Graduation Address

"Address by the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, to the Convocation of the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B." (9 October 1958). (UA Case 69, Box 1)

Your Honour, My Lord Chancellor,
My fellow graduates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I little thought in the fall of 1916 when I first saw Lord Beaverbrook, that the day would ever come that I would be honoured in this way and at his hand. I am going to speak quite shortly today and I know you will welcome that because the par of the political course is usually at least an hour.

I do give my thanks and appreciation to this institution for the honour that it has done me and those associated with me today. I would tell you, too that two weeks ago in the city of Vancouver, the former President of this University, Dr. Norman MacKenzie, conferred on me an honorary degree. This reminds me, Mr. Chancellor, of the former member of the House of Commons, now deceased. On the occasion, back in 1947, in the House, a late Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, was asking an announcement. His words have come back to me on this occasion. The member in question was the late Mr. Church, who was very deaf-he couldn't hear anything that he didn't want to hear in the House of Commons, and he followed that course throughout the years that he was there. That day, Mr. Mackenzie King got up to announce that the then Minister of Finance would not be able to proceed that day with the budget resolutions for the reason that he was receiving an honorary degree from an Ontario University. Mr. King always spoke very quietly and he said, and I would point out to Mr. Speaker that he will not be here tomorrow, either. He will be receiving another honorary degree. At this Mr. Church, who could hear what the rest of us had difficulty in hearing, said, "Mr. Speaker he's getting awfully popular by degrees, isn't he?"

All through the years, this University has been a nursery of great men and women. They have made their contribution to the building of a great Canada. I remember so well the connection between this University and my own in Saskatchewan, for from this University in 1909 or 1909 we took the late Dr. Walter C. Murray, the first President of the University of Saskatchewan.

And now, I said a moment ago how honoured I was on this occasion to receive this degree at your hands, Lord Beaverbrook. I intend to say a few words regarding the contribution made by you in every part of Canada and not only in this province and in Canada, but in the United Kingdom and for Freedom as well. You started well, sir, in the province of Ontario, to be born there. It was a good start so long as you go to the Maritimes at an early date, reversing the ordinary way. I followed you through the years. I saw you in the days of the First War. I saw you in the days of your Ministership at the end of the First Great War. I saw you in 1940-41 as the Minister of Aircraft Production, and your contribution was growing larger as the years go by. You made that contribution to the survival of freedom that the forces of freedom can never forget. You have given New Brunswick and the Maritime Provinces added pride in their glorious history and in public devotion, new opportunities for education and scholarship for young men and women for the future. Your life is an inspiration to others. It has been summarized in two concepts-that of loyalty and that of public service. May I also say, Sir, a word about your President, a man young in years, who has given to this University, a vision and a vista of its opportunities. He has given to Canadian citizenship that contribution which Universities alone of the standing of this great college can assure and maintain.

May I refer for a few minutes to those two principles which I mentioned a moment ago that have activated your life, my Lord Chancellor? In this province, we walk with history. This province, in its earliest settlers, was composed of those courageous men and women who left their native land to the south and came here to find new homes in what was an unsettled land. Comparatively little has ever been written about these remarkable people. There is only one scholarly study and only a few good books, as far as I can find, that tell something of the contribution made to this Canada of ours today by those who came here at that time. Only the other day I read some of the records of the stories of the past, the glorious legendary stories, part of the romance of Canada.

I read of the irascible old Irishman, Governor Parr, who favoured this site for the capital. He favoured it over Saint John because he said, Saint John was composed of "turbulent spirits, full of groundless complaints and representations". Well, my wife is descended from those who settled in the Maritimes, and she says that the statement is unjustified, because no Maritimer at any time has ever made a complaint that was unfounded.

I think of Daniel Cox of Trenton, New Jersey, who came here and became Chairman of that Committee known as the Board of Loyal Associated Refugees. He possessed that gift which we in politics so often desire not to have. He was described by the Assistant Chairman of the Committee as possessing that "great gift of saying little with many words". And then there was Thomas Gilbert whose magnificent epitaph at Gagetown tells something of the past of this province: "He was known for his loyalty to his King". Loyalty, the essence of our citizenship, had its birth in these portions of our country that had early settlement, that loyalty, that spirit that has brought about today that unity in our country, that fundamental interest that was apparent here today in the person of Dr. Rousseau, that belief that Confederation which in the past on occasion had not always been regarded as of the best.

Today across this country, I see a new spirit, something of the spirit of the United States of America in the early 17th century when it was first developed. Finally nurtured in the fires of war we see it in the 1870s and the 1880s much in the same position as we are today. They build in that nation, as we do here today, that new loyalty that knows no racial origin to bring about a new nationalism but not a narrow; not a self-centered nationalism; a new appreciation of the meaning of our citizenship, a new realization of those things that today build our country from east to west.

Only a few days ago, I was in the Yukon Territory. I saw there those who from 1896 to 1898, opened up that country-the oldtimers. I told them I would be in New Brunswick the week following. These simple men, many of who came from the Maritimes, told me to carry back to the Maritimes a message which is ours in every part of our Canada today, a unity that we have not known before. That unity is epitomized here today. That public service, that citizenship that has characterized Lord Beaverbrook is of the essence of the privilege ot be remembered at this university-freedom, defended by men of thought, defended in public by men of action in the arena of public affairs, and naturally you would expect me to say this, the participation in making a contribution to the building of that destiny which can be Canada's providing that each and every one of us makes our contribution.

