I arrived in Montreal on a late May afternoon in 1965 as an immigrant without any qualifications, money, or contacts. Luckily, I could write, and thanks to those boom years I got a job as a Public Relations Officer in Canadian Industries Ltd (CIL). Montreal society graciously accepted me and I was liked and respected in my company. However, what gave me the greatest chance in life was the offer made to me by Colin Dobell, then in McGill administration, to achieve a BA Hons in Political Science and Economics within two years, provided I satisfied the academic requirements of the department. CIL permitted me to attempt the degree, provided I continued to do my job.
When I look back, I acknowledge with gratitude the generosity of academic spirit that McGill University displayed to me half a century ago...”
Those were two years of hard work, for I had to write speeches for the President of CIL, undertake a special job of ‘developing projects of social consciousness’ for the company, a corporate first in those days, while attending classes compressed into two years and writing 500 pages of papers. It would not have been possible but for the excellence of instruction I received from Professors Paul Noble, Michael Brecher, and Athanasios Asimakopoulos. In 1970, I received a first class honours degree, a Canadian Council grant for Doctoral Studies, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and admission to a PhD programme in International Relations at the London School of Economics.
I decided to go the LSE from McGill, for Europe at that time was the centre of anti-Vietnam War peace activities. I was appointed a mediator in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s by the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace; and later I was a founding faculty member of the School of Peace Studies at Bradford University. My commitment to working for peaceful societies led me back to India to found and work with poor communities at the grassroots level. Later, I was invited to be the first Executive Director of the Right Livelihood Award in Sweden, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, and then, as the Director Ethics & Education, World Wide Fund for Nature, in Switzerland.
For this lifetime of work, the Governor General was graciously pleased to make me an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. When I look back, I acknowledge with gratitude the generosity of academic spirit that McGill University displayed to me half a century ago, which made my life and fulfilled an ambition to be of service to fellow human beings to the best of my ability.