I had a tender decision to make in including this writing. The decision was whether or not to out myself as the writer of Peter’s last lecture.
The simple truth is, like a lot of couples, we helped each other in every way throughout our marriage. His inestimable wisdom and loving support was the joy of my life and the foundation of my ministry. And Peter expressed his appreciation for my contribution to his work in a letter he wrote me not long before he died:
”I am reminded of your infinite generosity in helping me do my job better in so many ways, from writing and revising my speeches, to joining me for many events, dinners, and trips, and always your loving support of me through difficult times and good times – I was always proud and reassured to have you by my side. Your faith in me buoyed my confidence and raised me to the heights of professional success, of personal fulfilment and of love and he has been the solid, loving core of our family virtually since we met.”
With Peter, I too became more myself, the best version of myself. He saw me through the eyes of love and made me feel invincible. I know I did the same for him.
I started writing for him when speeches or words he was to deliver would mysteriously appear at my spot at the breakfast table. “Could you have a look at it?” he would say, which meant “I’d really like you to rewrite it.” To his credit, he told his Board that he would be paying me for my work out of his own salary, and he always did, generously.
He would often ask me to “leave a few spaces” usually for remarks about family or friends, so his personal touches are here and there, but especially in his last two terms, I wrote a lot of what he said in public. He was always so grateful and appreciative; “My brilliant wife – you know better than I what I want to say!”
We never thought much about whether anyone might guess our “secret,” but there at his Last Lecture, in a row sitting behind me, was a group of people from my church. When Peter was finished, one of them leaned forward and said in a loud stage whisper “I never knew that Peter George was such a fan of lesbian poets.“ Busted!
The coda to this story is that McMaster decided to print the words of Peter’s Last Lecture on giant wall panels across from the elevator on every floor of the new, fabulous Peter George Centre for Living and Learning (they were already carved into the bust of him in The McMaster University Student Centre) so now they’re credited to him for all posterity.
In light of all this, I asked my 15-year-old if she thought I should include it on my website. Her answer? “You wrote it, Mom. You know it, I know it and Baba knows it, too.”
She’s right.
Peter George’s Last Lecture
I am honoured to be here with all of you to share with you my thoughts and reflections on a life devoted to education. But I should tell you that my academic career began very humbly in a very small school.
You see, my grandfather was the lighthouse keeper on Toronto Island and we lived in that magical place from the time I was very small until I started High School in the city. So every day I walked to a three room school house with my dog by my side.
Things were a little more relaxed back then and so my teacher saw no reason why my dog couldn’t attend school with me. So I spent my first years in school with a faithful companion under my desk. His name was “Mac.” It’s true! So although I may not have gone to school AT “Mac”, I went to school WITH Mac from the very beginning!
My parents were young people during the depression and really regretted not having more opportunity to better themselves through education. So as the eldest son, after High School at the University of Toronto School, they were very anxious for me to attend university. Maybe a little over anxious; they had me skip two grades and I was only 16 when I began, ready academically but pretty immature socially and quite shy.
And I was (perhaps like some of you) the first person in my family to go to University. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say they expected great things of me, especially my mother, who was a very smart woman who lived in a time that offered few opportunities for women and for advanced education.
I went to the University of Toronto because my family could not afford for me to go away to University, and so I lived at home – maybe like some of you, too? And so I started classes still shy of my seventeenth birthday, and with great excitement and some fear and trepidation walked in the door of…
… McMaster Hall – at the University of Toronto! Yes, the building where I began my undergraduate career was the original site of the University in which we all now live, learn and work.
In the early 1880s, Senator William McMaster’s bequest financed the building of McMaster Hall on Bloor Street and when Mac moved to Hamilton in 1930, it became a part of the University of Toronto – until the year after I graduated when it became the home of the Royal Conservatory of Music as it is today.