I never tire, sir, of saying what opportunities there are in this land. Any one of us, any person, any young man or woman, graduating today, may look forward to the assurances that in a life of public service, you can make a contribution to the building of Canada with every opportunity to do so. Freedom, the opportunity of service, with universities constituting, as I see it, the training grounds for public service. One-half of the House of Commons are university graduates. There are ten thousand graduates in the civil service, one of whom you have honoured today in the person of the Director of Forestry. Universities are building for Canadian citizenship, etching something of the picture that came to me many years ago, when the late Mr. Bennett, as he then was, spoke to the Graduate Association in Saskatoon. He told the story that I am trying to pass on to you today. That is the story of good citizenship and the opportunity for your contribution to it. He told the story of the building of that Cathedral that you have all heard of, that Cathedral in France, which had taken some forty years to build. The clergyman was being shown over this Cathedral by the maker of the frescoes, proud at what had been done and by the architects who had made a major contribution. Finally, the clergyman cam outside and he saw there an old man, engaged in piling stones according to various sizes, and he said, "What are you doing?". I remember Mr. Bennett's words, all that force that he could place in his words, those many years ago. The old man answered, "I, sir, am engaged in building a great Cathedral."

And that's my message today to young men and women, I'm not giving them advice; everybody gives me advice today, but I don't try to pass it on. I am not giving advice, but giving them something of the picture as I see it, the opportunity that has been provided in the Maritimes by Lord Beaverbrook, the opportunity aspired to bring together in various parts of the Commonwealth that concept, that idealism that binds us together with regard to race or colour.

He has given that leadership for so many years past, and in ever enlarging measure, to enable Canadians to learn something of the other parts of the Commonwealth and the world, thereby laying the foundations for that pence which all of us aim to achieve. And I can say this: out of his idea of a scholarship system, there have been repeated and continued expansions and extensions. Only a few weeks ago in Montreal, on the occasion of the British Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference, a new system of scholarships was arranged to enable Canadians to visit other parts of the Commonwealth and for students from other parts of the Commonwealth to visit us.

University trained students with scholarships provide an opportunity for valuable exchanges and friendships within this Commonwealth. In the exchange of opinion, we will remove many of those difficulties that have appeared in the past. In addition to that, we will be able to do away with that thing that more than anything else accounts for the march of communism in the world today, namely, the practice of discrimination.

Only in the last few days, we in Ottawa, decided, following a meeting of the heads of government which took place at the NATO meeting in Paris in the month of December-at which the President of the United States and the heads of all the NATO countries gathered together-we decided then that we would lay more stress on scientific research and development in NATO. We set up a NATO Scientific Committee with responsibility to recommend to us action to increase the effectiveness of all NATO countries concerned while at the same time not losing sight of the need of preserving the humanities. The recommendations of the eminent scientists of the Committee were considered. The Canadian government has decided to participate in a substantial NATO programme of international fellowships, which will enable graduates of universities in various NATO countries to do research in other NATO countries. These fellowships will provide not only assistance in the field of scientific research, but a greater understanding in scientific circles of the scientific achievements of each of the other NATO countries.

We are not going to start on a large scale. Canada's contribution this year will amount to $40 thousand but will rise to several times that figure in later years as the programme develops. This is a system whereby, in an ever rising effort, we endeavour to ensure the maintenance of freedom and Freedom itself.

I say this to you, Sir, again: I am honoured to receive the degree which has been conferred on me. To you who have just graduated, may I say that I envy your entry into the affairs of the world as it is today. I would like to be in your place, but no one who has graduated in the past would not like to be in the present. It may not be a comfortable period in history. It is full of darkness and of menace. But it is a thrilling one, the threshold of a new era. Here in the Maritime provinces, your opportunities-and I suggest this to you-are such that they are commensurate with your abilities. These provinces, standing on the threshold of a new era, sit only for young men and women, who in the words of the sage, will not accept the inevitability of the present but will, as adventurers, help to form it.

To all of you my best wishes. You leave here to seek the truth, the truth that is so often difficult to define. The best definition that I know was given by Sir William Oastler when he said this:

"The truth is the best that you can get with your best endeavour; the best that best men accept."

There can be no better way of expressing your ultimate objectives than that, no better objective for us than trying to obtain the best that you can get with your best endeavour, the best that the best men accept. To all of you my fellow graduates my best wishes in the years ahead.

My hope is that a number of you will enter the public service of our country and give yourselves in devotion to that field of endeavour which will enable you to participate in one of the greatest adventures of all times, the building of Canada.

Mr. Chancellor, with all my heart I thank you for the opportunity of these few words. Your life has been an inspiration through the years, your life and devotion to New Brunswick and to the Maritimes and to Canada has made it possible for many who are in public life today to be devoting themselves as they are. To you on this occasion I conclude by repeating what I said before-the service that you have given to Europe, to Canada, to the Commonwealth, and to freedom, has not permitted you to lose sight of the fact that you sometimes regard Newcastle as your place of birth.