as a capable, competent, hard working person who stood for what was right. Indeed, there was a growing silent majority who had come to accept that political change was inevitable and necessary if Guyana was to escape from the rut in which it had become stuck. The ending of the Cold war, the universal call for democracy, for free and fair elections everywhere set the stage for the first change in Government since 1964 and I was happy to be part of that change.

Chancellor, Professors, Members of the Senate, Students, I have been speaking about my experiences on returning home, to a poorer less developed society, to illustrate what faced many Third World students of the nineteen fifties and sixties, who like me, returned home. Such skilled professionals can make a great contribution to their countries, provided that they see their professional training as a tool which they can call on as their work to improve the lot of their people. The professional needs to keep in mind that becoming a professional does not relieve anyone of the primary responsibility of being a good citizen and being responsible for the ends to which others might put his professional services.

Opportunities for university education in developing countries are today much better than they were in the sixties and there may be les need for students from developing countries to enter universities in developed countries. Nevertheless, I do hope that some flow of students would remain—whether students stay on in the developed countries or return home they are important in linking our different worlds.

Chancellor as I close let me say how happy I am and let me express my thanks to those who proposed and supported and bestowing me of this high honour. Chancellor I don’t know how many people sense how happy I am to be back at my old home—how happy I am to be a native UNBer returning home to UNB.