So throughout my undergraduate career, I walked the halls of McMaster, even while attending the U of T! I started out with “Mac” under my desk and continued with “Mac” all around me. If one was a believer in destiny, at this point you might pause and scratch your head. (Pause and scratch your head!)
Now I realize my life trajectory might be different than yours. But I didn’t have much time to pause back then. By the time I was 22, I was a graduate student with a wife and baby son who I was supporting with scholarships and what I earned as a Teaching Assistant.
I needed a job, and so when McMaster offered me one the next year, I took it. I didn’t think about destiny or Mac under my desk or even McMaster Hall. I thought only about supporting my family and getting a job after long years of study, maybe having some money for a change or paying off debts (student loans back then were called “parents!”)
I started teaching university at 23 years of age. My wife Allison says this explains why so many of the people who come up to me or her in the supermarket saying I was their teacher are now as grey as I am! I was 23 when they were 20!
I am certain I wasn’t the most fascinating professor. My first lecture I was so nervous I zoomed through three classes’ worth of lecture notes in 20 minutes and then stood there like a deer in the headlights and finally said “Go and buy your textbooks!”
My former students tell me I got better over time, but I certainly never thought I would spend the next 45 years at Mac, and I never DREAMED of being President of a University, especially this one I love so much. It was bit disconcerting when a few years later someone wrote a best-selling book about people who are “elevated to the level of their own incompetence.” It was called “The Peter Principle!”
While I hope I am not an example, it’s safe to say that at that point in my career, I was just glad to have a job, some food on the table and a roof over the heads of my young family. A few years later, with the joyful addition of a daughter completing Gwen’s and my family, our lives looked pretty set, you might even say predictable. I would finish my PhD, publish some books, make full professor, we would raise our kids and be empty nesters in our 40s and enjoy a long lovely career and retirement together.
But, as the saying goes, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans!
One day a colleague from Toronto called me in the Economics Department looking for someone who was willing to go and work in Africa for a year. The Tanzanian Tourist Corporation was looking for an Economist and I tried in vain to convince several of my colleagues to go, but to no avail. One night I came home frustrated at my lack of success and my wife Gwen just looked at me and said “Well, why don’t WE go?”
I can honestly say that my life changed forever for the better that night. At 28 years old with two small children (6 and 3) off we went on an adventure that was to turn my previously sheltered life upside down in the most positive way possible.
I learned so much during my time in Africa! Now when every year I have about 30 or 40 students ask me to help them with some worthy project – they want to go and build homes or provide health care, do earthquake relief, participate in civil society or learn about microcredit in places all over the globe, I always listen and respond.
I respond! Instead of giving one of them the roughly $4000 that they are looking for, I give all 40 of them 100 dollars and encourage them to raise the rest of the funds from their family and friends and by the fruits of their own labours.
American poet Walt Whitman says “Give alms to all who ask” – while the students aren’t exactly asking for alms – they are asking me to believe that by taking themselves out of their own environment and being a “world citizen” even for a few weeks or months, that they can transform they way they think and feel about this planet and its inhabitants.
I believe this with all my heart so I always say “Yes.”
I believe I became a world citizen when I went to Africa. I realized something that perhaps I had known intellectually but never really felt in my bones, and that’s that the tiny slice of privileged life into which I was born is but a fraction of what it means to be human, and a very privileged fraction at that.
I learned that I had been granted a privilege by an accident of birth and that privilege bears with it responsibility. That in order to really understand who we are in our souls, we need to break down the barriers between us, and reach across great divides to do so.
In a country where water is carried on the heads of women and children for miles, I appreciated for the first time the abundant water that simply comes out of our taps. I learned to notice and be grateful for healthy food, clean water, for the ability to vote and choose a government. And above all – for education, which is valued so much more highly in the places in the world where it is harder to obtain than it is on this continent.
I learned to listen before I speak. Many times I say down in councils with local villagers in Africa and observed in wonder how carefully and graciously they listened. There was a level of respect and engagement in community that I had never before experienced. I wondered if I had ever really listened well to other people.
