Home / Faculty Congratulations
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Dear 2021 Graduating Class, We are so proud of you. You have finished your degree while grappling with the personal challenges posed by the COVID-19 virus. Congratulations on your perseverance, resilience, and indomitable spirit as you open a new chapter on your life and remember the lesson that you have learned this spring: “It... More
Dear Graduates: I so wish we could gather in person. You are all so deserving. I've had the great privilege of knowing many of you, and you have made my life richer, and all of you have taught me something I didn't even know I needed to know! Graduation is always a very exciting... More
Saturday, June 5, 2021
Hello friends. I decided to curate a little portfolio of things for you, linked here (I hope it works!), some serious and some more silly. It's some poems, a song, and a video toast from my son and me. I’m not very good with motivational speaking (as you will see from the collection of... More
Dear 2021 graduates, I met many of you in my courses during the last half decade and could certainly not have foreseen how your undergraduate years would come to a close. Life is unpredictable. It is sometimes terrible and, for many in this world, it is too often awful. You have been schooled in... More
Congratulations! You did it. Reading and writing and thinking and paying attention is hard work, but really worth it. I hope you know that what you've learned and contributed to this community matters a great deal. We will miss you, so please drop us a line once in a while and let us know... More
If you've been in my Indigenous and Canadian Literatures class, it was a pleasure and an honour for me to be part of your university studies. I know that from all of your courses put together, you'll be taking the ability to read, write, and analyze with sharpness and sophistication into the world, wherever... More
Congratulations, class of 2021!! You are all to be commended for completing your degrees under such tough and unusual circumstances. I'm very sorry that we can't all share in your achievement in person, but I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours. Sara... More
Generous—that’s how I have often described you. —Thoughtful, creative, and engaged, too, of course, but I always come back to generous. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas, your insights, your words, your time. It has been a privilege and such a pleasure to work with you, whether as instructor or faculty advisor. I’m... More
My dear graduating students: Please accept my warmest congratulations on the occasion of your graduation. I have had the great honour and pleasure to teach some of you as incoming students and others among you as seniors. The times we spent together talking about literature are some of the happiest and most memorable of... More
Letter to Class of 2021 English Majors “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, / Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquering” Geoffrey Chaucer wrote these words in the late 1300s, about love, to open his “Parliament of Fowls” poem, but they have always seemed to me to sum up in... More
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” ― James Baldwin, interview, 1963. It was literature, Baldwin continues, that “taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who... More
Dear Members of the Class of 2021: Congratulations on this amazing achievement! I hope that you can celebrate this moment and that exciting adventures are on the horizon for... More
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