Ham, James Milton

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1979
JAMES MILTON HAM
be Doctor of Science

Canada's most distinguished scholar-engineer and the president of our country's greatest university does us honour in joining us today. It is a happy coincidence that he brings together, in his profession and his office, two of the historic events we are celebrating -- the 125th anniversary of the establishment of engineering education in Canada, and the 150th anniversary of the granting of a royal charter to King's College in Fredericton.

The University of Toronto, of which he is president, and the University of New Brunswick, of which he now becomes a member, share a common origin, in that both grew out of King's CoIleges. New Brunswick was first of the two in applying for royal recognition, but the Colonial Office held up our request whereas Upper Canada's application received quick approval.

Some may regard the precedence thus granted to Toronto as an incidental result of bureaucratic bungling, but others will see in it an early manifestation of the external order of priorities in Canadian life.

The research group that gathered around James Ham in the fifties earned international recognition for its excellence, and his students from those years have become leading teachers and researchers in control systems engineering throughout Canada and in far parts of the world.

Over the past fifteen years, he has steadily assumed increasing administrative responsibilities, becoming successively, Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science, Chairman of the Research Board, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and since fast year, President of the University of Toronto.

The small boy who collected used batteries from the telephone man in a tiny rural village in Ontario, became the man who wrote papers with severely technical titles, such as "Parameter Invariance Through the Use of Non-Linear Comparators". This may evoke the spectre of the scientist heedlessly making tools which can be used in shaping an Orwellian World. But that small boy also became the high school boy who enjoyed languages and literature, who, during the war scribbled poems aboard ship when he was an electrical officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, and who, when he was a young professor, travelled to India as a faculty member of a World University Service of Canada Seminar.

Absorption in control systems engineering gradually gave way to a concern for how technology shapes the lives of people. In his own words: "In a society that is becoming unduly wedded to merely instrumental means, it is necessary to hold in balance the goal of the imagining and reasoning mind and the role of the contriving thumb."

He has faced, honestly, rationally and directly, the adverse effects of technological innovations. From 1974 to 1976 he was Chairman of the Ontario Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines. He wrote a report which is regarded as a model for the thoroughness of its enquiry and the breadth of its recommendations.

We welcome to our Encaenia his gracious wife whose loyal support and personal sacrifices have made possible his move into the demanding world of creative administration.

We salute James Ham for his scholarship and for his insistence, by word and by example, on high standards in the performance of the responsible role which universities must play, if we are to continue building and maintaining a vigorous, humane and free society.

Isignissime Praeses, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Jacobum Milton Ham ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2