I learned to ask questions that would help people find their own answers rather than parachute in and offer my own solutions. These skills have helped me immeasurably in my career. I remember the saying my mother taught me “Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and leave no doubt!” Never did I learn this more than in Africa, where I was graced with the life lesson that you first have to do enough listening to make what you have to say worth hearing.
I learned other lessons about different cultures and different ways of being. For example, it’s the custom in much of Africa for men to hold hands with each other walking down the street, something with which my uptight WASP upbringing was not very familiar! I amazed myself in actually getting comfortable walking hand in hand down the streets of Dar es Saalam with my 6 foot 5 – 250 pound, shaven headed Tanzanian boss, a Wachaga from Kilimanjaro District, who had been the first Black District Commissioner in colonial Tanganyika.
He tested my sense of world citizenship and cultural respect by doing the same walking down Bloor Street when he visited Toronto and I hope I passed the test; although that was about 35 years ago so we did get a few looks on that sunny, summer day.
But the people I met in Africa were hungry for education. As when we traveled in India, we were amazed that the children wanted not chocolate or toys but pencils, any pencil they could get their hands on was as precious as gold, because it meant they could write!
Do you know that right here and now, you have an education that is the envy of the world? That just by being in this room you are already one of the luckiest .001 percent of people alive on this planet?
Then, as the poet Mary Oliver says “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I want to tell you what a few Mac grads have done with their “wild and precious lives.” Perhaps they will inspire you as they have me. People like this handful of heroic doctors who have put themselves in harm’s way repeatedly to bring aid to the most at-risk members of our global family. They are people like James Orbinski, class of ’89, Samantha Nutt, class of’91 and ’94, Eric Hoskins, class of ’82 and ’85 and Richard Heinzl, class of ’87. They have led and founded organizations like War Child and Doctors Without Borders. They have accepted Nobel Peace Prizes and Orders of Canada and they are incredible examples for us all.
Yet because of the privileges that have been bestowed upon all of us – a prosperous and peaceful home nation; access to free health care, clean water and food, and above all, the benefits of a wonderful education; we have all been invited to humanity’s table – to listen and to share, to learn and to give back. We all have an open invitation to become global citizens. We just need to answer the call!
Maybe you will fly into the most war-ravaged places on earth, but you can also fulfill your citizenship goals without ever boarding an airplane. We need volunteer doctors in the middle of a war, but we also need coaches for youth basketball teams. We need people to work in health clinics for the homeless. We need volunteers to welcome refugees to a new country. We need people to tutor math skills for children. We need someone to restore indigenous plants to our watershed. It matters not what you do, only that you do it!
The call of the world is for everyone to hear, and for those lucky enough to be able to give back – to answer.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I came back from Africa feeling myself to be not a professor but a lucky participant in the greatest endeavour of human kind; to learn and grow in community with one another. I felt myself to be not just a Canadian, but a human being in a vast community of human beings.
When we left for Tanzania, we were warned about “culture shock.” No-one told us that the real culture shock would be coming back to Canada!
I have given my life to education because I believe it to be a most worthy endeavor. Without it on its simplest level, people cannot communicate with each other. When we learn, we learn about ourselves and others, we learn about our history and our planet and its people and we probe the very nature of the universe. We gain knowledge and understanding, pose problems and provide solutions, solve mysteries and grow a sense of awe for the mysteries we can never solve.
It does not stop all wars but but without it there can be no understanding that leads to peace.
It does not heal the planet but without it we have no idea even how to begin to try.
It does not right all the wrongs of the world but makes righting wrongs more possible and more probable.
I gave my life to education because there is nothing better than bearing witness to the opening of the human mind and spirit.
