Law school at McGill was a big test. I was a full-time student and at the same time – from September to April – I was also a full-time player for the Montreal Canadiens. Exam time was playoff time. This could get a bit complicated but John Durnford, the Dean of Law at the time, and the Canadiens’ General Manager Sam Pollock never tried to stop me. It was up to me to figure out how to do it.
The experience taught me that it’s important to find something you get so immersed in that you don’t matter so much. By focusing on it and not on yourself, you don’t feel the pressure of expectation and hope, and may find you can do a lot more than anyone, including you, ever thought you could. It was at McGill and with the Canadiens that I learned this lesson best, if not first.
In the spring of 1973, only a few weeks after winning our second Stanley Cup, I crossed the stage at Place des Arts and received my law degree from McGill.
WATCH: Ken Dryden reflects on his time as a Montreal Canadien and a McGill Law student, and why he came back to McGill many years later.
Years later, after a career as a sports executive, writer, and politician, I returned to McGill to teach a course I called “Making the Future”. I knew that in other courses, students were learning about the present and the past. I wanted them to think about the future: Canada’s future, the world’s future, and their own futures.
I loved teaching that course. When we would debate big questions, the students would often say ‘they’ (meaning other people, older people) will do this or ‘they’ will do that – and I’d stop them. “No, no,” I’d say. “This isn’t about other people. Very soon ‘they’ is going to be ‘you.’” I would tell students, “Assume that you’re not just a passenger in the world; assume you’re a driver. Where do you want to go?”
I’ve gotten involved with McGill as a volunteer in the years since because I like to help out if I think an organization matters, if it really helps people who really need help, if it’s the best at what it does, and if it seems I can assist in ways that others can’t. Made by McGill, that’s one thing; McGill as a place that makes the future, that’s something else.