Graduation Address

"UNB Convocation Address" (17 October 1981). (UA Case 69, Box 2)

Your Honour Mr. Premier, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, distinguished guests, fellow members of the graduating class, ladies and gentlemen:

For the past several years illness has prevented our Chancellor, Sir Max Aitken, from attending Encaenia and Convocation. This has been a matter of great regret to the University community and I want to extend my personal welcome and good wishes to Lady Aitken, the Chancellor’s wife, who is a much loved and popular visitor to the university and province where she is affectionately known as "Lady Vi," and to their daughter, Laura, and son Maxwell—we are very happy to have them with us today.

First of all I want to say how much I appreciate this great honour that the Board of Governors of the University had bestowed upon me today by awarding me an honorary degree from my Alma Mater and I know that Madame Robichaud shares my deep feelings about the like honour bestowed on her.

When Dr. Downey asked me if I would give the Convocation address I hesitated for a moment and reminded him that while I had made very many speeches from Newfoundland to British Columbia during my 15 years as a member of the National Parole Board, prisoners and parole would not be suitable subjects for this particular audience.

My father who was born in 1877, and lived to see men land on the moon, often remarked that his long life span has covered an amazing period in the history of the world and it occurred to me that U.N.B. also had experienced some amazing changes, starting in the Nineteen Twenties and particularly during the 27 years that I have been a member of the governing body of the University, then known as the Senate and now the Board of Governors, and it is this period that I shall talk about today.

We are all familiar with U.N.B’s early history, we have heard about it many times and I do not intend to recount it again.

For many years we remained a small but very good university, with distinguished professors and highly regarded Faculties, particularly those of engineering and forestry.

In the early Nineteen Twenties the late Dr. Murray MacLaren, a graduate of U.N.B., a distinguished surgeon and a former Lt. Governor of N.B., was entertained by Lord and Lady Beaverbrook while on a visit to England. During the course of their conversations, Dr. MacLaren inspired Lord Beaverbrook to establish the Beaverbrook Scholarships at U.N.B. From that time on the university had an interested and very generous benefactor in Lord Beaverbrook.

During my extensive travels throughout Canada I have met a great many successful men and women who identified themselves to me as former Beaverbrook scholars. Almost always it was the same story of a bright and talented young boy or girl from a low income family—often from a farm or a small village. Without those generous scholarships it would have been impossible for these young people to have had the advantage of going to university and thus changing the course of their lives.

I was delighted to learn recently that there is now an Association of former Beaverbrook scholars and that their aim is to raise funds for scholarships as a small token of appreciation for what Lord Beaverbrook did for them. I know that this would have pleased him very much.

In the early Twenties there were very few buildings on our campus. During a visit to N.B. with her husband, Lady Beaverbrook decided that a residence for men was a prime need and she showed such enthusiasm for the project that Lord Beaverbrook turned it over to her entirely.

Lady Beaverbrook was the former Gladys Drury, a member of a distinguished N.B. family. She was a very beautiful and gracious woman, beloved by all who had the privilege of knowing her and she devoted all her energies to working with architects on plans for the building which is known as Lady Beaverbrook’s Building. It was to be perfect in every way from the attractive rooms, including several suites, to the spacious lounge and dining-hall complete with minstrel gallery.

Unhappily Lady Beaverbrook died at a tragically early age before the building was completed. Lord Beaverbrook always had a very special feeling for this building with which his wife was so closely involved. Lord Beaverbrook loved N.B. and spent five to seven weeks here every autumn. He frequently took an evening walk to the campus and would drop in to the residence to have informal chats with the students.

Pope Pius X²² died during one of Lord Beaverbrook’s visits to N.B. At that time I was living in Saint John and about midnight one evening I received a 'phone call from Lord Beaverbrook.' His phone calls were always very succinct and to the point. This one was as follows: "Mary Lou, do you know what 'sic transit Gloria mundi' means? It has been used several times in connection with the Pope’s death." "Yes, of course," I replied. "Well that’s more than the students in the Residence do—not one of them could tell me and many of them are Beaverbrook Scholars—I almost feel like dropping the scholarships." I reminded him that rightly or wrongly Latin had ceased to be a compulsory subject in the Arts Course.

On another occasion I was told during a very brief 'phone conversation' "buy me a house" and again "You must open the Saint John rink one week from today"— in each case followed by a cheery confident "good-bye" and leaving me gasping!

Life was very exciting when Lord Beaverbrook was in N.B. He would be full of projects the world’s great and famous came to visit him and he would have fabulous luncheon and dinner parties at Somerville House. Those of us who were close to him and were privileged to attend these functions will never forget them and the stimulating conversations in which we took part.

There was a very mischievous side to Lord Beaverbrook. I was heavily involved in the building of the Town Hall and Theatre in Newcastle. There were legal tangles to be straightened out, architects to be dealt with and I had a real struggle getting the local painters to mix the paints so as to give me exactly the colours I wanted for the various sections of the building. I finally succeeded and was very pleased with the result and so was Lord Beaverbrook. The focal point in the entrance-hall was a fine Lazlo portrait of Lord Beaverbrook. Picture my consternation when he informed me that he wanted to hang there also a doleful full length portrait of Bonar Law! I protested and said "You can’t have a dreadful thing in my beautiful building into which I have put so much time and effort. Bonar Law may have been the only native Canadian to become Prime Minister of England but he was a homely, sad-looking man."

