Leaders aren’t born! They are
made by hard effort which is the price
all of us must pay to achieve any worthwhile
goal. (Vince Lombardi: 1913-1970)
Who would believe
that a young boy growing up as a child
of white privilege in
apartheid-dominated South
Africa
would become the
President of of our prestigious McMaster
University?
March 1st edition of
the Hamilton Spectator featured an article about him by journalist, Jon Wells,
who wrote about the experience that shaped how he became ~ a true believer in
the university as a place for teaching 'humane wisdom'...where ideas are
challenged...difficult questions asked...and where students graduate with
something deeper than job qualification. I take the
privilege of excerpting information from this article which significantly led
to his position today.
It was warm outside and
perfectly cool in the auditorium.
Fresh-faced McMaster students in their graduation robes gathered on the cusp of summer ~ the future
at their feet. On stage in this symbolic
'dawn of the possible' stood an erudite man with a greying beard,
speaking of the limitations of optimism.
“Optimism is a partial truth,” he said from the podium, “and a
sentimental one at that. As you celebrate what you know, and what you can do,
it is important to have the discipline of acknowledging...what you don't know
and what you may not be able to do.”
Patrick Deane, the president
of McMaster University, administers a business that has 6,400 staff, an $878-million
budget and educates 30,000 students. He does not speak like an administrator
whose sole mission is to turn out students with practical job-ready
skills; Deane is cut from a different
cloth.
“BEWARE FALSE CERTAINTIES,” he
told the graduates. “Carry with you
skepticism and doubt.” Invisible to the
students, he did not talk about his birthplace nor the story of how, as a young
man, he had what he later thought of as a 'Matrix moment'...that revealed to
him his powerlessness and even his complicity in the system. “The essence of all human activity, is that
it stands on the edge of error. To
progress in any way, we must acknowledge that we, too, stand always in an intimate
relation to self-delusion and ignorance.”
A boyhood friend in Johannesburg, Robin Carr
stated that even as a young boy, Patrick had the quality of being interested in
other people. Brian, another friend
stated that they lived in a sheltered environment, tending to take the Mandela
fiasco for granted. Teachers kept quiet
and parents didn't broach it much, if at all during that stage of their lives.
Further, South Africans were not permitted to know about Nelson Mandela.
Patrick's older brother died
of testicular cancer at the end of
fulfilling his compulsory military service across the border in Namibia. Patrick, who was 15, determined to avoid
military service, decided that a career in law was his calling, the better to
seek justice for his brother and others like him. He attended Witwatersrand University
in Johannesburg
which had a reputation for campus anti-apartheid activism. It was a curious thing, he came to realize,
that the apartheid-government, as oppressive as it was, permitted elements of
free expression on campuses and in the press and judicial systems. Apartheid,
and the broader white society's acceptance of it, was strengthened through
insidious laws that controlled where blacks could live, separating them
physically and socially.
But, as a young man, the
system did not truly hit home with him until one day, when he was working a
summer job after his first year of university.
His manager asked him to accompany a store employee, who was black, to a
governmental office to have his passbook stamped. This was a document all blacks had to carry,
indicating where they were entitled to live and work. Patrick, at first
resisted ~ it struck him as absurd, a student shepherding a middle-aged
man. At the chaotic government's office,
they were directed to a room where a bureaucrat reflexively stamped the
passbook. Examining the book outside,
Patrick noticed that...rather than renew the man's passbook to continue
living and working in Johannesburg (as he had for many years), the
stamp expelled him from his city forever.
Returning to the office, he was told the stamp was...irreversible! The guy's life had been ruined...just like
that and no one cared! That was
Patrick's Matrix moment...the code revealing... cold injustice!
Nearly 40 years later, Patrick
Deane asks the question, “So is that the big narrative denouement, where the
scales fall from your eyes?” sitting in the president's office at McMaster University as he reflects on that
day. “Not really...the guy who suffered,
whose life was changed by that mistake, disappears from that narrative
entirely. That story has always haunted
me, my own culpability in it.”
Deane did not mount barricades
and demand revolution. But he yearned to
leave the country. If he didn't get out
then, he would, like many of his friends, be forced to do his military service
for a regime none of them could stomach.
Unlike his closest friends, he had a way out...his bloodline! His mother, Elvira, was Canadian...whom his
father had met while on a trip for his steel company to Welland, Ontario.
Holding his newly acquired Canadian passport, Patrick Deane, at 22, boarded a
plane out of Johannesburg and across the Atlantic.
He attended Western University
in London, Ontario, earning his Master's and PhD in English. That's where he met Sheila, also an English
major, a Virginia Woolf scholar who
would go on to earn her PhD and be an educator in women's studies. They married and had a daughter, Petra, and son,
Colin. Sheila lobbied that their family
should live on a farm...raise animals...go organic..and live feeling the
rhythms of the earth.
Deane reflected that it had
been tough on his parents to lose their remaining son when he left ~ but he had
not recognized that back then. “You
think back about how you treated your
parents and think, 'you insensitive boor' ! Now as a father, I understand
better.”
Patrick and Sheila bought a
farm, first during their time in Winnipeg and
then in Kingston and now near Sheffield
(a 35 minute drive to McMaster). They
have several horses they have moved from place to place, plus chickens and
sheep. She does most of the work on their nine-hectare hobby farm. He does his part primarily on weekends.
He turned 57 last December and
has been living in Canada
34 years. It has taken nearly that long
for him to come to terms with his roots.
Patrick relates,“I did not speak
of myself as a South African for a long time.
I did not associate with South Africans on the faculty at Queen's and I
refused to attend Witwatersrand University reunions held in Toronto.
I did not want to be among those who pined for the old country or styled
themselves as having taken a heroic stand against apartheid.”
Deane further said that he was
a kid born of privilege who derived benefits from a country's racist
system. And then, like others his age
who shared his background, he woke up to what it was all about. “There was nothing heroic abut it.”
When Deane had his fresh start
at McMaster, he finally began to speak of the road travelled. At the formal ceremony installing him as
president, he spoke of his university days, of protest and the courage of his
teachers. “The role of the university,”
he told the audience, “is not to serve the law, but to serve society.” As
president, Deane must handle..budgets, employee unions, student controversies
and lobbying politicians for research funding.
(McMaster is one of Canada's
top three research intensive universities.)
But Deane can only see his job and the role of the university through
his distinct intellectual prism. He
believes the university's mission is to cultivate in all students, regardless
of study area, a 'humane wisdom' toward making their community and world...a
better place!
Each fall, Patrick Deane
greets first-year students, as they pass through a symbolic stone arch, with a
handshake. To teenagers, just out of
high school, this rite might seem old-fashioned. Perhaps, over time it will have more meaning
~ the bearded wise man with the accent
welcoming them into something profound...even earth-changing...if they
are able to see it.
Words of Wisdom
“Every moment, your
life should be measured
by just how far it
takes you from the ordinary.”
Everyone who is
successful, must have dreamed up something.
(Maricopa ~ Native
American Indian)
The journey to go
further...never ends!
(Ancient proverb)
Merle
Baird-Kerr...March 2, 2014
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