1963 Fredericton Encaenia
McCord, David Thompson Watson
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.
Image
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L to R: Colin B. Mackay, David Thompson Watson McCord
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Source: UA PC-4 no.11o; Photo by Harvey Studios
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 1963
DAVID THOMPSON WATSON MCCORD
to be Doctor of Letters
Journeying hither thirty-two years ago from Boston, David McCord called on the author of Red Fox, who had so inspired his Oregon boyhood. The great Sit Charles was absent, but the visitor fell in love with his city and his Alma Mater. In 1959 McCord returned to deliver at Founders' Day the distilled wisdom of a lifetime. Improving on Samuel Butler who thought Oxford and Cambridge strangely lacking a Chair of Wit, he declared that all modern universities need a Chair of Man-in-his-Environment. And inasmuch as Forestry is more concerned with people than with trees, he suggested that our own celebrated School should supply all the professors.
The elusive McCord knows us better than we know him. He is not a hand to be shaken, a back to be slapped, but an essence to be savoured. Its fragrance may linger after a conversation or lecture, but it is his writings that embody the full rich quintessence. In them there blooms reincarnated all that is both hardy and perennial in a Lear and a Carroll, a Thoreau and an Emerson, a Housman, a Kipling and an Ogden Nash. And transcending them all, there is McCord.
But these be things of the spirit, unsubstantial -- and you cannot, Mr. President, hood and cap an emanation!
And so I have quested for what this materialistic age terms 'solid achievements'. And I have found two, utterly appropriate to this Encaenia.
Our Alumni Secretary might reflect on the fund-raising genius of his Harvard counterpart, whose flawless essay on the migration of alewives brought in cheques totalling $37,000.
The other is McCord Hall, newest and smallest edifice on our campus. At present neither is it a "Hall" nor is McCord in it. But, like a gothic church dwarfed by sky-scrapers, it abides, a haven for the soul. There is a scholastic aura about its tie-beams, pine shingles, and grey freestone walls. Installed are the polished refectory table, the jet-black chairs with the cherry-wood arms. It needs but a fine etching or two on the walls, some Colonial plate on the sideboard, and a Jacobean decanter in the cabinet, to quicken the genius and irradiate the symposia of a future Master and his Fellows.
Mr. President, Members of the Senate, I ask you to give earnest consideration to the founding of a Chair of Wit in this University. You should have no difficulty in selecting it's first incumbent.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
DAVID THOMPSON WATSON MCCORD
to be Doctor of Letters
Journeying hither thirty-two years ago from Boston, David McCord called on the author of Red Fox, who had so inspired his Oregon boyhood. The great Sit Charles was absent, but the visitor fell in love with his city and his Alma Mater. In 1959 McCord returned to deliver at Founders' Day the distilled wisdom of a lifetime. Improving on Samuel Butler who thought Oxford and Cambridge strangely lacking a Chair of Wit, he declared that all modern universities need a Chair of Man-in-his-Environment. And inasmuch as Forestry is more concerned with people than with trees, he suggested that our own celebrated School should supply all the professors.
The elusive McCord knows us better than we know him. He is not a hand to be shaken, a back to be slapped, but an essence to be savoured. Its fragrance may linger after a conversation or lecture, but it is his writings that embody the full rich quintessence. In them there blooms reincarnated all that is both hardy and perennial in a Lear and a Carroll, a Thoreau and an Emerson, a Housman, a Kipling and an Ogden Nash. And transcending them all, there is McCord.
But these be things of the spirit, unsubstantial -- and you cannot, Mr. President, hood and cap an emanation!
And so I have quested for what this materialistic age terms 'solid achievements'. And I have found two, utterly appropriate to this Encaenia.
Our Alumni Secretary might reflect on the fund-raising genius of his Harvard counterpart, whose flawless essay on the migration of alewives brought in cheques totalling $37,000.
The other is McCord Hall, newest and smallest edifice on our campus. At present neither is it a "Hall" nor is McCord in it. But, like a gothic church dwarfed by sky-scrapers, it abides, a haven for the soul. There is a scholastic aura about its tie-beams, pine shingles, and grey freestone walls. Installed are the polished refectory table, the jet-black chairs with the cherry-wood arms. It needs but a fine etching or two on the walls, some Colonial plate on the sideboard, and a Jacobean decanter in the cabinet, to quicken the genius and irradiate the symposia of a future Master and his Fellows.
Mr. President, Members of the Senate, I ask you to give earnest consideration to the founding of a Chair of Wit in this University. You should have no difficulty in selecting it's first incumbent.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
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