Jean Sutherland Boggs receives an honourary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) degree from John G. Diefenbaker, University Chancellor during the special convocation held in the Bowl during the Learned Societies Conference, U of S, 22 May 1979-8 June 1979.

Bio/Historical Note: Grace Jean Sutherland Boggs (1922-2014) was born in Negritos, Peru. Boggs attended Alma College in St. Thomas, Ontario, graduating in 1938. She would later receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Trinity College in 1942. She received a M.A. in 1946 and a Ph.D. in 1953 from Radcliffe College. From 1942-1944 Boggs was an education secretary for the Art Association of Montreal (today known as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). In 1948, she joined the faculty of Skidmore College as an assistant professor. From 1949-1952 she was an assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College. From 1954 to 1962 Boggs was an assistant and associate professor at the University of California. In 1962, she was appointed curator for the Art Gallery of Toronto. In 1964 she was appointed Steinberg Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1966 Boggs was appointed the first female and fifth director of the National Gallery of Canada and served in this position until 1976. During her tenure, the Gallery collection grew by more than 8,600 pieces. including works from Degas, van Gogh, Pollock, the Group of Seven, and the beginnings of the Gallery's photography collection. From 1976-1979 she was a Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard University. From 1978-1982 she was the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Under her leadership, the Museum purchased Edgar Degas's painting After the Bath, which is now considered to be one of the Museum's most important acquisitions in the post-war period. She also presided over the Museum during art historian Stella Kramrisch's acclaimed 1981 exhibition of Indian art, Manifestations of Shiva. She was chair and chief executive officer of the Canada Museums Construction Corporation from 1982-1985, where she directed the construction of both a custom-built National Gallery building and the unique Canadian Museum of Civilization (today known as the Canadian Museum of History) in collaboration with the architects Moshe Safdie and Douglas Cardinal. From 1991 to 1993 Boggs was a senior advisor for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As an art historian, she has written books about the life of Edgar Degas, including Portraits By Degas (1962). In 1973, Boggs was made an Officer of the Order of Canada "in recognition of her scholarship and the vision and energy she has displayed in developing the collection and the services of the Gallery". She was promoted to Companion in 1992. In 1979 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Saskatchewan. She was awarded honorary degrees from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, York University in 1976 and from Concordia University in 2000. Boggs died in 2014 in Ottawa at age 92.

Bio/Historical Note: A special convocation was held 2 June 1979 to celebrate the "Learned Societies Conference." It was 20 years since the last conference was held at the University of Saskatchewan. Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) degrees were conferred on four outstanding scholars; Jean Sutherland Boggs, Sir Moses I. Finley, Amartya Kumar Sen, and Arthur Whalley.

Head and shoulders image of Richard Harris, Department of English; outdoor winter scene.

Bio/Historical Note: Richard Harris, member of the Department of English, earned a BA from the University of the South, an MA from Florida State University, and a PhD from Iowa State University. Harris edited the Old Icelandic Hjalmþés saga for his dissertation while in Reykjavík on a Fulbright Grant for Graduate Research (1965-67). His early publications, while teaching at Umeå University in Sweden (1971-72), were concerned with Old Icelandic and Old English literature and their inter-connections. He then undertook research in Reykjavík and London on the collaborative activities of William Morris and Eiríkur Magnússon, resulting in several articles and the discovery of 75 letters from Morris to Magnússon which had sat unknown for some decades in a shoebox in a cupboard at the National Library of Iceland. His work with the 17th-century English antiquaries, begun in the late 70s and supported by SSHRCC (1983-85), produced 'A Chorus of Grammars': The Correspondence of George Hickes and his Collaborators on the Thesaurus linguarum septentrionalium, a 492-page volume published with the aid of a CFH grant (Pontifical Institute, Toronto, 1992).

Bio/Historical Note: Image appeared in 11 Apr. 1997 issue of OCN.

Dr. Douglas R. Cherry, dean of Arts, presents the Copland Prize in Arts to Mark J.C. Abley at Convocation held in Physical Education gymnasium.

Bio/Historical Note: Mark J.C. Abley was born in England in 1955. When he was a small child his family moved to Canada, and he grew up in northern Ontario, southern Alberta and Saskatoon. Abley’s father Harry was for many years organist-choirmaster at St. John’s Cathedral and Third Avenue United Church, and several theatres in Saskatoon. Abley studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan and, after winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1975, at St. John’s College, Oxford. He won prizes for his poetry while a student there, and began to write full-time after moving to Toronto in 1978. He has been a contributing editor of both Maclean's and Saturday Night magazines, and a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement. His writings show an interest in endangered languages. He published a memoir, The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, in 2019.

