Paul, Peter Lewis

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1970
PETER LEWIS PAUL
to be Doctor of Laws

The county of Carleton has for many years harboured our most active adventurers in the lore of the aboriginal races of the province. The work of Tappan Adney, George Frederick Clarke and Professor Teeter of Harvard, conducted in the hinterland of Woodstock, preserves for posterity a vivid knowledge of the ways of life and forms of speech of New Brunswick’s first inhabitants.

Here is a man who has schooled them all. Peter Paul’s knowledge of the dialects of all the Indians from the Kennebeck to Cape Sable goes far to prove that Champlain was right when he said that all were derived from the same stock, that all, even the Micmac, were originally Malecite. From tales told by his grandfather he has preserved an immense fund of legend of the first people of the St. John Valley, notably on the magic properties of New Brunswick’s famous fiddlehead, which could ward off evil and cleanse the body of impurities.

We honor him not only as a leader of his people but as a scholar steeped in reverence for the enduring past. He has lectured at Harvard and Columbia. He has served as consultant to the Museum of Man at Ottawa upon the intricate technology of the birch-bark canoe. As an anthropologist and linguist, now contributing to the compilation of a Malecite dictionary, this worthy representative of his race deserves our highest acclaim.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 1