I heard no more about Bonar Law until a few weeks later when Lord Beaverbrook announced at a large dinner party given by him that he was building an Art Gallery in Fredericton. Hugh John Flemming was then Premier of N.B. and rose to thank him for this magnificent gift. Much to my surprise and embarrassment Lord Beaverbrook replied "don’t thank me—thank my strong-minded lawyer. She wouldn’t let me hang Bonar Law in the Town Hall in Newcastle so I have to build a gallery to put him in!" So far as I know he has never been hung in the Gallery and is to this day stored deep in the basement.

Lady Beaverbrook’s Building was followed by the Lady Beaverbrook Gymnasium, the Lady Beaverbrook Rink, an addition to the Bonar-Law Bennett Library, etc. He also established the Beaverbrook Overseas Scholarships. These not only gave further education opportunities to many of our gifted young people but also broadened their horizons since the scholarships were generous enough to provide for travel as well as tuition fees and living expenses and that was the purpose behind them.

In 1854 we had a small Senate; there were no Faculty members and no student representation. We met in the Board Room in the Old Arts Building. Today the Senate is made up of members of the Faculty and we have a greatly enlarged Board of Governors with both Faculty and student representation.

The salaries of the Deans were in the $6,200 - $9,500 range and the President’s range was $10,000 - $12,000. Today’s salaries are more than six times higher. We had 95 on Faculty and today we have over 500. Our ’54 student body was less than 1000 and today we have over 6,000 students. Our annual budget was $5,000,000—today it requires $50,000,000 to run the university.

In 1954 we didn’t have any MPHEC—the president just told the premier the amount required and he got it. The Federal grant was paid direct to the university on a per student capita basis in contrast to the present system where an amount is paid to the province for secondary education purposes. The Federal government feels it should get more credit for its participation and the present arrangement is being threatened with cut-backs. This would result in a very serious situation for our universities and must be resisted strongly by the provinces.

U.N.B. has been fortunate in the calibre of its presidents and each one has made a real contribution to the university. I hope that I will be forgiven if I single out two presidents—each of whom made a unique contribution at a very special period in our history. The first, of course, is the late Col. Milton Gregg, V.C., an outstanding military hero of World War 1. Following World War 11, we had an influx of veteran students, men who had seen active service and who were older than the average university student. It was a difficult time but Milton Gregg was just the man to see us through those port-war years.

The other is Colin Mackay, president from 1953-1969, a period of extraordinary expansion for the university. Several residences were built on the campus for male residents and also Lady Dunn Hall for the women and then came the Harriet Irving Library, the Student Union Building, and the additions to the Bonar Law-Bennett Library and the Engineering Building to name just a few. We established a Faculty of Nursing and built MacLaggan Hall, the Graduate School was greatly expanded, a branch of the Bank of Montreal set up a business on the campus, St. Thomas University was moved here from Chatham and Teachers’ College was established on our campus. We also built McConnell Hall.

I remember most vividly the day that McConnell Hall was officially opened. There was a quite lengthy speech. Lord Beaverbrook didn’t enjoy lengthy speeches and when he cut the ribbon he said "I declare this magnificent dining-hall officially open and name it after my very good friend who made a generous contribution towards its construction." Lord Beaverbrook considered N.B’s liquor laws to be very archaic and he looked straight at Louis Robichaud who was then premier and said "and I hope, Mr. Premier, that you will soon change our liquor laws so that the young men who dine here can enjoy a glass of wine or beer with their meals as they do in England."

A woman in the audience who was very much opposed to drinking said in a loud voice "no Lord Beaverbrook, you are a wonderful man, but not even you can make such a suggestion and get away with it," whereupon she was bodily removed from the room by the campus police.

A few years later I was in Western Canada on a P.R. trip for the Parole Board and one of my duties was to call upon all the provincial Attorneys-General, one of whom was a nephew of the protester. He asked me if I knew her and when I said that I did he mentioned having heard about the episode at McConnell Hall and wondered if it were true. I assured him that it was and that I had been an eye-witness.

In 1959 the Faculty of Law was moved to Fredericton from Saint John where it had been located since 1892, first as King’s College and from 1923 as a Faculty of U.N.B.

Lord Beaverbrook was a student in the Faculty of Law in 1898 and he retained a very special interest in it. In the early fifties we were housed in rather dingy quarters on the top floor of the old Provincial Building on Princess Street and were almost wholly dependent on the Saint John Law Society Library. Our Faculty was largely part-time but of very high quality with 3 Rhodes scholars, 3 graduates of Harvard Law School and one graduate of Yale Law School.

Lord Beaverbrook bought a home of a local merchant and gave me the task of converting it and furnishing it as a Law School. He also provided us with a first-class Law Library. When we moved to Fredericton we were given his residence Somerville House. It converted most successfully to a first home for the Faculty of Law. When we outgrew Somerville House, our Chancellor Sir Max Aitken and the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation built Ludlow Hall, then the last word in Law School, and it now is bursting at the seams. One of the great achievements of this period was the establishment of U.N.B. in Saint John—this has been a great thing for our largest city.

The first time I visited St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, I was struck by the plaque there which reads "if you would seek his monument look around you." The same could be said of Colin Mackay’s period at U.N.B.

The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation under the guidance of our present Chancellor has given us an Olympic-size swimming-pool in the Lady Beaverbrook Gymnasium, substantial contributions to Aitken Centre, Ludlow Hall, etc. We must never forget the tremendous debt we owe to Lord Beaverbrook and the Aitken family.

You young people are living in a most exciting period in the history of our great country. We have no idea what great discoveries lie before us in the decades ahead. Many of you will contribute to this expansion in medicine, science, technology and the development of our tremendous resources. It is a momentous challenge—don’t fumble the ball.