Graduation Address

"Advice is Given Graduating Class U.N.B. by the Minister" The Daily Gleaner (13 May 1949): 13. (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Your Honour, Mr. President, members of the Graduating Class, ladies and gentlemen:

I am very happy to have the chance to speak to you today. I congratulate each of you who have just now graduated and wish for you careers of usefulness to the world and of satisfaction to yourselves.

It is not my role to tell of things this old university has done to you; or you to it – since your class was formed. That task you gave the valedictorian. He will do it well and I shall not encroach upon his time.

Today I think of many things related to the time this first big postwar class moved in and started to take over.

You came from the armed forces, and from the high schools of our countryside, under the urge of dreams that had come to some of you in distant lands—dreams of a chance to fit yourselves for the life-work of your choice and for peace-time service to your fellow men.

Many of you came early that summer to sign an application and get your paper work cleared up. I well recall he office of Miss McLeod, the registrar, next to mine. The crash of service boots on floor as Miss McLeod was given a more punctilious salute than any field marshal—sometimes perhaps in hopes she might give a more indulgent look upon a dreary pre-war high school academic record.

Then, in due course, you were informed that upon a given date the faculty and staff would be ready to receive you and when the smoke of your arrival cleared away it was found you had overflowed Fredericton even into the basement of this building. Others of you followed the next January and became the rugged founders of—and gave the name to—Alexander College.

The great experiment was on within all our Canadian universities. There were no sign posts to guide, but by good-will and grim determination of students and university personnel, the plan was assured of success before that first academic year was out.

Your sheer weight of numbers, or something, halted the class of '48 from applying the traditional sanctions of initiation.

In all your activities you mixed up well the two age groups which formed your class. Some of you came very young and gained much from the maturity of classmates with whom you worked and played. Some of you from the services had grown old and hard before your time, and your care-free young companions helped to shake you out of it.

You put those who laboured here, in classroom and administration, upon their mettle. It has been estimated that the skepticism expressed by students in the pet theories of professors has reached an all-time high during the years since 1945.

As an extra-curricular activity, married life and all that goes with it was introduced into U.N.B. by your class. I pay tribute today to the patience and encouragement shown by veteran students’ wives all across our land. Here, today, they look down from the balcony with pride—and rightly so. None have done more to make the university plan work than the wives who shared the joint austerity. I forecast for you, Mr. President, large classes in the 1960’s when all the U.N.B. babies born these years will return to you as freshmen.

You of the class of 1949 will leave much here that will become part of the rich tradition of U.N.B. You will take with you much of the tolerance, good-will and friendly understanding that you and I found and enjoyed at U.N.B.

As you go on to your chosen work with courage, enthusiasm and ingenuity, as I know you will, I ask you to bear in mind the simple truth you learned in war. It is also true in peace and it is this: our greatest satisfactions in life come from giving of ourselves for the good of our fellow men with no thought of reward.

I hope you, may find much satisfaction in life, and I wish you God-speed.