COMMENCEMENT ANNUAL

Dr. Scott has given innumerable evidences of his ability fairly and justly to look after
Canada’s wards. His kindly spirit and natural dignity never failed to impress the Indian people.
There is no space here to ennumerate my claim that Dr. Scott is the most influential and
best friend the Indians ever had. His policy has been one of progressive advancement.

He built up a system of education and educational institutions extending from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, worthy of the people of Canada and as great, if not superior, to such an under-
taking carried on by other Nations responsible for the education of under-privileged peoples
or those who are their wards. He co-related academic and technical education so as to make
it meet the needs of the times. He has created and fostered the interest of the country in the
question of Indian citizenship and has had legislation advanced in this regard as far as the
Federal Government would allow. He has taken the ground that the educated Indian is as
capable of fulfilling his obligations to the state as any other person.

He has laid great emphasis on re-establishing the health of the Indian people: to this
end, vitally improved sanitary conditions on hundreds of reserves, established water works
wherever possible, assisted in the building and maintaining of hospitals and placed on a sound
basis a comprehensive medical service. Frequently he has fought strenuous battles for the
Indian people, otherwise they would have been victims of unscrupulous dealings which mask
themselves in the mode of civilization.

In fifty years he has performed a task, exalted in its ideals, far reaching in its influence,
with splendid success and earned the gratitude of the Nation and the Indian people of Canada.

Notwithstanding the arduous life as Administrator of Indian Affairs, he is a man of wide
renown in the literary world, ranking high amongst the poets. This year he is President of
the Canadian Authors Association. The following is one of Dr. Scott’s poems, taken from his
volume “Beauty and Life”:

The Tree, The Birds, and The Child

A birch before the northern window stood
Silvery white,

Shrouded in greens of liquid tender hue,
All laved in light.

It seemed a naiad in a fountain caught
Had charmed the spray

‘To blow about her naked loveliness,
Never away

And all the rustle of the inner shadow
Was full of dancing,

Now the swift sun and now the lustrous rain
llashing and glancing.

Two robins searching for an empty tree
Saw it was fair,

Liked the seclusion of an ambushed crotch
And settled there.

And there a child beside the window sat
Watching them brood

Over their eggs, with all the fluttering care
Of parenthood.

She clasped her hands below her vivid face,
Iler lips apart,

As if she mothered there a little bird
Close to her heart.

But then ere long, she turned and vanished
Through the closed door,

No more to laugh, to love—perhaps ‘twere best
To say no more.

Then the tree died, it could not answer once
To Spring's desire,

It was cut down and split and corded up
And burned with fire.

The birds were certain of their slender tree
Early that Spring,

But when they strove to perch upon the limbs
There was nothing.

They flew away and built in other branches

Five