W WELCOME
I am pleased to welcome everyone to convocation and to congratulate our graduates and their families on this very special occasion.
During my student days here at the Macdonald Institute – one of this University’s founding colleges – in the early 1960s, we often heard a line from our beloved Dean Margaret McCready.
Today we celebrate the culmination of years of hard work and perseverance, inspiration and discovery. Today we recognize our graduates’ potential to use what they have learned to shape their life and to transform our planet.
“Remember, ladies, you are Mac girls,” she said. “And Mac girls can do anything.”
Her words have stayed with me ever since. As I can attest from my own experience in research, business and charitable endeavours since graduation, Margaret McCready was right.
I am an optimist by nature. In many ways, we are living through what might be remembered as one of the most exciting and important periods in history. Today is not the end of your journey, it is really just the beginning of your new life.
She was speaking to us a long time ago, but the same sentiment applies all these years later.
Life is, in fact, what the University of Guelph is all about. “Improve Life” is our brand, our identity. It reflects our teaching and research strengths, our contributions to society, and our commitment to enriching the minds and lives of students in hopes that what you’ve learned will serve you – and all of us – well.
A University of Guelph education opens up doors and offers windows on the world.
Your experiences here have given you the tools and the wherewithal to strive for more, to make a difference, to improve life for yourselves and for others in the world around you.
To our graduates I say, our world needs more people like you. Our world needs more of the University of Guelph.
Congratulations, and remember: You are University of Guelph graduates, and you can do anything.
forever a gryphon
Franco J. Vaccarino President and Vice-Chancellor
Martha Billes Chancellor
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