Johnston stories, photos, valedictions

A cover photo, a farewell message, a historian’s analysis and a journalist’s interview with some anecdotes we haven’t heard before — it all adds up to the David Johnston issue of Waterloo’s alumni-and-friends magazine.

The fall issue of the twice-a-year magazine (left) is largely devoted to the man who left Waterloo September 30, after eleven years as the university’s president, to become Governor General of Canada. “David’s thoughts about his 11-year term,” writes university historian Ken McLaughlin, “were that he hoped that he had made a difference for Canada and to the university in ways that were in the interest of the nation and the community.”

He speaks of Johnston’s “spirit of adventure”, itemizes some of the university’s achievements between 1999 and 2010, and declares that the university’s fifth president “embraced the unorthodox, unconventional, entrepreneurial spirit of Waterloo”.

Johnston himself writes: “I have been inspired time and again by your creativity, ingenuity, and energy. You all have my sincerest thanks for staking our claim as Canada’s most innovative university.”

Creative and ingenious might be mild words for one or two of the magazine’s photos of Johnston. Yes, he’s seen a few times in his customary University of Waterloo necktie, as well as in a Team Canada jersey and in uniform (and on the ice) from the days when he played hockey for Harvard. But there are more informal pictures too: there’s Johnston in a white T-shirt and bike helmet, there he is in bright red fleece cuddling with grandchildren, and, oh my goodness, there he is (right) in the brightest of houndstooth-check black and gold golf pants.

And the issue’s longest article, an interview and profile written by Kelley Teahen, the magazine’s editor, has some of those informal insights too. Here are just a few snippets:

• His other self-observed flaws have to do with speed. "I'm impatient, and that's a weakness. I have a sense of urgency that I bring sometimes in an oppressive way into situations. I'm so conscious, there are only 24 hours in a day, and there are so many things to be done, and time's a-wasting." Ancillary to his impatience — beyond a penchant for collecting speeding tickets — is a worry that he sometimes makes decisions too quickly in his urge to move things forward, and that he has "a short attention span."

• Throughout his life, Johnston has been guided by his faith and committed to a Christian calling to "care for the people in your community," Sam Johnston says. "He takes that really seriously. It's very raw. There's no arrogance to it, or a thought that it's a 'good thing to do.' It doesn't register on a strategic level with him: It's internal; his ethic."

• In 1963, after completing his arts degree at Harvard, Johnston considered a professional hockey career but ultimately did not pursue that path as he had injured his left hand at the end of high school and permanent nerve damage limited his strength. He decided to pursue legal studies and chose a scholarship opportunity at Cambridge in England "to make a clean break from the game I loved so much" rather than studying in Boston or Toronto or Montreal, with the taunt of NHL teams within reach.

• [As principal of McGill University] he perfected the art of multitasking, whether at home in the cheerfully chaotic household filled with young girls and frequent university dinner guests, squeezing in runs up and down Mont Royal amid a bull-stunning schedule of daily meetings, or negotiating the tense dance between separatist Quebec politics and funding for an English-language university in the late 1980s. Johnston did not keep a separate office at home, but worked on university files among the children. At the dining room table after dinner, "while we did our homework, he did too," Debbie Johnston says. "My mom explained Dad had a lot of homework because he was a little slower."

• Family times, whether at Chatterbox Farm near Heidelberg (so dubbed by the Johnston daughters after their vivacious mom Sharon, nicknamed "the chatterbox") or at the cottage on Lac Tremblant in Quebec, are central to Johnston's happiness. "He loves being around his family; that is so important to him," Debbie Johnston says. "You can see him light up, especially with grandchildren."

• His daughters report he also is in the habit of sending summaries of sermons to them via BlackBerry messages, thumb-typed directly from church.

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Former profs mourned and remembered

As 2010 nears its end, the university remembers a number of retired and former faculty members who died during this year. Among them:

Rex Guest, who died April 9, was one of the university’s pioneers. He joined the department of chemistry in December 1957, when “Waterloo College Associate Faculties”, not yet a university, was less than a year old. He retired in 1972.

Jack Gray (left, 1981), who died May 8, was a faculty member in the department of English from 1966 to his retirement in 1990. He served for a time as associate dean (undergraduate studies) in the arts faculty, and played a role in the creation of the integrated studies (now independent studies) program. As a researcher, he played a major part in establishing and leading the Oxford English Dictionary project in the 1980s, which in turn led to the creation of Waterloo spinoff companies in the high-tech industry.

Ladis Kristof, who died June 15, was briefly (1969-71) a faculty member in the department of political science. A concentration camp survivor, he acquired English and a university education in the United States, and spent most of his career teaching at Portland State University in Oregon.

Raymond Pellowe, who died September 24, practised optometry in Toronto for 25 years, then came to Waterloo as a faculty member in the school of optometry in 1975. He coordinated summer programs in the optometry clinic, including a student expedition to Jamaica that provided eye care and glasses to hundreds of people. He retired in 1984.

Ernest Roy Officer, who died September 30, was a professor in the department of geography, as it was then called, from 1962 to his retirement in 1988; he specialized in historical and political geography.

Derick Wood, who died October 4, taught in what was then the “department of computer science” from 1982 to 1992 before moving to the University of Western Ontario and later the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His name is honoured through a recently created Derick Wood Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science at Waterloo. His wife, Mary Chen, is also a Waterloo retiree.

Richard Cockfield, who died October 13, came to the university in 1969 as a research assistant in civil (now civil and environmental) engineering. He then served as a faculty member from 1970 to his retirement in 1996, and was especially involved in the construction management program.

CAR

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