Here is a copy of a tribute speech by Grant MacEwan from August
22, 1946 which he titled The Man Murray: "I don't suppose anybody
left a more vivid mark upon the youthful face of Western Canada
than the late Walter C. Murray of Saskatchewan. It wasn't just what
he did but it was the "Murray way" he had of doing it that made him
loved. He distinguished himself as a philosopher and he was a great
educator; yes, but more than that, he was distinguished for his
tremendous capacity for friendship; he was a great Canadian.
I was engaged by the University of Saskatchewan in the spring of
1928 but it was several weeks before I met the President. Then one
day a man came into my new office and offered his hand and said,
"My name is Murray". His kindly informality didn't somehow suggest
a University President and I asked, "What department are you in?"
He chuckled a typical Murray chuckle and said, "I work in the
President's office and if you get into trouble give me a call".
Walter Charles Murray was born at Studholm in King' s County,
New Brunswick, on May 12, 1866. He said that County had produced
more good intentions than any area of similar size in the world,
but that Pictou County over in Nova Scotia was still in the lead
for foreign missionaries and college professors.
From the local schools, young Murray went to the University of
New Brunswick and graduated in 1886, a distinguished gold medalist.
He was awarded a scholarship which permitted him to pursue graduate
studies overseas and he elected philosophy at the University of
Edinburgh. Leaving Edinburgh he travelled in Europe and studied in
Berlin and then returned to become Professor of Philosophy at his
own University of New Brunswick. Dalhousie University wanted him
and got him in 1892, and there he remained until 1908 when he
accepted the challenge of the new North West.
The Province of Saskatchewan was created in 1905 and two years
later, under Premier Walter Scott, an act was passed establishing
the University of Saskatchewan. A Board of Governors was appointed
in January 1908, and in August of that year, the Board persuaded
Dalhousie's magnetic young Professor of Philosophy to become the
first President. Momentous decisions had to be made. First there
was the site of the provincial University. Battleford and Regina as
well as Saskatoon were making strong their bids for it. Saskatoon
won. And then when the new President saw the site for the first
time, an old she-coyote was emerging from her den just where
College Building now stands. (Incidentally there is still an
occasional wolf around there, looking I suppose, for chickens or
lambs.)
Then there was the relationship of the College of Agriculture to
the University which had to be determined. Murray had a vision of a
provincial University dedicated to service, a vision of a peoples'
University. It was to be the servant of an agricultural area,
conducting useful research, and turning out able leaders; and
raising cultural standards. An Agricultural college there must
certainly be; but where?
Tradition said the College of Agriculture should be separated by
a safe distance from the University but Murray had other ideas. As
one of my friends observed, Murray "did not establish another
University – he founded a new one". And after Minister of
Agriculture Motherwell had been convinced that Murray was right,
the decision was made to place the College of Agriculture along
with the College of Arts and Science at the very heart of the new
University. That decision and the intimate relationship between the
University and the agricultural community, gave the President his
biggest pride in after years.
Well, President Murray had a provincial University on his hands
and no place to put it. But temporary quarters were secured in the
Drinkle Building on 3rd Avenue in Saskatoon and 70 students
registered in Arts & Science for the first term which began at
the last of September in 1909. The Arts Faculty in addition to
President Murray consisted of Professors G.W. Ling, E.H. Oliver,
R.J. Bateman and Arthur Moxon. And President Murray's original
Agricultural Faculty, also set up that year, consisted of Dean
Rutherford and Professors Alexander Greig and John Bracken.
On July 29, 1910, Sir Wilfred Laurier laid the corner stone for
the building now known as College Building and it was opened for
use in October, 1912. It was the first of a series of beautiful
grey-stone buildings, Collegiate Gothic in style. It was a
brilliant blueprint for a peoples' University, that was drawn up by
"Architect" Murray and gradually the plan took form to make the
Saskatchewan campus one of the most lovely in Canada. The
prehistoric glaciers which brought down those mighty limestone
boulders from which the University buildings were constructed,
received "Honorary Degrees in Absentia" quite regularly from Dr.
Murray. Admittedly, he didn't realize when he picked New Brunswick
field rocks in his youth, that stones could be so beautiful and so
beneficial in education. Those limestone buildings will always be a
memorial to the first President.
The Faculty of Arts & Science and Faculty of Agriculture
were the two originals. Then came Engineering, Law, Pharmacy,
Accounting, Summer School, Medicine, Education, Household Science,
Music, and so on. It was phenomenal expansion. But nobody could
accuse Walter Murray of being interested only in Saskatchewan; he
responded to the call for public service in many parts of Canada.
In the course of time he was to go from one Royal Commission to
another. Incidentally, the first commission upon which he was
called to serve was back there in Nova Scotia when the railroad
freight handlers went on strike. There he was associated with a
lifelong friend, Clarence McKinnon, and a satisfactory settlement
was secured. But what Mrs. Murray remembered and enjoyed was that
before the freight handlers went back to work after the settlement,
she and her daughters were leaving Halifax for a holiday and
Commissioner Murray was obliged to carry the family trunks and load
them on the rail cars single handed. Again in 1931 he was appointed
to a Royal Commission investigating transportation in the
Dominion.
For a time he was chairman of the Board of Trustees for Carnegie
Foundation; in his later years he was chairman of the Board of
Governors of Saskatoon City Hospital; he served in important posts
in his church; he had his fingers in everything that was for
good.
