1962 Fredericton Encaenia
Forsey, Eugene Alfred
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.
Image
Image Caption
L to R: Colin B. Mackay, Eugene Alfred Forsey, C.L. Mahan
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Source: UA PC-4 no.10m; Photo by Harvey Studios
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 1962
EUGENE ALFRED FORSEY
to be Doctor of Laws
To confine this towering genie within the narrow bottle of a citation is not only unjust: it is absurd. Even so, my dim human portrait of a great and controversial figure will need all the illumination of his talents and personality when in a few minutes he addresses you.
He was born in Newfoundland and married a New Brunswick lady. That, with our degree, will make him trebly a Maritimer. Brought up in Ottawa, he capped a brilliant career at McGill by a more brilliant one at Oxford.
From that home of lost causes he may have acquired his fierce championship of the underdog -- whether a political party or an obscure French church. He is the defender of all minorities, including himself. His very refusal to drive a car can be attributed not to fear for his life but to sympathy with the vanishing pedestrian. In politics he has been described as an Unreconstructed Tory and in religion as a Continuing Methodist. But these are dangerous half-truths about one who is a combination of Christian humility and defiant liberalism. In his famous book, The Royal
Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth, some critics decry a perverse legal ring, others detect it in his attitude to alcohol, which to him is intellectually unjustifiable.
Disarming, conservative, and lovable in private, he becomes radical, trenchant and hard when human rights are in jeopardy. On that field the Raphael of Humanity merges with the Michael of Economics, and Satan (who is generally a capitalist) is made to flinch.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
EUGENE ALFRED FORSEY
to be Doctor of Laws
To confine this towering genie within the narrow bottle of a citation is not only unjust: it is absurd. Even so, my dim human portrait of a great and controversial figure will need all the illumination of his talents and personality when in a few minutes he addresses you.
He was born in Newfoundland and married a New Brunswick lady. That, with our degree, will make him trebly a Maritimer. Brought up in Ottawa, he capped a brilliant career at McGill by a more brilliant one at Oxford.
From that home of lost causes he may have acquired his fierce championship of the underdog -- whether a political party or an obscure French church. He is the defender of all minorities, including himself. His very refusal to drive a car can be attributed not to fear for his life but to sympathy with the vanishing pedestrian. In politics he has been described as an Unreconstructed Tory and in religion as a Continuing Methodist. But these are dangerous half-truths about one who is a combination of Christian humility and defiant liberalism. In his famous book, The Royal
Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth, some critics decry a perverse legal ring, others detect it in his attitude to alcohol, which to him is intellectually unjustifiable.
Disarming, conservative, and lovable in private, he becomes radical, trenchant and hard when human rights are in jeopardy. On that field the Raphael of Humanity merges with the Michael of Economics, and Satan (who is generally a capitalist) is made to flinch.
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
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