Citations of Distinguished Service Award Recipients who passed away prior to September 2011 are not available in electronic format.
Alistair MacLean - 2013
Your sustained and remarkable contributions to Queen’s over more than 40 years demonstrate exemplary leadership rooted in excellence in teaching, research, and administration.
You have shown superb commitment to students as an award-winning teacher, a sought-after thesis supervisor, a champion of student groups and a keen promoter of activities that engage potential students and alumni.
As Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science from 2006 to 2013, you navigated some rough institutional waters such as diminishing government support, pressure to increase enrolments, and a dwindling faculty complement, while always putting the interests of the faculty and the university first. Your stabilizing hand has set the faculty on a positive course for the future.
Your personal interactions are characterized by humour, deep knowledge across a range of disciplines, balance and fairness in dealings with everyone, as well as warmth, compassion and kindness.
You are always quick to single out the accomplishments of others and as one supporter noted, you would doubtless say, with characteristic modesty, that it has all been “part of the job.”
For going far beyond “the job,” we are pleased to present you with this award for distinguished service.
Kathleen Macmillan - 2011
You are a stellar example of the value of a Queen’s education. An intelligent, congenial and conscientious volunteer, you have raised not only money but also the reputation and profile of your alma mater through your leadership as Chair of the Grant Hall Society.
Equally impressive, however, is your performance on the Board of Trustees. As Chair of the Board of Trustees Governance Working Group, you led one of the most important developments in Board history, devoting countless hours to the task.
You chaired the working group meetings in a collegial and well-informed, well-organized manner, and got the job done in six months, from start to finish, culminating in the unanimous support of your fellow Board members.
Thanks to your capable efforts, the governance of Queen’s University will be markedly improved by changes to the Royal Charter that permit a reduction in the size of the Board of Trustees and open the door to the possibility of a reformed and revitalized University Council.
In recognition of this outstanding legacy and your enduring support of your alma mater, we present you with this Distinguished Service Award.
Murray Maracle - 2003
We are thankful your experiences with First Nations people are so generously shared through your extraordinary service and dedication as a member and co-chair of Queen’s Aboriginal Council. A decade of your own deep passion and commitment to enhancing the education of Queen’s Aboriginal students has built a solid program foundation.
As an important partner in program innovation you have worked successfully to broaden admission policies, improve Aboriginal faculty recruitment, strengthen the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, broaden course offerings, and establish and extend cultural programs and student services. This, in turn, has enriched Queen’s learning environment for all of us. Many of the achievements of Queen’s University in welcoming increasing numbers of Aboriginal students and developing special outreach initiatives have resulted from countless volunteer hours given thoughtfully in a very busy life.
We are grateful for another role you offer as advisor to Aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in search of your wisdom about funding, human resource matters and strategy and planning concerns. To honour your gifts of expertise and leadership Queen’s takes great pride in presenting you with an award for distinguished service.
John R. Matheson – 1977
Is Queen's Counsel by vocation and Queen's Councillor by long dedication.
Son of a loyal Queen's clan (and father of another), he came to campus in the right spirit: his presidency of the Arts Society and his A.M.S. activities earned him a Tricolor Award and election to the permanent executive of Arts' 40.
By always impressing on people his ties with Queen's, he has since honoured us all through his valorous military service and subsequent career as Brockville barrister, Member of Parliament (Leeds, 1961-68), Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Pearson, a prime mover of the Canadian flag, and now Judge in Carleton Country. He has affiliated himself with the Order of St. John, the Conference of Defence, the Canadian Olympic Association, Amateur Boxing and the War Amps, and is Honorary Colonel of an artillery regiment stationed in Germany. From such pursuits, he has brought back laurels to Queen's: sound judgment, generous financial support and important archival papers.
Specifically, he has been Chairman of the Board of Management of Queen's Theological College (which made him a Life Member), a University Councillor, and a founding member of the Cha Gheill Society. Two decades on the Board of Trustees and its several committees have amply demonstrated his fidelity, zeal, experience, eloquence and spiritual insights. John Matheson has always had a gift for recognizing history while it was yet in the making; may this award help confirm to him his puissant place in the chronicles of Queen's.
Patty McHenry - 2021
Your remarkable and distinguished career at Queen’s started in 1987, close to 35 years ago, in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Your superb ability to foster relationships and make connections caught the eye of the Office of Advancement and, in 2000, you made the fateful decision to join its team.
Since that time, your impact has been extraordinary. You have spearheaded work on transformational, multi-million-dollar philanthropic investments from Queen’s alumni and friends across the country, including gifts focused on medicine and nursing, student wellness, athletics and recreation, the performing arts, and the campus itself.
Many Queen’s senior administrators and donors have considered you a trusted advisor and confidante, knowing that your top priority was always what was best for Queen’s. You would do whatever it took to connect with donors so that they new they were valued, even travelling to a home accessible only by float plane with a birthday cake in hand.
Your kindness, generosity, and integrity have made their mark on all who have encountered you during your time at the university and we are all immensely grateful.
