1982 Saint John Spring Convocation
Ganong, Rendol Whidden
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Bogaards, Winnifred M.
Citation:
CONVOCATION, MAY, 1982
RENDOL WHIDDEN GANONG
to be Doctor of Laws
In honouring Rendol Whidden Ganong, we honour not only an individual but also a family and a family business whose motto might also be CANDU. Ignoring both common sense and geography, the Ganongs have proved that one can make candy in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.
Starting from a tiny one-man operation over a century ago, their business has expanded slowly but steadily to become a national institution. They have combined determination with imagination and practicality ever since Mr. Ganong's father realized that the traditional box of chocolates was not the only means of marketing his product; small pieces of chocolate might be wrapped and sold individually. The invention of the first chocolate bar in Canada started the firm on a sound policy of diversification. Maintaining that policy has been one of the chief contributions of Whidden Ganong during his lifetime association with and twenty year presidency of the firm, and during his presidency of the Confectionary Association of Canada in the late 194Os. In a highly competitive business, where many specialized firms have failed, the Ganong Company remains the only general confectioner left in Canada.
St. Stephen, New Brunswick has a very beautiful location, an appropriate situation if one wished, let us say, to develop a business catering to summer tourists in search of sea breezes. I am sure, however, that any marketing expert would insist that it is an impossible place from which to operate a candy factory whose product was to be marketed coast to coast. When it would have been much easier to follow other Maritimers going down the road to upper and lower Canada, Whidden Ganong accepted and met successfully the challenge offered by his father to remain in a city and a region his family had called home for over a hundred years.
The eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift and the nineteenth-century poet Matthew Arnold concurred in the belief that, in Arnold's words, "The pursuit of perfection ... is the pursuit of sweetness and light." We have just recognized the scientist whose work will bring us light; now we honour the businessman who has provided the sweetness.
Insignissime Praeses, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Rendol Whidden Ganong ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Utroque Jure in hac Universitate.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2
RENDOL WHIDDEN GANONG
to be Doctor of Laws
In honouring Rendol Whidden Ganong, we honour not only an individual but also a family and a family business whose motto might also be CANDU. Ignoring both common sense and geography, the Ganongs have proved that one can make candy in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.
Starting from a tiny one-man operation over a century ago, their business has expanded slowly but steadily to become a national institution. They have combined determination with imagination and practicality ever since Mr. Ganong's father realized that the traditional box of chocolates was not the only means of marketing his product; small pieces of chocolate might be wrapped and sold individually. The invention of the first chocolate bar in Canada started the firm on a sound policy of diversification. Maintaining that policy has been one of the chief contributions of Whidden Ganong during his lifetime association with and twenty year presidency of the firm, and during his presidency of the Confectionary Association of Canada in the late 194Os. In a highly competitive business, where many specialized firms have failed, the Ganong Company remains the only general confectioner left in Canada.
St. Stephen, New Brunswick has a very beautiful location, an appropriate situation if one wished, let us say, to develop a business catering to summer tourists in search of sea breezes. I am sure, however, that any marketing expert would insist that it is an impossible place from which to operate a candy factory whose product was to be marketed coast to coast. When it would have been much easier to follow other Maritimers going down the road to upper and lower Canada, Whidden Ganong accepted and met successfully the challenge offered by his father to remain in a city and a region his family had called home for over a hundred years.
The eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift and the nineteenth-century poet Matthew Arnold concurred in the belief that, in Arnold's words, "The pursuit of perfection ... is the pursuit of sweetness and light." We have just recognized the scientist whose work will bring us light; now we honour the businessman who has provided the sweetness.
Insignissime Praeses, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Rendol Whidden Ganong ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Utroque Jure in hac Universitate.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2
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