My coming to McGill was partly the result of the happy outcome that brought my family to Montreal as I began my final year of high school. Emerging from that, access to the finest university in Canada was an additional bonus from which I was delighted to benefit.
I had settled, quite early, on becoming a Chartered Accountant. Our Commerce class in 1958 was the first after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, which did not change double-entry accounting, but certainly stunned the scientific world. Well before I completed Commerce, I decided to combine accounting with law and took advantage of McGill’s superb law school as soon as I became a CA.
The skills I acquired through my McGill experiences have enabled me to take on many national and international challenges, professionally, and as a volunteer in international sport and in Canadian endeavours.”
While I acknowledge that the following examples date me to some extent, exposure to superb professors of my era encouraged me to continually expand my knowledge and horizons. These include Byrd (accounting), Armstrong (economics and marketing), Hebb (psychology), McLennan and Dudek (literature), plus Scott and Durnford (law).
Education and sport have been major themes in my life. The educational connection has mainly been McGill, where I began with the Graduates’ Society (now Alumni Association) and eventually became its president, then a Governor of the University, Chair of the Board and eventually Chancellor (clearly the Peter Principle run amok).
It was my good fortune to have been successful as a swimmer and, while a student at McGill, I participated in the 1959 Pan American Games, the 1960 Rome Olympics (double finalist) and the 1962 Commonwealth Games (gold, silver and bronze medals). Competitive days behind me, I became secretary then president of the Canadian Olympic Committee. I was also co-opted as a member of the International Olympic Committee (the third successive McGill graduate member of the IOC – after Sidney Dawes, BEng’12 (electrical engineering), and James Worrall, BSc’35), of which I served two terms as vice president. From that base I became the founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
My dual qualifications as a CA (now CPA) and lawyer, both obtained as a result of my training at McGill, have served me very well and the skills I acquired through my McGill experiences have enabled me to take on many national and international challenges, professionally, and as a volunteer in international sport and in Canadian endeavours.
So, if I were branded, it would be “Made in McGill.”