Halifax Grammar School - Grammarian Yearbook (Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada)

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- 6 - GQVERNOR-GENERAL VANIER When the new CJovernor General, Roland Michener, the late high commissioner to India, finally takes office he will have the almost impossible task of filling the place of a man who vras the most well-liked and respected of all who held this high office. Time magazine said, This man, George Philias Vanier, devoted his whole life to his family, Chiirch, Queen, and Country. MDntreal bora, of Irish and French Canadian parents, Vanier abandoned a career in law to help form Quebec ' s famed Royal 22nd Regiment in 1914. On the Western Front he won a D.S.O., M.C, and bar. At Cherisy, a German bomb cost him his right leg, but Vanier talked his way back into the service after the war by convincing the doubting army that ' brains matter more than a leg. ' In 1921, Vanier was appointed aide-de-camp to Governor General Lord Byng and, as he later delightedly observed, it took him 38 years to move 800 yards from his aide ' s cottage to stately Rideau Hall. Later, Vanier returned to command the Van Doo ' s and then joined Canada ' s expanding diplomatic service. As Canadian minister to allied governments-in-exile during World War II, he coiinted among his close friends Charles de Gaulle and was a frequent visitor to Colomby-les-deux-Eglises during his 1944-53 term as Ambassador to France. Summoned to become Canada ' s 19th Governor General in 1959, by the then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, he became Canada ' s first French-Canadian and first Roman Catholic to hold that office. Vanier used his position to convey his deep sense of Canadianism, and appealed to his countrymen of both languages to cast aside pettiness, selfishness, and intolerance. In a New Year ' s Day address that drew requests for 200,000 copies, he proudly declared, We have a Canadian identity, and deplored those who say and write that we are a rudderless people. During Open House last year, on what was to be his last official visit to Halifax, the Governor-General visited the Grammar School. He had planned to stay only fifteen minutes but so thoroughly enjoyed the school and children that it was not until three quarters of an hour later that he finally left. He presented to the school an autographed picture of himself and also had his picture taken with some of the Grammar School children. The Governor- General accepted a copy of last year ' s Grammarian and autographed one for the school. He also agreed to have one of our new school bursaries named after him - The Governor-General Vanier Scholarship, He was a simple man and devoted his term in office to unifying this Country and especially the English and French, Vanier was devoutly religious and was not ashamed to sho it in public. His love for children was shovm by his parties for orphans and his being Chief Scout in Canada.