Valedictory Address

“Valedictory 1957” (May 1957): 1-4. (UA Case 68, Box 2)

Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, Deans, fellow students, ladies and gentlemen:

There is a word which keeps coming up in reference to the 1957 University Graduate in Canada. The word is “spoiled”. And few of us would deny that the number and diversification of available jobs, the relatively high starting salaries, the wealth of opportunity facing college graduates, has never been better.

Not so often emphasized are the challenges which face the university graduate who must accept much of the responsibility for the development, peace and prosperity of the nation, in the dawn of the atomic age. But, although the future facing us would give ample room for consideration, this evening we will take a few minutes to reflect not upon where we are going but where we have been.

For as surely as our futures will send us galloping off in all directions, it is the past, or the four or five years of it, which can bring us together. The future will divide us but the common experience we have shared will always be a unifying force as it is this evening.

Let us suppose that you came back to Fredericton about ten years from now. And suppose you came in the summer, apart from the summer session and walked around the city and around the relatively deserted campus. What would you remember? What memories of these four or five years would come to mind? For it is these things which are worth recalling when we are saying good-bye as we are this week. Not all of the things I will mention will apply to all of us; but all of them will apply to some of us.

We will recall the town of Fredericton itself, which has in fact been our home for the largest part of four or five years. Bliss Carmen once said that Fredericton is a good town to be born in. Well, it’s a good place to go to college also. It isn’t a big city, but by now we know the qualities of a small one. You can walk down any street or into any restaurant and expect to run into someone you know. And that’s a warm feeling! We would recall the people who used to say “Hi” when we met them on the street. We recall the places, the Club 252, the restaurants, the clubs, the dances. And some of us may recall that charming little nuisance who flits about the Paradise between twelve and one o’clock, turning off lights. We’ll recall that these were times when we marched in numbers down those streets, in reckless abandon at the end of Freshman week, in organized optimism on evenings before football games and in somber resolution at the tragic death of someone we all know.

And then we go “up the hill” where the college buildings themselves shout memories in our ears. In our mind’s eye the labs and lecture rooms are one more filled. A person may come to mind, a lecturer who was especially good, or a professor who had once given you a helping hand, or a piece of sound advice. You may have a feeling of sorrow at the memory of an unkind act or a feeling of gratitude because it was not returned. We may remember parents and friends who helped make our education possible.

There were evenings spent at study or at assignments. And then there were evenings when the studying didn’t seem so urgent and when the movie at the Gaiety was just too good to miss. These were good times, as long as they did not come too often. In such moments we have all shared the admiration for the irrefutable logic with which we have convinced ourselves that the work could wait.

Not all of the study was hard work. There were some courses which we especially enjoyed and to these we gave our time and interest willingly. But whether enjoyable or not, difficult or easy, the work had to be done sooner or later. That was why we were there. And if we tended to forget, there was the common challenge or tests and examinations to remind us. We have known the common frustrations or last minute cramming, so illogical and yet so necessary. We have shared that silent, plastic moment when we first glanced over the examination paper. And when the exams were over, there was the optimism of the pessimism, tempered with a strong feeling or relief. We may recall a friend who failed to make these hurdles and having retired from the field, is not with us to-night.

We remember enterprises and organizations entered into freely and with an enthusiasm which some of us may not achieve again in our lives. Some of our number came from high school with a record of benefit and achievement in extra-curricular activity, and carried this on in university. But some of us came from high school, still member of that determined band of diehards who chastise enthusiasm, who resent joiners and who refuse to participate in clubs and organizations. For some of us in this category, college has been a welcome cure. We may look with deep relief and satisfaction upon the first fatal moment when we overcame our fear or our inertia long enough to accept some office or some position of responsibility in a campus organization or committee. There are few of us who would still deny the joys and benefits which such participation can provide. Life may have become a little more meaningful, a little more interesting. We may have gained an increased sense of responsibility or developed latent talents. And then, arising from these activities there were petty conflicts and some not so petty and casual friendships and some not so casual.