I have loved being surrounded by students for 45 years, and not just the students who are the same age I was when I came here, but all of you who have grown along with me. I have enormous respect for the students, staff, faculty and alumni who have been with me on this incredible journey of life- long learning, bringing honour and esteem to our university and inestimable good to our world. I could use up the rest of this last lecture outlining their many accomplishments.
Yet at the same time, when I assumed the helm of this university, we were, as the old Chinese saying goes , living in “interesting times.”
Within weeks of beginning my Presidency, we were in the throes of the “Common Sense Revolution” – distinguished, in my opinion, by its utter lack of common sense, and utter disregard for the social contract of our shared community. Within weeks, huge cuts to public education were announced, forcing an unheard of crisis in the University’s budgetary planning.
Ironically, my Presidency is ending amid the worst global recession since the Depression of my parents’ youth, causing, some would say, an unheard of crisis in the University’s budgetary planning!
But I believe, as the saying goes, in “Postponing pessimism for better times!”
We made it through that first storm and I have no doubt at all we will weather the next and weather it well. As a friend pointed out to me, “You’re not responsible for the weather, but you do have to safely guide the ship – in storms as well as in calm seas.” And that I believe, with great help, I have done. And during those calmer passages we have seen an unprecedented era of growth and prosperity for our beloved University.
But did you know that when I began at McMaster and even as I rose through the ranks to be a full professor and Dean, our stated aim was to be “Canada’s best medium-sized university?” While each stage of our growth has been important, to me if you will pardon the analogy, that is like saying your goal is to be the best average guy in town, or the most impressive boring woman you know.
It reminds me of the story of two travelers on their way to Japan who were standing at the rail of the ship looking out upon the sea. After a few moments, one of them turned and walked away, disappointed. Throughout the day, the man returned to the deck and then turned and walked away in disappointment again and again.
Finally the second traveler asked the fellow traveler what it was that made him so downcast. The man replied that he’d been told that at this point in the journey he would be able to see Mt. Fuji. But he feared the haze over the water was not going to lift, robbing him of a sight that he so longed to see.
Taking him by the arm, his shipmate led the man back to the rail of the ship and said quietly, “Look higher.” The traveler, raising his eyes above the haze, saw the great mountain in all its majesty.
I hope that my time at McMaster has been a time of “looking higher” or, as the saying goes, of our “reach exceeding our grasp” – or “What’s a heaven for?”
When I look around me at the bright faces of our students, the excellence and dedication of our staff, the passion of our best professors and the enthusiasm and accomplishments of our alumni, I see no reason for Mac not to be the best university in the world!
We have all it takes right here; all we needed was hope, and vision, and the determination and will to make it happen. I have done my best for 45 years to make it so. Now it is up to all those who will come after.
I know there are some of you who were reminded, as we laid plans to grow this institution, of the saying “For years we have been standing at the edge of an abyss – now is the time to step boldly forward!”
I know some have also said I have an “Edifice Complex” and want to leave a legacy of buildings. I still receive complaints about the loss of the “sunken garden” which made way for our world-class medical school and hospital, although it disappeared long before my watch. I liked it too! But what would you rather have? World-class medical care or a sunken garden?
But all the buildings and changes and plans and growth have not been an end in themselves, but a mere means to serve that Spirit of understanding and education, that Spirit of engagement and world community I first learned so much about in Tanzania and tried to live by when I returned.
It does give me joy to see the Student Centre. But not when I look at the empty building as I walk through it late at night on my way home; but when the foyer is filled with students talking, laughing, sharing their interests in clubs or groups; when I see them clustered in twos or threes studying in its many cubby holes and meeting rooms.
Before I was President, the student centre was supposedly in Wentworth House, and then in Hamilton Hall, except that few students ever went there! Yet 6 generations of students had been levied and taxed in student fees to build a gathering place they never got to use!
So Yes, I considered it a matter of personal integrity to build it and I am glad I kept that promise every time I see it doing what it was REALLY intended to do – which is build community in the next generation of human beings to set forth from McMaster to lead this world. It is the heart of student life at Mac, and we would be far poorer without it.
