The Man and His Interests

SIR ROBERT FALCONER 14!i had a goodly heritage." He constantly reminded the young men and women under his care that their natural gifts and opportunities should be held in· trust from God for the service of mankind. His own life was. based upon his Christian faith. II. THE MAN AND HIS INTERESTS MALCOLM w. V\7ALLACE _Sir Robert Falconer, during the whole of his life from boyhood onward, lived within the walls of colleges and universities. It is difficult indeed to imagine what kind of life he might have lived ha(,i. fortune denied him the boon of an academic training. Whatever his calling, it is safe to assume that he would have managed to_ interpret its_ duties in terms closely related to those of the college professor. He had a passion to know and to be-to understand more clearly the enigma of life3 and to make his own life conform more closely to the ideals dictated by his conscience and an· instructed reason. Any other kind of human interest seemed to him subordinate and incidental. Born in a Presbyterian manse in Prince Edward Island, he was a per:fect illustration o( the saying that the boy is father of the man. In other words, conduct and scholarship were the pre-Occupations of his parents, and. in his earliest days they placed on him their indelible stamp. This determining power of early environment as illustrated in his own case never failed to impress rus judgment when he meditated on it, and gradually it became one of his most deep-~ooted convictions. In childhood are laid down the strong foundations of character. In this way the traditional wisdom of the race is perpetuated;· it will be modified fundamentally by later e~perience, but it will prevent the individual from being a mere storm-centre of conflicting idea.~ ar1d emotions. ~'If we have had .the good fortune,'' ·Wrote Sir Robert in his mature years, "to be brought up in a home where there was a strong- belief in the distinction between right and wrong~ and if we inherit the tradition of a moral end in life as imperative, the slow changes that must _come through a powerful and attractive new environment will not wreck our self-respect. That past itsel( will be an ideal which will be purified by the new experience. We despise those who forget their past, because they ·show thereby that the present is little more to them than a mass of unstable conventions." 146 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY No one unacquainted with the Scotch Presbyterian way of life -in Scotland or in Canada-could easily understand Sir Robert; for he _ typified that life to a remarkable degree. Its outlook in religion was puritanic, austere, with a strong tendency to place the emphasis on self-control and repression. Indulgence of any kind was looked upon with suspicion, as was also any unusual preoccupation with matters of mere beauty. It believed in plain living, partly because there was no alternative, partly because it distrusted ease and power as inimical to the highest spiritual ideals. Next to religion its devotion was given to scholarship: very ofte~ scholarship was the consuming-passion. Indeed it may be seriously questioned whether among any other people there has ever been a more wide-spread or in tense love of learning. During his boyhood Sir Robert spent eight years in Trinidad, where his. father had a charge, and where the boy was fortunate enough to secure a good secondary education at Quee'n's Royal College School. A Gilchrist Scholarship enabled him to proceed to the University of Edinburgh, where he prepared himself for the B.A. examination in the University of London. The total number of Canadian students who secured Gilchrist awards was small, but a surprising proportion of them achieved some real degree of eminence in later life, including Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, Toronto, President Jacob Schurman of Cornell, and President Walter Murray of Saskatchewan. Edinburgh was the gateway through which young Falconer entered the great world of scholarship and politics. The first experience of staring at the Pacific is almost sure to work disturbance in the...