William McLatchie - 1997
An outstanding academic administrator, scholar, and teacher who has made extraordinary contributions to the life and work of this University: as a director of Queen's Nuclear Physics Lab, as a gifted and committed physics prof, as a thoughtful and humane vice-principal and dean of graduate studies and research, as a nurturing neutrino observatory midwife, and more recently as castle champion for Queen's International Study Centre.
Quietly out of the limelight, Bill's personal skills, vision, and "turn-around" depth of experience have served Queen's need for development of student-centred policies and practices in the Graduate School. These same skills have ensured a strong presence for University researchers in Centres of Excellence and helped to breathe life into the Neutrino Institute based at Queen's and its Observatory now under construction in Sudbury, currently Canada's largest basic research project.
Turning his 21st century science mind to the problems of a 15th century castle, he helped discover and define a "go ahead" strategy for Queen's International Study Centre, in partnership with other Canadian universities.
He personifies the ideal synthesis of excellence in teaching, research, and administration, and we warmly celebrate his distinguished service to Queen's University with this award.
Jennifer Medves - 2020
Your time at Queen’s has provided an admirable example of service – to the university, the Faculty of Health Sciences, the School of Nursing, and to individual students, instructors, and staff.
While many faculty members and academic administrators spend two to three years engaged in university governance, you chose to spend close to two decades on Senate committees and Senate itself, concluding these years as Senate’s Vice-Chair, providing thoughtful guidance to Principal Woolf and the University Secretary.
In your role as Vice-Dean and Director of the School of Nursing, you committed to making its core programs the best in Canada, while also developing new programs, including a Master of Science in Healthcare Quality, which is now a flagship, interdisciplinary, online program.
You also spent much of your time working to ensure the Faculty of Health Sciences operated as one, exploring ways to bring Nursing, Medicine, and Rehabilitation Therapy students together for collaborative learning.
Your dedication to the Queen’s community has placed us in your debt and we wish to offer our appreciation with this award.
John Meisel - 2009
John, you have deeply enriched the lives of Queen’s students and faculty colleagues over more than half a century: ever a humane, compassionate, personally welcoming and supportive presence to generations on campus and to thousands around the globe in whose eyes and hearts you are the personification of Queen’s.
You have been an “ocean of wisdom” to numerous acquaintances in Canadian public life and among scholars across Canada, many of them former students, now friends, touched by your wisdom, infectious enthusiasm, broad knowledge and brilliant insight.
Your guiding foundational leadership in shaping the Department of Political Studies marked its strong beginning and assured its future success.
Your extremely active life within and outside the University, promoting research in the social sciences and humanities, leading the Royal Society of Canada, the CRTC, and Royal commissions, other groups and organizations, has done an enormous amount to enhance the reputation of Queen’s.
You have taught and written about virtually every aspect of Canadian politics, helping us to better understand our country.
Your generous benefactions given quietly to the University will endlessly and significantly enrich Queen’s programs in the arts.
Now, as a founding member of the Retirees Association of Queen’s, an emeritus campus fixture and a font of wisdom, you have a most welcome new role, serving Queen’s as a source of wisdom, memory and counsel.
Thank you, John, for what you have done at Queen’s, these fifty five years, to bless the life that surrounds us as we all delight in honoring you with an award for distinguished service.
John Molloy - 2001
President and Chief Executive Officer of Parteq Innovations;
A native of Grand Falls, Newfoundland, whose military service took him to postings across Canada, peacekeeping in Cypress and, we are thankful, to Queen's for his MBA;
A determined promoter of the sparkling intellectual property often hidden in the quiet reluctance of scholarship and research;
Revered by his offspring spin-offs as a confidence-inspiring midwife who nimbly negotiates the deals and nurtures researchers as they take their technologies on the long arduous journey to success in the marketplace;
Who attentively helps watch over the incubators in Parteq's hothouse, offering advice, support, investor access, seed capital, and networks of expertise;
A change agent, who with his knowledgeable technology team, carefully judges then nudges new ventures out of the nest to fly on their own, business class;
An insightful commercialization harvester, whose expanding portfolio overflows with strong projects, active licenses, and promising patents, and who always has room for more;
Known also as a Kingston technology champion, who wins enterprise converts in the research community, strengthens business in his own community and his country, and earns respect for wisdom and leadership among his professional peers;
An incomparable tech transfer strategist and amazing hockey dad we now honour and thank with our highest award for distinguished service to Queen's University.
