McMaster University - Marmor Yearbook (Hamilton, Ontario Canada)

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idrhiratinn 'l'0 l'ltl'ISlllEN'I' GEORGE PEEL GILNIOYR, ILA., B.D., FLD.. ll.l'.L., LL.D., IllS'l'lNGI'ISHl'ID CHURFHJIAN, l'Illl'l'A'I'0R AND ADNlINlS'l'RA'l'0R. i George Peel Gilmour is a native son of Hamilton, born in the manse of James Street Baptist Church. After grade uation from McMaster and a year at Mansfield College, Oxford, he served as pastor of Danforth Baptist Church, Toronto. In 1929, after receiving the M.A.' degree-from Yale he became Professor of Church History in McMaster and in 1941 was made Chancellor, the title being changed in 1950 to President and Vice-Chancellor. - By way of serving the Church President distinguished himself as a preacher, liturgist, and administrator Canadian Baptist Chairman of the from 1946 to 1948 of Churches. Gilmour has hymnologist, He edited the hymnary now used in churches, has been for many years Baptist Publications Committee, and was President of the Canadian Council With credit to himself and to this University he served for a time on the executive of the National Conference of Canadian Universities and as president during the term of 1951-52. In 1951 he represented Canada at a conference of the universities of the British Commonwealth in India. Ile was chosen Man of the Year by the City of Hamilton in 1950, and has been awarded honorary degrees by six universities: Acadia, Toronto, Queen's, Laval, St. An- drews, Scotland, and recently McGill. It would be impossible to overestimate President Gil- mour's contribution to McMaster University itself. Under his leadership Hamilton College was organized and af- filiated in 1948. During his presidency, and largely in consequence of his personal efforts, six splendid buildings and a modern heating plant have been added to the campus, annual enrolment has been doubled, endowment has increased, educational policy has advanced, public relations have been extended, and the University has attained to an unprecedented prestige in the academic world. To him, therefore, this dedication Sllllllllll cum laude nn this the Twenty-Fiftli Anniversary of the Marnior

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The Presidents Message Automation is a lively topic, pe-o-ple hailing its approach with joy or fear: joy, because things can be done which have been impossible or impossibly tedious, fear, lest machines increase man's output without proportionately increasing his purchasing power. For the university man, however, auto-mation cannot inspire any hope of endless leisure, because a few of us are the people who must design and operate these machines, and most of us are people who must work in society at tasks no machinery can do. The fields of human relations, human motives and resilient faith lie outside the area of the machine, and may be more difficult to make fruitful because of it. Just as the Apostle Paul came to see that the real problem was that of what the law could not do, so the university man must be chiefly aware of what automation will not be able to do. A machine will be able to inform but not to teach, it will give some kinds of answers but it cannot frame the questions, least of all the troublesome questions to which it can give no answer. When Tennyson in 1854 celebrated The Charge of the Light Brigade, he sang that all the world wondered. He had in mind men's admiring wonder at the stubborn discipline and reckless courage of a small group of misdirected men wastefully expended. But we have come to wonder .about a lot more things, such as the executive failure that produced that futile manoeuvre, the crass stupidity that characterized the direction of the Crimean War, and the ugly politics that precipitated it. So if we wonder at the machines we may design and command, it will be a childish wonder unless we give thought to the non-mathematical and non-mechanical problem of the spirit and the flesh that will go on troubling us. To those problems men address themselves best if they work in the faith of Christ, with disciplined intelligence and moral responsibility. G. P. GILMOUR.