Head and shoulders of Mark J.C. Abley, University of Saskatchewan Alumnus as well as a Journalist and a Poet, in an academic gown.

Bio/Historical Note: Mark J.C.Abley was born in England in 1955. When he was a small child his family moved to Canada, and he grew up in northern Ontario, southern Alberta and Saskatoon. Abley’s father Harry was for many years organist-choirmaster at St. John’s Cathedral and Third Avenue United Church, and several theatres in Saskatoon. Abley studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan and, after winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1975 at St. John’s College, Oxford. He won prizes for his poetry while a student at St John's College, Oxford, and began to write full-time after moving to Toronto in 1978. He has been a contributing editor of both Maclean's and Saturday Night magazines, and a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement. His writings show an interest in endangered languages. He published a memoir, The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, in 2019.

Head and shoulders image of Dr. Carman E. Miller, Professor, Department of Mathematics.

Bio/Historical note: Dr. Carman Edgar Miller was born on 11 October 1907 in Milliken, Ontario. After graduating from high school in Markham, Ontario, he enrolled at the University of Toronto and went on to earn three degrees: a BA (1930), MA (1931), and PhD (1940). The Gertrude Davis Exchange Scholarship allowed Miller to study three semesters at Goettingen University (Germany) in 1931-1932. He also spent 1934-1935 attending the Ontario College of Education. Dr. Miller taught at a number of Toronto area high schools before accepting a post at the University of New Brunswick in 1941. He became head of the department prior coming to the University of Saskatchewan in 1946 as a professor of Mathematics. Dr. Miller served as head of the department from 1964-1970. He retired in 1973 and was named professor emeritus. He was active in the Saskatoon community as a supporter of the musical arts and also had a keen interest in Slavic languages and literature. Dr. Miller died on 6 June 1988 in Saskatoon.

Statue of Lesya Ukrainka, celebrated Ukrainian poet; Arts Wing and Arts Tower in background.

Bio/Historical Note: Lesya Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach-Kvitka) (1871-1913), the celebrated Ukrainian poet, made her mark on Ukrainian and world literature through her diverse writing talents. Her profound knowledge of world history and languages enabled her to write extensively across genres on a variety of subjects. In her lyrical works and dramatic poems, she vividly developed the themes of patriotism, human dignity, and personal integrity. Ukrainka’s work is timeless in its powerful assertion of human rights and freedoms. In 1976, a bronze statue of Lesya Ukrainka, made in Kyiv, Ukraine (USSR) by sculptor Halyna Kal’chenko and architect Anatoliy Ihnashchenko, was unveiled at the University of Saskatchewan. Commissioned by the Association for Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad, the statue was at the time seen by some merely as Soviet propaganda designed to rehabilitate their international reputation tarnished, in part, by injustices perpetrated against the people of Ukraine. The gift was initially declined by both the Province of Saskatchewan and the City of Saskatoon before being accepted by the University of Saskatchewan and installed on campus in a grove south of the Arts Tower. Through a generous donation by Dr. Victor O. Buyniak, as well as through the support of alumni and the wider Ukrainian community, the statue was refurbished and unveiled in its present location on 1 August 2013, the centenary of the death of Lesya Ukrainka.

Head and shoulders image of Dr. Maryna Romanets, sessional lecturer in English.

Bio/historical note: Image appeared in 9 Apr. 1999 issue of OCN.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. Maryna Romanets holds an MA (Chernivtsi Ukraine), a PhD from Kyiv (Ukrainian National Academy of Arts and Science), and a PhD (Saskatchewan). Dr. Romanets specializes in comparative, postcolonial, and women’s literatures, and contemporary critical theory. She has published articles and book chapters on the issues of representation and gender, post-colonialism and intertextual relations, politics and language, and translation theory and praxis. Dr. Romanets is the author of Anamorphosic Texts and Reconfigured Visions: Improvised Traditions in Contemporary Ukrainian and Irish Literature (2007) and coeditor of Beauty, Violence, Representation (2014, 2017). Her latest title, Ukrainian Erotomaniac Fictions: First Postindependence Wave, appeared in 2019, and she is currently working on an edited volume that examines Central and East-European neo-Gothic cultural productions after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dr. Romanets is currently professor, English/Women's and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia (2021).