Leslie G. Monkman - 2008
Les, you have served Queen’s with dedication and distinction since you arrived as an Associate Professor in 1984. You have touched virtually every part of the University as a Professor, Associate Dean, Acting Dean, Associate Vice-principal (Academic), and advisor to two Principals. Queen’s remains a beneficiary of your warmth, your caring and your wisdom;
An outstanding teacher, scholar and editor, you are admired as awesomely smart and learned, yet totally unpretentious, beautifully collegial and generous, and possessing the capacity to work with your head in the clouds and your feet firmly on the ground, ensuring year after year that high values, fairness and common sense are represented at Queen’s;
To an enormous array of students and colleagues seeking and generously receiving wisdom and thoughtful counsel you have served as an inspiring and unforgettable mentor, advisor, navigator and interpreter of Queen’s culture;
To fellow administrators seeking a steadying hand in turbulent times you are a respected fountain of wisdom and a profoundly modest leader behind the scenes, often designated as the University’s problem solver for hard issues requiring an astute political sense and instinctive diplomacy;
To observers of the progress of Queen’s educational mission you are the friendly, engaging, and reassuring person who makes good decisions and gets things done;
To many beyond the limestone you are a strong voice for Canadian studies and humanistic education, an intellectual authority on Canadian and Commonwealth literature and culture, and a welcome innovator in the cause of reforming graduate education in English;
You have shared your deep understanding of the University and its people with others, committing your knowledge, analysis and insight to strategies for achieving and sustaining operational excellence, guiding decisions and bringing critical strategic initiatives to fruition;
Consistently to those around you, you have been a privilege to work with, respected as a thoughtful, honest man who has put his heart and soul into doing the right thing for Queen’s, making the institution a better place, and we are honoured to present you with an award for distinguished service.
Alexander Montgomery - 2004
From Kingston to England and beyond, your amazing administrative feats built the International Study Centre into a magical place, thus extending the University’s international reputation.
We recognize you today as the cornerstone of the Castle since its inception as the ISC. Your outstanding character, faithful commitment to the ISC vision, is illuminated by a well-known, uniquely idiosyncratic humour. No less than seven Academic Directors benefited from your association, and have relied on your ingenuous and mischievous ability to make them smile even on the really tough days. Others celebrate your loyal support of Queen’s, to seeing the ISC experience through, as one who worked on the budgets, reworked those budgets and reworked them again.
All the while, you have been a constant source of energy, raising spirits, encouraging those at the Centre at times when it stumbled or soared. We see today the ISC as a product of your loving care as artist and administrator, an achievement of your belief that it could be this strangest of all things: a Canadian study centre in rural UK that was at once a Castle, a true home for students and viable venture.
In grateful appreciation for your service, your selfless dedication and outstanding accomplishments, Queen’s is proud and honoured to bestow upon you an award for distinguished service.
Georgina Moore - 2012
As Queen's guardian of good governance, your professional and dedicated service has ensured the smooth functioning of Queen's governing bodies, including the Senate, Board of Trustees and University Council, for two decades. Your encyclopedic knowledge of Queen's history and governance practices is well known and respected both inside and outside the University.
You have been the driving force behind searches for Principals and Chancellors, who are beneficiaries of your wisdom and deep caring as a trusted advisor. Senators, trustees, alumni, students, staff and faculty have all benefited from your wise counsel.
You have an uncanny ability to facilitate quality decision-making by steering people toward the correct course of action. Your honesty and willingness to "tell it like it is" is both reassuring and invaluable. As an articulate and unflappable catalyst of University governance reform, you assisted those leading the way by laying out a clear road map.
Your genuine warmth and wry English sense of humour will be sorely missed when you retire later this month.
You epitomize what this award is all about. For your contributions to University governance and in recognition of your exemplary service, Queen's is honoured to present to you this award for distinguished service.
Alison Morgan - 2001
Whose lifetime cup of association with Queen's overflows with teaching tales, research stories, tough challenges, wily administrative victories, alumni nostalgia, and warm memories of childhood play in the soft snow on Summerhill's front lawn;
Who has served Queen's wearing the hats of departmental administrator, secretary of Senate, secretary of the Board, registrar, and secretary of the university;
Whose love of teaching economics and close rapport with students enriched the perspective she has brought to her wider University service;
Known also as an intensely loyal, fair-minded person whose intellectual self-confidence, generous personality and concern for human values is attested to by her co-workers;
And who, with humour, irony, and a rare understanding of Queen's distinctive qualities, has been interpreter and guide to students, staff, faculty trustees and friends, helping them explore tri-colour folkways, lubricate sandy bureaucratic gears, and illuminate central issues that at times were obscured in academic fog;
Respected as committee strategist who adroitly used excellent judgment, and political acumen as she actively participated in organizations and groups mandated to advise, search, review, steer, plan, edit and provide guidance, on critical facets of the University;
Whose grasp of the complex has lightened the path to decisions in a whirlwind of change, her contributions often hidden in her modest, gentle, unassuming style;
A most distinguished servant of Queen's University who has lived its essence and given guidance to its affairs and whom we celebrate and honour with our highest award.
Elspeth Murray - 2023
Your passion for innovation and entrepreneurship has left its mark on students, the Smith School of Business, and Queen’s University as a whole, with the creation of nine new graduate programs and leadership of the
Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Social Impact.