And for most of us, college life has seen the breaking down of youthful prejudices, religious, social and economic. Some of us will have undergone an experience common to many college students, that which the novelist Herman Wouk has termed, the sophomoric enlightenment. It came with a new sense of confidence or perhaps of overconfidence in the use of our rational faculties. It came with a feeling of self reliance or perhaps of self-centeredness. It may have manifested itself in a doubting and criticism of religion, and usually our own family religion came in for the hardest knocks. There may even have been times when some of us have thought that religion had little more to offer us. But at least this experience was an indication that we were concerned about these things and were thinking about them. We were searching for answers. And in most cases, it proved to be a temporary thing and perhaps for most of us it has already ended. And who can say that the person who returns freely to religion feeling a need of it after having undergone the experience of a sophomoric enlightenment, may not have gained much in understanding and in faith.

And suppose, in our hypothetical visit ten years from now, we went on down to the gym. Its walls too would shout memories to our ears. We would remember the formal dances, glowing and graceful evenings that have a special place in our imagination, perhaps along with a person who occupies a special place in our memories.

We recall the thrill and excitement of basketball games, the loud ring of the college cheers as the Red Raiders surge from behind in a bid for the victory and the year of approval when they succeeded….. College field, we will always associate with those cool fall afternoons, when the stands were filled with students watching the game and cheering for the red and black. In some ways, those days were the best of all, for they brought us together in a single competitive enterprise, united in the excitement and the drama of the occasion. We go on to the rink, and this time we are not reminded of examinations. Once more that stands are filled and once more the walls echo with the college cheers as the fast skating and hard checking Red-Devils do battle with their opponents.

Not many of us could actually participate in varsity athletics. But all of us could enjoy them, could experience them, could revel in the victories and feel sorrow in the defeats. However, many of us could and did take part in intra-mural athletics. And for those of us who did they were no less exciting and no less enjoyable than the varsity contests themselves. In a society so given to spectator diversions it is a good and healthy thing to participate in these intra-mural activities. They not only provided physical exercise but they gave us new opportunities to meet new friends.

We recall the big specific things, the Winter Carnivals, Engineering and Forestry weeks, the train trips to Mount A. for football games. Nor can we forget the evenings of revelry, the wassails, the Hammerfest’s and the smokers. Some of these memories may be a little blurred, but they are there. For some of us the beer and the wine has been a part of college life, a diverting, enjoyable and rather expensive down of barriers. For many of us, those evenings provided a welcome diversion from the regular stream of academic life, and brought us together in closer bonds of friendship.

We will recall other things too: conversations over coffee in the student’s centre, mostly of light and passing things, sometimes of schemes and plans that never materialized and occasionally of ones that did. We recall arguments and bull sessions on every subject under the sun.

We will recall the things done that may endure. It may be a novel resolution in the SRC or a Model Parliament or a bi-weekly Brunswickan, a new standard set for the Winter Carnival or it may be a name scratches with a pen-knife in a wooden desk, a name with a large 57 beside it. Whatever it is we’ll probably check to see if it has lasted, and we’ll have a feeling of satisfaction if it has endured. It is natural for us to want something to last. For during the past year we have all had that sense of eternal recurrence. We feel it most when we see the new class of Freshmen coming in ….. A few years ago we wore those beanies; a few years from now they’ll wear the mortarboards. We can see the rolls, class of ’57, class of ’58, class of ’59 and so on ad infinitum. It is a sobering thought that the present which seems to us so important, so special can be reduced to a number. Yes, it is natural that we should want something to endure, even if it is only a name scratched on a wooden desk.

We recall these separate things, and together they constitute that thing called college life. It is true that a name scratched on a wooden desk is small solace for the feeling that things will go on here just as well without us. But it is not in the college, but in ourselves that we must look for the real meaning of things enduring. Underlying all of these things and embracing all of them is the change that this last four or five years has brought upon our character, upon our outlook, upon our aspirations.

It is then the influence which college life has had upon us that is important. We are the products of this thing called college life and for better or for worse it is to us that it must point in justifying its value. And it cannot point with pride to anything so obvious as high starting salaries or accumulations of facts. If the first was the only advantage of a college education then this valedictory might better have been confined to a survey of the employment situation. However, the learning and experience and resourcefulness which we can bring to bear in earning those salaries are a part of the value of college life ….. As for the accumulation of facts, Einstein has said that “education is what remains after you’ve forgotten the facts”. It is surely something much more a part of us which has been ingrained into our personalities, welded into our character that has transformed our scale of values. It is not only that which gives us new power, in concrete terms, but it is the thing which guides us in using that power. And finally, it has affected us in different ways. How good or how bad a job it has done is a question which each of us will answer, in the things we do, and in the way we live.