Carleton University - Raven Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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Deduction Professor W. P. Wilgar died September 6, 1950. To him this year book is dedicated by those whose minds he touched and caused to grow. We will remember him as a spare, tall figure in a tweed jacket, prowl- ing restlessly across the front of the room, addressing the class in fluid, meti- culous speech: I do not expect you to write good English, but I do demand at least Basic English. His insistence upon the basic was characteristic; his was a vital mind. He had known Queen ' s and Cambridge, Texas, Mount Allison, and Manitoba, but only at Carleton he watched the children playing among the poets, as he once remarked of some of his senior students, with all the detached amusement of an indulgent parent. Sensitive, aloof, and intense, he found at Carleton a fulfillment which made him a Dart of it, and involved him in the lives of its students. To the students he gave much, for he was a teacher in the great sense of the word, a professor not only of literature, but of life, an educator to whom education meant not only knowledge, but growth. When growth demanded severity, he was severe; but many faltering minds he nourished, and many lethargic his wit stung to activity. His kindness, however, was never obvious, and his concern too little known. Such is the man we knew for little over a year, and yet who is already almost a legend; such the mind which gave so much. This record of graduation, then, we, the emergent and alive, dedicate to the teacher, now dead, who quickened so many of our minds to thought. — 7 —

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TO THE LATE PROFESSOR W. P. WILGAR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, CARLETON COLLEGE, THE RAVEN ' 51 , IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. — 6 —

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The President ' s IMessciije Only nine academic years have passed since Carleton College opened its first classes. Henry Marshall Tory, our beloved first President of the College, died in office just four years ago. The first Bachelor of Journalism degrees of the College were conferred in 1946; the first degrees in Arts, Science and Commerce as recently as May, 1949; and the first diplomas in the two-year Engineering course in 1948. These events and their dates will serve to remind us how near we are to the beginning of things at Carleton College. And it is important that we should realize this, for our nearness to the beginning of things means that our names now stand in the list of those who have pioneered the most daring undertaking in the recent history of higher education in Canada: indeed in some respects perhaps the most daring in the whole history of Canada ' s colleges and universities. This latter claim can be advanced when it is remembered that Carleton College at the time of its foundation had no rich benefactor and utterly lacked the financial support of Church or State. It had not, at its beginning, even the proverbial shoe- string. As against this seeming disadvantage, Carleton College had the real advantage (at the time and even now perhaps not fully appreciated) of coming to life not at the command of State or Church, but at the call of learned teachers, eager students and the clear-visioned men and women who were members of the Ottawa Association for the Advancement of Learning. At first, 1942-44, the only source of revenue lay in the tuition fees paid by the students of the College. In 1945 the College began to share in the financial benefits made generally available by the Govern- ment of Canada to universities and colleges participating in the educational rehabilitation of war veterans. In 1947 a public appeal for funds to advance the work of the College met with gratifying response. In 1949, 1950 and 1951 the Government of Ontario gave successive grants of $65,000, $75,000 and $100,000. A second public appeal for funds is now in progress, with an announced goal of $511,000 to help meet the needs of the three years 1951-1954. The needs of Carleton College are great, but the opportunities of Carleton College are vast. These needs and these opportunities are in a SDecial sense the responsibility of this pioneering generation of students. By your attainments, by your achievements, by your loyalties, the worth of Carleton College will be judged. The open book, the maple leaf, the effulgent sun at meridian solendour: these, in the familiar composite symbolism of the Carleton College crest, invite your life-long devotion to sound learning, good citizenship and the highest hopes of humanity. March 15, 1951 — 8