Dr. Murray's relationship to his students was extremely happy.
He got along well with them. He could call most of them by name and
actually he knew a great deal about the problems confronting them
individually. In student affairs, his policy showed how well he
understood; students should be self governing to a reasonable
degree and his students didn't let him down. And in those later
years when they met to express their loyalty and love, he didn't
use many words, but the tears which filled his eyes said a lot.
He loved clean sport and he followed the student teams with most
enthusiastic interest. He loved it when Saskatchewan made a
brilliant play and he loved it when a wee laddie met him at the
door of Knox Church one Sunday morning and said, "You're the boss
of the University aren't you; well you're going to lose the hockey
game against Edmonton tomorrow night unless you get a different
goalie".
No one enjoyed good humor more than Murray and there was no lack
of originality in his own. The first two dormitories on his campus,
Saskatchewan Hall and Qu'Appelle Hall, were called after two rivers
in the province. He threatened to call the next one Carrot Hall. It
was his observation that "the modern pastime known as necking had
done more to discourage the habit of tobacco chewing than a
thousand years of reform." In 1937, that unforgetable drought year,
we were having trouble to get the stock to eat Russian thistle hay,
the only roughage we recovered. Dr. Murray had a solution; put a
fence around the stack and the cattle would be sure to show a new
appreciation. It worked with buckwheat straw in New Brunswick.
In training, Walter Murray was a philosopher but all through the
years, nothing gave him greater satisfaction than his associations
with agriculture. In the formative years, he conferred with Dean
Rutherford in the planning of the University barns and the laying
out of the fields. And he watched the horses and cattle and sheep,
and pigs. He loved the growing things; he enjoyed nothing more than
to stroll through the barns and talk to the horses. And while he
had that great interest in animals, he had a great and sympathetic
love for people. I recall that when sugar rationing came into
effect in 1942, a certain little girl remarked sadly that there
would be no sugar now for her pony. The great and sympathetic
gentleman meditated; that pony should have some sugar and from that
day forward, three lumps of sugar were delivered every Tuesday
afternoon following the weekly Kiwanis luncheon at the Bessborough
Hotel. Yes, the man with Honorary Degrees from Queens University,
McMaster, McGill, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Wisconsin,
was never too busy to do those kindly little things which endeared
him to thousands. Nothing in his full and busy life was more
important than helping somebody who needed his help, even to the
little girl who was short of sugar for her pony. It just seemed
that nearly all the little people of his acquaintance had bicycle
funds, or toboggan funds, or pony funds, to which the great man
with a passion for sharing, subscribed regularly.
I was riding with him in his car one day when we encountered an
old sheep herder on the trail, 15 miles south of Saskatoon. We
chatted with the old timer as he munched his evening meal on the
roadside. We learned that he was out of tea and out of tobacco.
That could be serious. Well, we returned to Saskatoon in sufficient
time for our evening meal, but Dr. Murray couldn't stop; he phoned
home to say he wouldn't be there. Instead of going home for supper
he got a bottle of tea at one restaurant and a supply of tobacco at
another and started back on a 30 mile drive, to bring a bit of
cheer to the old shepherd whom he had never seen before.
If there was a Santa Claus in Saskatoon, his other name was
Murray, and in those years of depression, no one will ever know how
much aid and assistance he gave, and nearly always anonymously.
That was the way he helped a good many poor students along and that
was the reason he was obliged, usually, to give a post-dated cheque
when he was canvassed for Red Cross or Community Chest. Money was
not for hoarding or storing; it was for helping people in need.
When a mysteriously ordered load of coal was delivered anonymously
at the manse or a box of apples at the School for the Deaf, it had
all the marks of a Walter Murray trick.
And speaking of Santa Claus, no one who had the thrill of
attending a Murray Christmas party could ever forget. It began as
an annual when the University Faculty was small and it was mainly
for the children but every mother and every dad connected with the
University were invited. In the later years the big Murray
residence could scarcely hold the crowd. Always there was a tree
and Santa Claus had a gift for every child. Dozens of wee ones,
laughing and crying would be lined up at the long table for the
party and the more milk that spilled down baby dresses and onto the
polished floor, the more Dr. Murray chuckled.
Not much wonder that those who knew that man with such
distinguished gifts of leadership and character, want to build a
splendid and useful memorial to him. Many of the letters which have
come carry the most earnest expressions of admiration. Wish I could
share those letters with you.
In his last months, Dr. Murray was a sick man. In the autumn
before he died, he did me a fine compliment; he had a premonition
that his time was short and he asked me one day to see that certain
of his self-assigned jobs were not neglected. There was a soldier
overseas whose mother in Saskatoon might need some special
assistance; there was a certain tree to be planted on Memorial
Avenue for "one of the boys"; there was a job in Knox Church which
would require attention. He was far too busy to die; but he "broke
camp" on March 23, 1945, age 79, and men and women in all provinces
and in all walks of life, mourned his going. They mourned the
passing of one of God's gentlemen, a noble Canadian, a man who
loved his fellows and lived to make Canada a better place.
Walter Murray Colliegate was established in 1962 & is termed
Saskatchewan's Leading Comprehensive School. Since the cache is in
the neighbourhood near the school muggle activity could be high
during daytime hours so please use extreme stealth. You need to
bring your own writing utensil. The power lines kept interfering
with the GPS so we had terrible accuracy when hiding this cache.
Please be careful to replace the cache exactly how you found
it.
Hint will be given with posted DNF.