You created the “Tricolour Venture Fund”, Canada’s first student-advised venture capital fund, with 18 ventures bringing in close to $3 million in funding. Through this and other initiatives, MBA and Commerce students have the opportunity for real-world experiences that remain with them well after their time at the university. In addition to this, the “Dare to Dream” program provides students and recent graduates with another avenue for support and success, with funding, access to office space, and connections to Queen’s faculty, staff, and alumni.
You do not hesitate to lend your own experience and support to a diverse range of individuals choosing to embark on a career as an entrepreneur, giving them the tools to succeed in a challenging environment and shaping future generations of Canadian leaders. Many of those who have benefitted from your guidance remark on your patience, kindness, empathy, and encouragement, which are selflessly given time and time again.
The university is honoured to recognize this work and so much more with the presentation of this
Distinguished Service Award.
Sheila Murray - 2004
An enthusiastic supporter of your University, you are an inspiration to all who seek an active, engaged life with their Alma Mater. During your years of participation and leadership on Queen’s Board of Trustees, you have faithfully and with extraordinary dedication given advice and provided your wisdom to ensure that the University maintains its standards of excellence.
We hail you as a daughter of Queen’s whose years of unfailing, selfless service give powerful and special meaning to our long tricolour tradition of giving something back. An active member of the Alumni Association, your contributions inject life into our University. An enthusiast, whose energy is truly contagious, you are person who approaches life from an involved engagement, including your participation in Branch events, Grant Hall and John Orr dinners and in your role as speaker at Alumni Assembly and the Alumni Candlelighting Ceremony. And, your wisdom has once again been called to service during your recent responsibilities as a member of the selection committee seeking the University’s next Principal.
In grateful appreciation for your service, which extends from Queen’s to your extremely active volunteer support and leadership in your community, we are pleased and take great pride in bestowing upon you an award for distinguished service.
Diane Nolting - 2005
Eighteen years ago you were appointed Ontario’s first university-based health educator.
Your position at Queen’s was to be experimental but you made the experiment such an enormous success it has become the model for health education programs across the country. Each year you are the unfailing voice of experience and wisdom on health issues who inspires and supervises dozens of student volunteer peer educators. Your formidable energy and remarkable inventive imagination have given us StressBusters, Nutritional Jeopardy, Drink-Tac-Toe and an almost endless array of effective programs for alcohol and substance abuse prevention, addiction, eating disorders, and human sexuality. And in the small parts of your days when there is no end to your job you serve as an outstanding mentor to nursing students. You are also the remarkable anonymous person in the trenches of student life searching tirelessly for health strategies with a vision of what is possible, a willingness to experiment, a capacity to engage and the ability to get things done to benefit students. In celebrating your own generous, selfless service to Queen’s we recognize, too, that you would wish us to warmly acknowledge the many contributions of the hundreds of volunteers you have worked with and encouraged to provide outreach to the community through health, counseling and disability services.
And this evening, it is an honour to present you with our highest award for distinguished service.
R. Dan Norman - 2002
Integrity is embedded in your genes. But it is your own strength of character and your commitment and respect for the Queen's community that we see as the hallmark of your diligent stewardship of the University's pension fund. Your leadership as Chair of the fund's board and successor committee for fourteen years has been exemplary in creating and sustaining a plan that is among the finest in the nation. You managed the revisions and decisions and the issues and you ensured the inclusion all the members in these actions.
The stamp of your approach to this massive volunteer effort was quietly placed on every activity you touched. Its effects resulted in orderly convocations, effective committees and associations and many positive human relationships. All of this from a man of numbers, a mathematician, a man who has a passion for Queen's and whose real job all the while was teaching and chairing academic programs.
Queen's takes great pride now in honouring you with an award for distinguished service.
Thomas Charles O’Neill - 2008
It is a delight to recognize a dedicated son of Queen's who embraced the term 'Trustee' quite literally, warmly accepting and valuing the role when the University placed its well-being in your care;
You are an exceptional volunteer, a devoted servant of Queen's and a master of the art of advancement renewal;
We celebrate your 12-year membership on the Board of Trustees, your role as its vice-chair, your wise participation on audit, finance and advancement committees, and your leadership of university campaigns;
No doubt your devotion to your alma mater started long before you decided to act as commerce '67 fundraising chair for your 25th class reunion, and we are thankful those days of your youth imprinted warm tricolour memories and endless consideration for the well-being of Queen's students;
For many individuals, the voluntary advisory contributions of a senior business executive and wily accounting wizard might be sufficient – and although your advice was always welcome and often pivotal to important financial decisions thankfully this was never enough for you;
When Queen's developed a new advancement structure you were there in an instant, driving in from Toronto to meet, support and inspire the new team through a period of change, generously offering your time, talents and technical assistance;
Then as advancement champion and Vice-Chair of the Campaign for Queen's, you worked tirelessly to attract philanthropic resources, ensuring a smooth and harmonious interlocking of Campaign components and securing historic fundraising success, surpassing goals by every measure;
And while you and your family's philanthropy has benefited many institutions and activities, your affection for Queen's has especially strengthened this University. We are grateful for your many gifts;
At the same time, even with the very considerable pressures and responsibilities of a remarkably busy career, you have always found the time to respond to requests for guidance and advice from grateful Administrators;
We pay tribute to your contributions, and are honoured this evening to present you with this award for distinguished service.
