Valedictory Address

“Encaenia 1969—Valedictory by David Cox”(13 May 1969):1-9. (UA Case 68, Box 1)

Mr. Chairman, Dr. Mackay, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Classmates:

I would like to ask a question, the answer to which has been bothering me for some time. That question is, “What can we do about it?” By it I mean that with which we are being confronted every day – in the newspaper, on radio, on television, in speeches like this – everywhere people are talking about it – examining it, analyzing it, spreading its gospel. We have all heard of it, in the past year more than any other, we have lived it. We know it by many names. I call it “the crisis of our time.”

Most of us have at one time or another heard that why’s of it, the where’s of it, the when’s of it, the how’s of it and most of us have asked the question, “What can we do about it?” I would like to develop the answer to this question with you now.

Concerning this crisis, the Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter of May 1964 had this to say, “The crisis of our time is not so much a crisis in inter-governmental relations involving destruction by hydrogen bombs as it is a crisis in human relations at all levels of experience involving disintegration in men’s minds”. The letter went on to comment and I quote, “society is assailed by all sorts of ideological propaganda and seems to have lost its grip on the fundamentals of human life… Our society has been subjected to violent assaults and shocks from revolutionary transformations in material living and psychological conditions… The most intelligent people are at a loss about what to think regarding the many questions hammering at us”, end quote.


This crisis confronts the youth of today, with problems of choice and action different in both kind and importance from those they watched their parents solve. Is it any wonder that they wonder what to do? It is any wonder that they are impatient of change from the old ways?

Here at UNB, during the past year in particular, we have witnessed the manifestations of this impatience. We have been intimately involved in the immediacy of youth, in the cry for change.

I think that we may all admit that changes in our society are necessary to the preservation of our democratic process and our freedom. The point I am pursuing is not what those changes are to be but how they are made and more specifically what you can do to make them.

Winston Churchill once said with confusing logic, “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” All changes are made in relation to a previous order, in relation to a previously established value. Changes are made in all regions of life by men showing their order of values by what they are willing to pay for what they consider the greater good. We must ensure that our values are correct. We need the courage to ask the question, “What are my values?” We also need the courage to set for ourselves the proper values. It has been said that the greatest threat to a decent way of life for all does not come from the extremists of left or right, but from the mass in the middle, who allow themselves to be moved by short term benefits rather than basing their attitudes on long-term principles. Values are essential to the maintenance of principle. Building a proper set of values requires a realization of the meaning of the precept “Know Thyself”. Set values which allow for your expansion – a continual progress to higher values. This does not mean that our values be set high but that our ideals must be adjusted to the capacities of our human nature.

We must ensure, however that we do not allow a good sense of values to keep company with a hardened sense of consistency. There is a necessary element of constancy in any social structure for ritualistic processes transmit culture and values and controls character. This does not mean that rigid minds should be cultivated but that change should be justified in some logical way and based on principles.

It is funny that in speaking of change we very often take for granted the freedom we enjoy which allows us firstly to contemplate it and then to put it into effect. A constructive approach to life is an essential of enduring freedom. We need straight thinking, disciplined creativity and knowledgeable action. Dr. Sydney Smith one-time President of the University of Toronto said, “Education leads to wisdom which leads to intelligent action”. Wisdom probably consists in making such changes as are needed at any particular time and never making greater changes. Education is not merely to fill the mind with other men’s thoughts and to be passive recipients of their impressions of things are some of you may feel we have been doing for the past four or five years. The purpose of learning is to enlarge our individual intelligence with a view to expressing our own thoughts and feelings. John Dewey, the United States philosopher and educator, suggest that, “we are free in the degree in which we act knowing what we are about”…

It is in these personally derived thoughts, in our sound values, understanding and sympathy which only develop in an environment of knowledge that we are qualified to exercise the rights and meet the obligations of freedom.

It is not expected that as individuals we solve world problems but we can do our own thinking about the problems that confront us and then take positive steps to promote the solutions to these problems through the democratic process. This is not easy, for democracy is not an easy way of life. Democracy is the mass and that mass in the middle must realize the need to live by its ideas, not its emotions and that those ideas must be justified in values and principles. It is your education, your learning, your intelligence which is preparing you for the role you are to play in the changes in our society. What is that role? Where will you be? What can we do about it? What of this crisis of our time?

Our children will inherit the world we create and in this sense we are tomorrow’s past. There are few prerogatives in life, prerogative meaning a right without a corresponding duty, to recognize the obligation to be useful and to bear one’s share of the load is a challenge we all must face.

Yesterday we were today’s past, today we stand on the threshold of tomorrow and tomorrow? – What of tomorrow?
--I charge you with the words of Thomas Carlyle.

“Let each become all that he was created able
of being. Expand, if possible, to his full
growth and stature – be there what they may!”

You do what you can about it!

I will now do what I can to fulfill my obligations as Valedictorian and bid farewell to UNB on behalf of the class of ’69.

Our sojourn here will be remembered by each and every one of us, for it is a time we will not live again we will say farewell to the Hill but I’m sure we won’t forget it.

Our leave taking this year must also include a farewell to a man who has guided UNB through its greatest age – our President, Dr. Colin B. Mackay. On your behalf, I would like to extend to Dr. Mackay the best wishes of the class of ’69 and to thank him for the stature he has imprinted to the name UNB while serving as its President.

To those here at UNB to whom we owe so much, I extend our gratitude. To our parents, whose contribution to our successes we all too often take for granted, a most sincere thank you. To my fellow classmates, I wish to extend my personal thanks for what have been the five most enjoyable and rewarding years of my life. And finally – to all of you – I wish the very best in all your future endeavours.

Thank You.