President Rigg, honoured guests, families, friends, and, most importantly, Brock University graduands – welcome to Convocation!

It is a privilege for me to share with you this important milestone in your academic and personal journeys.

Convocation is a celebration — of your accomplishments, and of the community that has helped you get here.

It’s also a celebration of the transformative power of education.

Your education has opened your mind. And I hope that it has equipped you with an appetite for future learning as you go out to experience the world.

More than sixty years ago, my grandfather, Lester B. Pearson, also spoke to a graduating class at what would become Concordia University. I want to quote from his words to the graduands at that time:

“Education is, above all, and ever has been, the process of learning how to think honestly and straight; to distinguish between the true and false; to appreciate quality and beauty wherever it may be found; and to be able to participate and to desire to participate with intelligence and tolerance in that most important of all forms of free enterprise, the exchange of ideas on every subject under the sun, with a minimum of every restriction, personal, social or political. In a word, education means — and this I think is the best definition of it that I have ever discovered — the ‘creation of finer human hungers’.”

I hope that you too have gained a fine hunger for knowledge at Brock.

You know that Brock is more than just a place to learn.

It is a community that fosters curiosity, creativity, and courage — values that are at the heart of our mission and your success.

I imagine that curiosity brought you here.

It led you to ask questions, to challenge assumptions, to wonder what might be possible if you pushed just a little further.

That same curiosity will carry you forward into the workforce, maybe into setting up your own business , perhaps into graduate studies, or to take paths you haven’t yet imagined.

Creativity helped you thrive here.

It’s what turned deadlines into discoveries and turned group projects into opportunities for innovation.

Creativity is the ability to see not just what is, but what could be.

Canada certainly needs your creative thinking more than ever.

And courage — persistent strength — is what allowed you to keep going through difficult times.

It takes courage to start something new.

To admit when you don’t know the answer.

To change your mind.

And, sometimes, to stand firm when everything tells you otherwise.

At Brock, you have been encouraged to speak up, to explore, to expand your worldview, and to do so with integrity.

That takes courage.

These three values — curiosity, creativity, and courage — are not just words in a strategic plan.

They’re at the heart of everything we do here at Brock.

Like the work of master’s student Serenity Amegashie’s (ama-GOSH-ie) supporting African immigrant mothers navigating a complex healthcare system.

Or Professor Newman Sze’s (SEE) recent discovery, which could cure age-related lung disease.

Or the innovative collaboration between the Centre for Healthy Young Development through Sport and the YMCA of Niagara, which will advance physical literacy in local youth.

None of these achievements are possible without curiosity, creativity, and courage.

As you leave Brock’s campus, I hope you carry these values with you.

Remain curious. Be creative. And apply your courage to achieve success in whatever life throws at you.

Congratulations, graduands. We are very proud of you — and  more hopeful about our world because of you.

Thank you.