Sandra Jean Olney - 2007
We celebrate your service to the University as an outstanding teacher, scientist, leader and administrator, renowned for your expertise in gait analysis, motor performance and biomechanics. Your work in helping build the School of Rehabilitation Therapy, together with significant local, national and international contributions in your field, enhanced and broadened the global reputation of Queen’s as a centre for excellence in teaching, research and service in the rehabilitation sciences.
Your eminent thirty-three year career at Queen’s was instrumental in shaping the present day School of Rehabilitation Therapy. In the early building phase, your leadership and guidance helped to make an evidence-based case for the growth of programs, faculty numbers, graduate teaching and space for rehabilitation practice and research.
You established and developed a novel gait laboratory and the School’s first biomechanics research group and co-founded an important inter-professional ‘Clinical Mechanics Group’ that has become a respected national centre for human mobility research. Through your vision in bringing together specialists in surgery, engineering, medicine, rehabilitation and industry in shared research space, a new foundation was laid for innovation and discovery focused on mobility disorders.
Your active involvement in the implementation of rehabilitation programs around the world through the CIDA international centre of excellence for the advancement of community-based rehabilitation has established an international presence for Queen’s as a facilitator of research and service improving health outcomes for those in developing and war-ravaged nations.
You have served, too, as a dedicated role model for students at Queen’s and beyond, a most involved member of key Queen’s Senate and University committees, a sought-after reviewer of the rehabilitation programs at sister universities, and a major contributor to the growth and good health of professional associations and editorial boards.
We pay tribute to a lifetime of accomplishment, contributions to the University, and your research into the development of improved services for the physically disabled, as we take great pleasure in honouring you with an award for distinguished service.
Patrick H. Oosthuizen - 2004
An ideal faculty member, accomplished instructor, internationally recognized researcher and a committed enthusiast to your profession and this University. We all marvel at your ability to willingly and, it seems, effortlessly, take on innumerable tasks and responsibilities related to your academic service and passion to create a better world. Students appreciate your teaching style, as evidenced through the response to your Aerospace Engineering course, one so popular that its consistent high enrolment makes it seem more like a core course than an elective. You graciously and freely give your time to serve on University Senate and on many, many committees including those in research and graduate studies.
Your scope extends well beyond campus to links you have forged with other research centres in Canada and with several West African research institutes. You show your deep concern about the well-being of the people of West Africa through your research and committee work dedicated to using technology towards self-sustaining agricultural programs to relieve African poverty.
Everything you do is in the best interest of someone else, a quality that makes you legendary among your colleagues and students. Quite simply, you are a person that people can always count on. In grateful appreciation for your service, we take great pride in honouring you by bestowing upon you an award for distinguished service.
Dee Padfield - 1998
Superb administrator and exemplar of excellence, hard work, and achievement, Dee's decades of service to Queen's are glowing tricolour beacons for those who seek to understand the selfless contributions staff members make to improve life for those who work beside them.
Twenty-eight years of bumps inside the limestone have been smoothed through the determined administrative skills of this human performance indicator. Her record of accomplishment and guidance in faculty administration and part-time studies, and her work with senior officers of the University, has earned her the respect, affection and loyalty of a community familiar with her unwavering good sense, her knowledge of what has been, and her judgment of what is possible.
Among her numerous paragon pivotal roles on Queen's councils, committees, and boards, we note especially her work on behalf of the Aboriginal community recognized in their warm tribute of her support. And for her other roles as mentor to staff colleagues, counsel to vice-principals, and approachable, wise, dedicated friend, we thank her for so often finding the light at the end of the tunnel for us, and we honour and celebrate her distinguished service.
Barb Palk - 2016
Your involvement with Queen’s dates back to your time as a student, earning your BAH degree in 1973.
In an era when the fields of finance and management were dominated by men, you made your own path in institutional and investment management, retiring as President of TD Asset Management in 2010, providing an example for a generation of women.
Two years later, you took the helm of Queen’s Board of Trustees, guiding the University through the aftermath of the Great Recession while, at the same time, guiding the Board through significant reform that resulted in much more cohesive and effective governance processes at the University.
You led the call for the development of the University’s Strategic Framework, which brought a united focus on the University’s academic, research, internationalization, and financial goals and laid out key metrics that Queen’s is now well on its way to achieving.
Previous to this, you were an active member of nine Board committees and Chair or Vice-Chair of three, coming to Queen’s many times each year to provide your valuable analysis and feedback on committee items, often asking tough questions that ensured Queen’s was acting in the best interest of its students, while maintaining its duty to all of its various stakeholders.
However, your contributions to Queen’s did not start or end with governance. You played an active role in promoting Queen’s Initiative Campaign, providing advice to the Office of Advancement, hosting events for alumni and friends, encouraging donors to lend their support to Queen’s, and donating to the University yourself, making significant contributions to scholarships, bursaries, the Queen’s Fund, and the Queen’s Centre.