I am proud of the Student Centre and of being “student-centred”. I never gave up on the vision of having the student at the centre of all we do, of holding all our plans up to the light of what creates an ideal learning environment for the next generation of hearts, minds and spirits.
And I am proud, too, of the 70 % ratio of student use of the Athletic Centre – we were much bigger couch potatoes in my day as an undergrad – but if you didn’t have it, you couldn’t use it. So yes, I am glad that my efforts helped make it possible. And I am thrilled when I see you all there, working on improving your mind, spirit and body as the good gifts that you are.
I also had an “Open Door” policy which many of you availed yourselves of – students, faculty, staff and alumni. My vision was an accessible Presidency and Allison and I started our marriage living in the President’s Residence and weekly welcoming regular gatherings of the whole McMaster community to our doors!
I wanted to help build an inclusive and diverse community in our university. The Mac that my two oldest children attended in the 1980s was different than the one my youngest daughter born in China had better be planning to attend! It is already much different and welcomes her with a student body that better reflects the diversity of the world that I so want her to see as her whole human family.
I also wanted to bring Mac closer to Hamilton, increasing the alignment of Mac with our city’s needs, by expanding without compromising our research and educational mission. I believe that we have together built a wonderful partnership with the city of Hamilton and are an integral part of its future.
I know that it has not been possible to do any of this without garnering some criticism. This is an occupational hazard when you are willing to lead, especially in the academic environment which somehow wants to set itself aside from the world. In some people’s minds once you become an administrator, you go from being “Socrates to Bureaucrates,” forgetting all you learned about yourself and others along the way.
This I believe is a common misconception about leadership, that when you learn how to manage, you somehow forget how to work, that when you become a Principal, you forget how to teach, when you are willing to lead you cannot recall what it is like to be a part of the whole.
I am, and always will be, a teacher and, thanks to my time in Africa, and reinforced by countless international visits since, a citizen of the world. It is what I believe we all are called to be – for and with each other.
At the same time, criticism can offer valuable lessons. One is, as Allison’s old friend and mentor Alan Deale used to say, that “We all need to learn to eat crow and pretend it tastes like turkey!” Trust me, if you can learn to do this, you will have an easier life and a more successful career.
I have also learned that a real leader is willing to give credit and to accept blame. It is a lonely privilege to share joyfully in the collaboration when things go well, but stand alone in owning the mistakes. But that’s the job of leadership. If you’re not up for it, don’t aim higher.
I have had some lighthearted moments in all of this, even when it comes to critics. Some I can’t repeat in public. But one that stands out is the woman who phoned me irate because “The McMaster geese are eating my lawn!” “How do you know they’re McMaster Geese?” I asked her.
“Because that’s where they live and where they come from!” was the answer.
I asked her to describe them to me, which she did, a little perplexed. The only answer I could give of course was “Ma’am, those are not McMaster geese. The McMaster geese have maroon heads and grey neckbands and are wearing little Mac T shirts.” Would that all the criticisms we receive were so easily dismissed!
But I have learned that you can’t avoid mistakes, mistakes are a part of life, it’s what you learn from them that counts.
So what can you learn from your mistakes? Humility for one. How to change yourself for the better for another. For if they really are mistakes, learn from them, make amends and don’t repeat them! In true McMaster style, make new and innovative mistakes next time!
There is something I could have applied in my marking days that I learned later in life that has to do with the mistakes you make. And that’s basically to take off both the top and the bottom mark.
Because you are never as wrong or bad as your worst critics insist but neither are you always as wonderful as your biggest fans might believe. Even great people can make bad mistakes and each and every one of us has the capacity to do good, no matter how many wrong choices we may have already made.
So be gentle with yourself and others and take off the top mark as well as the bottom mark. Try to live in the place in between where you try your very best and may occasionally excel, or if you fail, you fail spectacularly after a valiant attempt!
