Cattley, Robert Ellis Dieuaide

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1968
ROBERT ELLIS DIEUAIDE CATTLEY
to be Doctor of Laws

Ecce bomo! For thirty years Robert (alias Bob) Cattley has sustained the mother-languages of the western world in our University, combatting the profanities of the twentieth century by extolling the sacred fountains of our civilization in the sunlit Aegean or on the shores of Latium. Trained in the classics by reedy Cam, he has professed his subjects with love and reverence. His skill and zeal in the classroom, his monumental knowledge of the heritage of the ancient world, have enabled the University of New Brunswick to perform the role any university worthy of the name must play, the transmission of the knowledge and culture of the past. Like Horatius at the bridge he has defended his citadel, and New Brunswick and Canada are the richer for it.

This latter-day scion of old Attica, this ancient Roman, has vividly personified the values and virtues of former eras, the discipline and rigour of days more strenuous, for a university and a community perilously bemused by the wonders of their own times. Undeterred by the fate of Leander, he has swum the Hellespont. By moonlight he
scrambled over the craggy camp of Miltiades at Marathon and lost the seat of his trousers, nevertheless happy in the possession of a bicycle by which he could decently continue his wanderings. In former years, when there was a joyous intimacy between professors and students, he regaled his class at Roman banquets, a Maecenas clad in toga and sandals, a crown of laurel circling his youthful brow. On the brink of retirement he has proverbially upheld the good old maxim of classic aestheticism, mens sana in corpore sano. Attired in singlet and running shorts, he has struck, and still strikes, wonder on the streets of Fredericton, jogging along at a good trot and in good wind, challenging the steep declivity of College Hill to ensure that his pristine powers have not failed him. Like Catullus he has taken to the water in his own boat, Phaselus ille, sailing the Saint John and its tributaries, convinced that the best New Brunswickers are the farmers on whose shores he has been shipwrecked. For him the sparkling waters of Belleisle Bay could well atone for the remoteness of the Aegean isles and of the fascinations of Scylla and Charybdis. New Brunswick has no Parthenon and no Pantheon. But nature here he has found no less awesome and intriguing than when Ulysses visited the Lotos-eaters or challenged the Cyclops.

It is our misfortune that he leaves us. Like the pious Aeneas he takes off towards the Hesperides to seek a new Elysium, to build a new Troy, in the shadows of the distant Rockies. As Robert E.D. Cattley, scholar, soldier, airman, athlete, Thespian, our University public orator, has praised so many others on so many occasions such as this, today we honour him in sorrow at his parting and joy in the fruition of a useful and creative career.

Insignissime Praeses et tota Universitas, presents vobis
ROBERTUM ELLIS DIEUAIDE CATTLEY
ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum
DOCTORIS IN UTROQUE JURE
in hac Universitate.

From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.