MacNeil, Rita

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1988
RITA MACNEIL
to be Doctor of Letters

One of the nicer aspects of my job as University Orator is that I get to meet and talk with the most remarkable people, and Rita is a very special member of this small and select, but growing, band of special people. In preparation for this Encaenia I have also had the great pleasure — and duty — of listening to Rita sing. I have always liked and enjoyed her singing from afar, but I have never had the occasion or opportunity to listen to all the wonderful songs which she has written and recorded. Now, however, thanks to my daughter-in-law, Kathy, and her friend, Kathy, I have been lent all her tapes from her earliest album Born a Woman, recorded in 1975, right up to her latest release of 1986, Flying On Your Own. Each day for the last few weeks I have had Rita for company as I drove to and from the place where I work, and the more I have listened to what she is saying and singing, the more I have come to respect and admire her, and to love her as a fellow human being who gives poetic voice to the deep longings and feelings which mark us all as sharing in the human condition.

As I have already told this patient audience, I am a teacher, a Professor of English, and it has been my privilege over the years to try to teach young--and sometimes not so young--students of the wonder and the power of poetry in the language of Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton. During all the years of my teaching, I have never been a creator or a "maker," which is the meaning of the Greek word which gives us our word "poet." For I have been denied the greatest gift, which Rita has cherished and nurtured, the gift which enables her to express the essential ambiguities and puzzles of our life; one who tells us that we are "part of the question and part of the answer;" one who speaks for us of our isolation, our fears, and ultimately, our hopes; and one who voices those hopes and fears when she sings of our children and somehow convinces us that despite all the evidence we can hope that "they come into something better." Her songs and voice are so powerful and, poignant, so commanding, so "human" that we must listen and pay attention to the unique voice and presence which are part of the mystery, the magic of Rita MacNeil. Her voice is unforgettable and commanding, whether in the unaccompanied simplicity of her early songs like "I Have A Son and I have a Daughter" or whether it is backed by the rhythmic sophistication of "Fast Train to Tokyo." Really, how can one say enough about lines such as "Old Man, what have they done to you," from a song which Rita wrote about her father, about all of our fathers.

The clan MacNeil, islanders and highlanders, from Scotland have been in Canada for many generations and Rita's sense of family, of the ties that bind is powerful. Her mother and her father, her sisters and her brothers have been a source of strength and support to her, and her own daughter and son are to her a comfort and a cause for a just pride. Her sense of the links and continuities of the generations rings through her newest and yet to be released album. The title song is "Reason to Believe" and her abiding sense of belonging rings out in lines filled with faith and determination:

And though you're only a memory
You still give to me

A reason to remember,
And a reason to believe.

Perhaps for us Herring-chokers there is one problem about Rita, and that is that she was born in Big Pond, Cape Breton Island. Perhaps she has solved the problem for us when she speaks of being from "away" and plaintively asks "Can't it be my island too?" One of my tapes is Rita MacNeil in concert and as an introduction to this song she tells us:

This is a song I wrote when I was living in Toronto, and it's just not for Cape Breton — it's for the whole Maritimes — I just love it.
And so do we: all us sentimental Herring-chokers, Bluenosers, and Spud Islanders — and even Newfies and Cape Bretoners.

Rita MacNeil has led a hard and a rough life, and she still displays some of the wisdom of the "working man" or woman who has learned over the years that perhaps one shouldn't always trust the bankers and the bosses, or the politicians, the presidents, and, even, the professors. Nevertheless, I know that all of us today — big and little join in paying tribute to you as a fine human being, as one who somehow keeps the faith through all your trials and tribulations. We honour you today as one who has a good heart, and Shakespeare tells us that "a good heart ... is the sun and the moon."

Insignissime Praeses, amplissima Cancellaria, tota Universitas, presento vobis Ritam MacNeil ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum DOCTORIS IN LITTERIS in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2