You are an exemplary servant of Queen’s and, in recognition of your many contributions, we are pleased to present you with this award for distinguished service.
Wilda Parkinson - 1986
For her unswerving support of Queen's women's interests ever since her under-graduate days on the AMS; for her 40-year involvement in the work of the Alumnae Association; for a rare record as national president of both the Alumnae and Alumni Associations; and for a decade of decision-making on the Board of Trustees and its Executive Committee.
Among the stars in her crown is the refurbishing of historic Summerhill as the permanent home of Queen's Alumni Association.
Admirers in the Queen's family, in her personal Queen's clan, in Ottawa's charitable network, in Canadian sheep-breeding circles, and on the university bodies she continues to serve are unanimous in praise of her excellent judgment and independent mind, tempered with modesty, tact and generosity of spirit.
A Karsh among fund-raisers, she has tracked down alumni donors with smiling single-mindedness, film and flash, and come back with impressive trophies for the Queen's Appeal and for the Grant Hall Society of which she is now founding co-chairman.
Though her roots are in upper New York and her heart is in Kingston, this former teacher has become one of Queen's first ladies in Ottawa, an ambassador of good will and a passionate lobbyist for her alma mater's place in an enlightened future for Canada and the world.
David Pattenden - 2016
You have earned an astounding five degrees from this University – an Honours Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts, a Bachelor of Laws, a Master of Education, and a Doctor of Laws – and have been a long-serving member of two of Queen’s governing bodies, its Board of Trustees and its University Council.
While this service alone would satisfy many, you chose to provide still more for Queen’s.
You chaired the Board’s Health and Safety Committee, continually emphasizing the health and welfare of all Queen’s community members as a University priority and tenaciously reminding the Board of Trustees and Queen’s senior leadership of this responsibility.
During your time with the W. J. Henderson Foundation, the Foundation generously supported Queen’s hospitals and the research and teaching taking place at Queen’s Faculty of Health Sciences. You also played a significant role in this area as a result of your chairmanship of the Board of Directors of the Human Mobility Research Centre, during which time you served as lead on a number of fundraising campaigns and as a resource to local and national fundraising agencies.
Remarkably, you also found the time to serve on numerous other boards and as the Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Medical Association, bringing to the Association a wealth of experience in law and business, resulting in a renewed structure, discipline, and accountability at the OMA, and improving its relationship with the provincial government, proving that the impact of your work is not limited merely to Queen’s and Kingston alone.
This University has benefitted immensely from your multi-faceted expertise and your unwavering commitment.
Please accept this award for distinguished service in recognition of your outstanding dedication.
Malcolm Peat - 2004
Clinician, teacher, researcher, mentor, administrator, diplomat, humanitarian and leader. You are a remarkable person who has worked to improve the lives of disabled people, society’s poorest and most vulnerable in Canada and around the world. As a professional and global citizen, you have focused on the internationalization of rehabilitation as a profession and Queen’s as a Canadian humanitarian and development educational institution.
The impact of your work is like a resounding gong, reverberating around the world for generations. You strongly believe that rehabilitation knowledge and skill should be accessible to all disabled people throughout the world and have made it possible for many hundreds of thousands of disabled people and their families to benefit from this vision.
The scope of your work is vast, including your involvement with hundreds of Canadians and Queen’s people in the education of rehabilitation professionals, government and disabled people to provide services and promote research on community-based rehabilitation in countries across Asia, Central America, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. The most significant contribution was in Sarajevo during the war when you lead a team of Queen’s faculty and clinicians to provide emergency assistance to thousands of disabled people and war injured.
You help the world help itself and we recognize you for truly making a difference. Your work has increased Queen’s international reputation, in part due to providing perhaps the largest number of Queen’s ties and scarves and flying the Queen’s flag more widely throughout the world than anyone. In grateful appreciation for your service, your selfless dedication and outstanding accomplishments, Queen’s is proud and honoured to bestow upon you an award for distinguished service.
Catherine Perkins - 1992
Highly regarded journalist, writer and editor; fervent keeper of the Queen's flame; warm friend to countless students, faculty and alumni; model citizen committed to the welfare of the wider community.
With skills sharpened to a fine edge at the Financial Post and Maclean Hunter Publications, she came back to Queen's a proficient professional with a passion for editorial perfection that infused her writing and editorial work on hundreds of Queen's publications over the past quarter century. If punctuality was sometimes problematic, her punctuation was invariably flawless. Without fear or favour, Cathy offered further education to all whose prose came within range of her relentless blue pencil. As editor for thirteen years, she brought fresh lustre to the Queen's Review molding it into Canada's pre-eminent alumni publication and won the admiring thanks of a multitude of readers.
Beyond her wide and helpful service on Principal's and other special committees, she has been and is a resource like a bottomless lake whose depths cannot be measured -- a living encyclopaedia of Queen's lore and user-friendly directory of Queen's people past and present. Most recipients of this Council's Distinguished Service Award and many honorary degree recipients have encountered at firsthand her deft wit and rich talent for what Alec Corry called the "pleasant exaggeration" of ceremonial citations.
