Carol Shields
On the occasion of her installation as Chancellor Carol Shields offered these words of encouragement to the graduating class of 1996:
President Hanen, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends, colleagues, family. I thank you all for being here to share this enormously happy occasion with me, and my thanks go, too, to all who have made this weekend one of festivity and consecration to the future. (These things don’t just happen.) The happy combination of celebration and solemnity defines, I think, the human balance that this institution represents.
When Dr. Hanen first presented me with the chancellorship “idea,” my first thought—I confess this today—was: Surely I’m not old enough to be a chancellor. But after doing some very elementary arithmetic I realized that maybe I was! I discussed the idea, which was still no more than an idea, with a friend, and her advice was: think about who you’ll be working with. This was good advice, I thought. I already knew a good many old friends at the university, and I now met others: Marsha Hanen, Joan Anderson, Marilyn Lockwood, John Hofley, George Tomlinson, Katherine Schultz, Bonnie Archibald, Evelyn Breau, and many others. The working relationship between these people is unbelievably warm and easy, familial as well as collegial, and they have extended to me a generous welcome.
I didn’t of course, know what the chancellorship would involve. But I did know that I loved universities. It is a truth universally recognized that academics often complain and carp—perhaps because we’re critically trained—but it is also a fact that we are extraordinarily privileged to belong to an institution whose major concern is the life of the mind. And this life is shared with students.
A friend of mine, a university teacher, told me the other day about an incident that occurred on the first day of term as she set off to meet her first of the year class. She was walking rather slowly, putting off that always fearful moment when one comes face to face with a new group of students—a kind of stage fright, I suppose.
In the crowded hall she happened to spot a very small boy of three or four, and, responding to maternal instincts, and perhaps also to put off a moment longer her arrival in class, she stopped and asked him if he was lost. Yes, he said, he’d lost his father.
Is your father a professor? she asked. Yes, he said. What does he teach? she asked.
There was a pause, and then he said, He teaches … students.
Well, I like to think that this is a university that teaches students. And that in the pursuit of advanced research, new teaching tools and methodologies, and exciting partnerships with other institutions, the student, as partner, is never for a minute forgotten.
When I was walking through Centennial the other day—and by the way, to leap onto one of Centennial’s escalators is to understand the meaning of the word throng—I looked around at all those upturned faces, and it occurred to me that each one of these people had made a deliberate choice—elected a particular educational path, chosen a personally congenial ambiance, said yes to diversity, opted for a sense of tradition but the kind of tradition that has not strangled the forward movement of knowledge.
I should tell you that coming through the doors of Wesley Hall never fails to thrill me. The beautiful stone, the handsome architecture, the plaque that spells out a history of more than one hundred years—more than a hundred because, as you will remember, the building was begun in 1884. Are we influenced by architecture, by the spaces we inhabit? Yes, I think we are. And—and this is important—inside this graceful old building can be heard the busy modern hum of a university which is facing—squarely facing—the twenty-first century. This weekend we have been witness to the new shape, the new direction of our university. I can only say that I am happy, and honoured, to be aboard. Thank you.
I was curious as to what would be my first official duty as the newly installed Chancellor of The University of Winnipeg, after putting on and lacing up the large and admirable and stylish and polished and slightly intimidating shoes of John Bulman, and I was altogether pleased to find that I have been given the happy privilege of receiving representatives from colleges and universities from across our country.
I am reminded that post-secondary education is a national concern. This is a very moving occasion for me, and I thank you all personally for being here to share the convocation ceremony at The University of Winnipeg, and I also thank you on behalf of the University for your greetings, your good wishes, and your shared faith in the future. Thank you.
