1951 Fredericton Encaenia
Mowat, Grace Helen
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)
Orator: Cattley, Robert E.D.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 1951
GRACE HELEN MOWAT
to be Doctor of Laws
Behold one of New Brunswick's great women, Grace Helen Mowat, the patron saint (if that be not too austere a term) of the cottage-craft industry of the Province.
We are apt to accept our weaving and our homespuns as products of spontaneous origin; and to imagine that handicrafts sprang autochthonous from some talented hinterland.
Nothing could be more untrue; for the plain reason that thirty-five years ago nothing was there -- except Helen Mowat! She had, she tells us, at that time a working capital of exactly ten dollars. This she somewhat trustingly invested in rugs -- potential rugs -- which farm-women were to hook for her from her own designs. These rugs she sold in Montreal at a five dollar profit. The venture grew, the farm-wives for once had money in their pockets, and the industry that has resulted has a turn-over of fifty thousand dollars a year.
All this from the genius, the artistic sense and the faith -- above all from the faith -- of a single woman, who "cast her bread upon the waters, and has found it after many days."
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
GRACE HELEN MOWAT
to be Doctor of Laws
Behold one of New Brunswick's great women, Grace Helen Mowat, the patron saint (if that be not too austere a term) of the cottage-craft industry of the Province.
We are apt to accept our weaving and our homespuns as products of spontaneous origin; and to imagine that handicrafts sprang autochthonous from some talented hinterland.
Nothing could be more untrue; for the plain reason that thirty-five years ago nothing was there -- except Helen Mowat! She had, she tells us, at that time a working capital of exactly ten dollars. This she somewhat trustingly invested in rugs -- potential rugs -- which farm-women were to hook for her from her own designs. These rugs she sold in Montreal at a five dollar profit. The venture grew, the farm-wives for once had money in their pockets, and the industry that has resulted has a turn-over of fifty thousand dollars a year.
All this from the genius, the artistic sense and the faith -- above all from the faith -- of a single woman, who "cast her bread upon the waters, and has found it after many days."
From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.
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