An elected member of this Council for many years, her distinguished service to this university has left its mark of betterment in many nooks and crannies unknown but to a few. Her singular contributions to Queen's and the greater Kingston community at large have been achieved through an elusive mix of careful craft, frisky fun, appropriate alliteration, and most of all a caring concern for people of every sort and station fortunate enough to have shared her path.
Robert Peterson - 2003
We hail you as a distinguished Queen’s chemical engineer and we celebrate your leadership contributions to Queen’s capital campaigns.
When the University sought record levels of support to strengthen its learning environment for the 21st century, you stepped up again and generously responded with marvelous insights and the organizational gifts you possess as a veteran of past appeals. You won the cooperation of hundreds of volunteers with your care for their time, your corporate wizardry and wisdom, and your personal tradition of active support and belief in the value of a Queen’s education. You responded with your own brand of national campaign leadership: thorough, practical, strong, common sense driven, on time, and remarkably results oriented. And your magnificent results will build your beloved Queen’s strongly for the future as will your superb advice on Queen’s advancement policies and practices.
In grateful appreciation for your service to alma mater, Queen’s is proud and honoured to bestow upon you an award for distinguished service.
John Pierce - 2012
Your remarkable record of service shows that it is possible to be a talented educator, researcher and mentor in both the academic and administrative sectors of the University. As a long-serving Associate Dean of Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science, your contributions far exceeded the job description. The Faculty and the University continue to benefit from the policies, practices and relationships that you established, including, in particular, those around academic integrity.
You have been a source of wisdom and knowledge regarding the myriad rules and regulations relevant to the lives of students. Thanks to your compassion, empathy and patience, you have helped many of them to overcome troubled academic pasts and succeed in their programs of study.
Most recently, you capably took on the responsibility of interim Associate Vice-Principal and Dean of Student Affairs. You facilitated the development of a comprehensive approach to student health and wellness, showing compassionate leadership during an extremely difficult year, handling these issues with equal measures of grace and competence.
For your dedication and promotion of Queen's core mission, the education and well-being of students, we present you with this award for distinguished service.
Andrew Pipe- 2010
Distinguished alumnus, Queen’s honorary degree recipient, Member of the Order of Canada – a devoted supporter of Queen’s University since your student years, when you won a Tricolour Award for your many contributions to student life. As a member of the Board of Trustees for the past 15 years, and a vice-chair for three, you deserve this recognition for the sheer scope and quality of your contributions to the Board and to the University as a whole.
You are the champion of the Queen’s Centre. You were involved from the start – in the hallway conversations about the need for a new student life centre in the mid-1990s, through to the opening this year of the “Jewel in the Crown,” as you have so aptly described it … the beautiful facility that we have today.
In your capacity as chair of the Queen’s Centre Executive Committee, you played a visionary and vital role in the Centre’s development, marshalling the constituents – students, faculty, staff and alumni – toward a single cause. Your superb leadership skills proved equal to the challenge as you developed and sustained the confidence of everyone who had a stake in the process.
You have made an outstanding contribution to your alma mater while being involved in so many other worthy activities; as a leading expert in cardiovascular disease prevention, physical activity and health and sport medicine; a physician at six Olympic Games, the team physician for Canada’s National Men’s Basketball Team for three decades, and your countless volunteer hours of service to amateur sport.
This evening, we celebrate your remarkable record of distinguished service. Thanks to your efforts, Queen’s, and the world beyond Queen’s, is a better place.
Bob Pritchard - 2016
Bob Pritchard, it is difficult to summarize the contributions you have made to Queen’s since you were a student here in the 1960s.
Your involvement in volunteer work for the University began with the Queen’s University Alumni Association in the 1990s, serving on many different Queen’s University Alumni Association committees as well as its Board of Directors.
You were integral in the development and establishment of Queen’s “Mini U”, which proved to be the ideal project for someone with your incredible ability to collaborate with others and lead groups made up of people from varying backgrounds. Your curiousity and passion for lifelong learning were evident in the amount of time you contributed to this very successful project, unique and innovative among Canadian universities.
However, as we know, you were also a dedicated member of the Queen’s University Council from 2002 to 2014, earning repeated re-election for your service. Your mentorship played an important role in the experiences of new members of the Council, and the guidance you have provided has been invaluable.
Your support of the “Grad Bash” has been especially noted by many Queen’s graduates over the years. You have exuded enthusiasm for Queen’s that many of our newer alumni carry with them as they begin their own lives and careers away from the University.
I am honoured to present this award for distinguished service to you, in recognition of your varied, tireless, and long-standing service to Queen’s.
John Rae – 2006
Generosity, gritty integrity, fairness and loyalty are embedded in your genes but it is by dint of your own wisdom and judgment that you have ably guided Queen’s Board of Trustees through a decade of challenging and complex political and financial times and cycles of administrative change.