Be an idealist, presume good intent and always be willing to be freshly disappointed if others’ intent is not as good as you had presumed. Don’t live your life by the carrot and the stick; the carrot of praise or the stick of criticism.
Above all, be true to yourself My main task in life is to be the best Peter George I can be. Your only task in life is to be the best Sam or Sarah, Jesse or Jingjing, Kira or Kristen, Matthew or Fayez, Livio or Vishal, Csilla, or Eric. Who else can you be?
I have also learned that nothing else will have more impact on your happiness and success in life than choosing and surrounding yourself with the right friends, mates, co-workers and employees. Trust your intuition as well as do your homework. I believe in reading the book, but I also believe in being prepared to set it aside if your gut instinct tells you something different.
Just for the sake of it, I counted up the leaders that Mac has contributed in recent years to the landscape of leadership in higher education in this country, many of whom I was fortunate enough to hire, befriend or mentor.
The Presidents of Manitoba, Calgary, York and Queen’s Universities; the Provosts or Academic Vice Presidents of Calgary, Carleton, Memorial, Saskachewan, Winnipeg and Simon Fraser University, to name the ones that come first to mind, with no doubt many more to come. Many people too numerous to mention in high office in government; Municipal, Provincial and Federal. My thrill at seeing them succeed is almost matched by my irritation at losing them and having to replace such wonderful colleagues.
I have been able to work with, nurture and benefit from excellence in my contemporaries, both bosses, employees and colleagues. You can always learn from everyone you meet – on the way up, on the way down and looking them straight in the eye across the table.
There are some other tables across which you can look while trusting your intuition. It may surprise you to know that I asked both of my wives to marry me on the first date; one when I was 20 years old and celebrating my graduation day with a few beers and another 35 years later when I was a grieving widower with a dream job and no-one to share it with any more.
Through those losses and those fortunate second chances, I’ve learned that life is precious, love is precious, and if you don’t take any chances, you won’t find it. Sorrow and joy are all mixed up together; you can be on top of the world in one moment and then you can be in the bottom of the valley sometimes in very short order.
But Love is not a process of reasoning, it’s a mystery. As the Little Prince says “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Trust your heart in matters of the heart.
The whole idea of “commitment phobia” we read about these days – I guess I’ve never understood it, a guy who proposes on the first date! But the choice of a life partner is the biggest decision you will ever make in your life.
So my best advice is Carpe Diem – sieze the day – or the good ones will be gone!
Give love and it will come back to you; in my experience it is returned a thousand times over.
And I know it’s trite but as the saying goes – “Never go to bed mad” – or as a comedian once said “Stay up and fight.” I’m joking! Never go to bed mad! But anyone you love is worth treating with kindness and respect, always. You can have all the awards and accolades in the world but the only thing that really matters is what your wife and kids think of you.
I can update that to include partners and friends, colleagues and all in your closest circle of companionship. Really, it all doesn’t amount to a hill of beans except the love that you give and share.
(Sung) “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention” so I won’t mention them. Suffice to say that this is a profession that always leaves things undone at the end of the day. That’s as it should be, for it’s about nothing less than the human spirit, which after all is unquenchable.
I have been privileged for 45 years to get up every morning and go to work believing that this could be the best day ever – and many, many days I have found it to be so.
From Mac under my desk, to the walls of McMaster Hall surrounding me, to the classroom of Africa, to the place where I now stand, incredibly honored to be part of an amazing university’s transformation, to the wonderful women and men I have been surrounded by in life and in love, I am one very lucky man.
And I wish for you, our students, no less a “wild and precious life.”
Thank You.
Delivered by Dr. Peter George, Wednesday, March 3, 2010
As he prepared to step down from an unprecedented 3 terms as President and Vice Chancellor and 45 years as Professor, Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Dean of Social Sciences at McMaster