Watson, Patrick

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1989
PATRICK WATSON
to be Doctor of Letters

One is inclined to greet Patrick Watson like an old friend. For it must seem to most of us here that we have known him for years. He is one of Canada’s best known and best loved television personalities.

His incomparable on-camera style might best be described in the words of two famous men, each facing very different circumstances. Teddy Roosevelt advised, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Artur Rubenstein said that the concert pianist must play as if wearing velvet gloves over fingers made of steel. As a television interviewer, Patrick Watson has combined both of these qualities: the charming, polished, soft-spoken exterior behind which is the razor-sharp, tough minded, uncompromising intelligence. The Watson style, as we have seen it, quickly penetrates the usual surface layer of television banality, and probes deeply for meaning, for clarity, and for substance. With searching questions, he prods musicians, businessmen, and prime ministers without distinction. Yet he does so as naturally -- even as casually -- as some would discuss the weather.

But Patrick Watson has been much more than an interviewer, good as he has been at this. Over a career of thirty some years, he has, at one time or another, been involved in almost every aspect of television production, as a director, writer, actor, program host, concept developer, and producer. And outside of television he has found time to become an accomplished pilot, to write five books including two novels, and to promote the cause of international disarmament. At times he has managed to bring several of his talents together, as when during his work on a four-part documentary on the history of Canadian aviation, he occasionally flew the camera plane and personally few the camera crew from on location to another.

Yet it is in public affairs broadcasting that Patrick Watson has perhaps made his greatest contribution. We associate his name with some of the finest achievements in Canadian television production, including The 700 Million, which in 1964 was the first North American film actually shot in the People’s Republic of China; This Hour Has Seven Days, the controversial and spirited challenge to broadcasting convention that ruffled feathers everywhere including Parliament and the upper echelons of the CBC; and the prestigious The Canadian Establishment, the gripping analysis of wealth and power which won the plaudits of television critics in 1981. Freshest in our minds is his latest, and some may argue his finest work: his massive examination of the history and practice of Democracy. In his incomparable way, Watson has taken a difficult concept off the shelf of abstraction, and examined it in ways that ordinary people can comprehend yet without glossing over its complexity, its subtlety, and its ambiguity.

Patrick Watson’s name has thus become synonymous with excellence and he has been recognized in both Canada and the United States as preeminent in his field. Yet we honor him today not only for his outstanding achievements, but to acknowledge our great debt to him for his support of values which we in the University hold dear. In a sometimes indifferent society, we try to maintain the highest standards of creative scholarship, promote the commerce of ideas, combat intellectual complacency, and challenge convention. Patrick Watson has done all of these things, and he has done so in ways we not only admire but envy.

Whether he speaks to us about the latest trends in Canadian business or casually interviews a master musician off-stage at the Lincoln Center, Patrick Watson provokes our interest, challenges our minds, and restores our faith in the incalculable promise of television and our confidence in the ameliorative power of human communication.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2