You have earned the respect deserving of a model board chair whose sense of engagement is pervasive, who employs a gentle even hand in chairing meetings, who gets everything right and drives for involvement and consensus - always with a watchful eye on a governance mandate to do the best one can for Queen’s.
And as a most active and effective ex-officio member on a dozen Board committees your measured approach to engage diverse views and alternative courses of action is consistently welcomed, anticipated and appreciated.
Through qualities that have caused you to be recognized as a highly ethical, thoughtful and effective leader beyond the limestone by those in governments, business and industry and other organizations, you have given the University access to an extensive network of leaders in Canada and beyond who have advanced the interests of this institution.
Your passion for the liberation of the human spirit and the fulfillment of human personalities through higher learning has had an incalculable effect on the life of Queen’s.
As a booster for education you eagerly share your personal interest and enduring support for the pedagogical role of Queen’s, grounded in your belief in the certainty that this university can contribute a unique memorable experience for talented young people.
And now, as we pay tribute to a son of Queen’s who wears tricolour advocacy so magnificently, a grateful alma mater is pleased to recognize your exceptional leadership and uncommon devotion and is proud to honour you with an award for distinguished service.
Donald M. Raymond - 2022
Your service to Queen’s began with your role as President of the then Graduate Student Society in 1989. At that time, you likely could not have imagined it would end as Chair of the university’s Board of Trustees, and a significant advisor, partner, and friend to many.
Your willingness to share your time and knowledge played a significant role in leading the institution through challenging fiscal situations that posed significant risks to the university. Leading the Board and university through these times has given thousands of past, current, and future employees a much more stable and secure financial footing.
We know of your dedication not just because of your work, but because of your participation in the life of the university. You were at football games, alumni events, and fundraising campaigns, and always willing to give your time to mentor and challenge students to excel. Indeed, your work with the Queen’s Backing Action on Climate Change group not only assisted in positioning Queen’s as an institution with a model decarbonization plan, but its former chair remarked on your profound effect on his life and the positive nature of your interactions with his team of young activists.
Please allow us to celebrate your commitment and devotion with the presentation of this Distinguished Service Award.
Brenda Reed - 2023
Your commitment to the university and its community has been evident in each of the years you have worked at Queen’s, starting in 1994 as a Reference Librarian in the Faculty of Education Library,
up to and including your current role as Head Education Librarian.
Time and again, your caring nature and leadership shines through, whether it be within your faculty or the university as a whole. You inspire your team to excellence, encourage innovation, and
are always focused on how to ensure services and the libraries’ collections are as inclusive as possible.
Your work has also had an impact beyond Queen’s campus. Local and national community literacy agencies have benefitted from your expertise, ensuring that both you and the teacher candidates you support will
continue to have a positive influence on students, young and old, far into the future.
Your dedication, persistence, and selflessness are an example for all, and we are proud to recognize your accomplishments with the presentation of this Distinguished Service Award.
Richard Reznick - 2020
As leader of the Faculty of Health Sciences for 10 years, your “open door policy” and focused dedication resulted in a flourishing Faculty of Health Sciences community.
Your annual holiday celebration, at which the year’s accomplishments were celebrated, was always hotly anticipated. New faculty each spent one-on-one time with you and first-year medical students were welcomed into your home for dinners, laughter, and advice.
One of your greatest legacies is likely to be the establishment of a competency-based medical education curriculum at Queen’s School of Medicine. The School went live with this curriculum at the same time in all of its 29 post-graduate residency programs and has since become a model both nationally and internationally, welcoming visitors from England, Mexico, Israel, Singapore, the Netherlands, and Lithuania, among others, to see just how this feat was accomplished.
Your positive impact on research, the launch of new programs, and tireless fundraising efforts have placed Health Sciences and Queen’s in an enviable position. We thank you for your commitment and perseverance with the presentation of this award.
Norman MacLeod Rogers - 1986
Faithful Trustee of this university for twenty-three years, whose outstanding leadership as Chairman of the Board from 1980 to 1985 has earned the admiration, respect and affection of his fellows on the Board and the grateful thanks of the whole Queen's community.
Renowned for his debating prowess while a student, he proceeded from an early flirtation with farce in Charley's Aunt to involvement in serious decision-making as Chief Justice of the Arts Court.
After service with the Royal Canadian Artillery in World War II, he further honed his maturing argumentative and discursive skills at Osgoode Hall and was called to the Bar in 1948.
Throughout an extraordinarily active professional career specializing in labour relations with the legal firm of Tilley, Carson & Findlay, he has given himself unstintingly to a broad spectrum of volunteer organizations, including a term as President of the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy. But, to understate the case in typical Rogers fashion, Queen's has been by far the major beneficiary of his dedication to public service for more than forty-five years as student, alumnus and trustee.
What he has done for Queen's is matched by the way he has represented Queen's and reflected her values in his life and service. In short, it can be said of him, as of an earlier Queen's graduate (Lorne Pierce) that he was "in his duty prompt at every call."