It is hard for me to imagine the Brock Political Science Department without the presence of Bill Matheson, even though he had been retired for many years. I came to the Department more than thirty years ago, and Professor Matheson exemplified for me everything that was good about Brock University. He loved the university. He gave most of his professional life to the university, and we are all better for his contributions. Professor Matheson’s accomplishments are many, and they bridge university teaching, university administration, scholarship, and community leadership. Surely, though, his greatest legacy is in the thousands of students he taught at Brock.
A word of advice that Bill Matheson gave to me as a young novice professor: “be careful what you say and what you do: after a decade here, everywhere you go in the Niagara Region, there will be students, present and former, who greet you and remember you.” It was good advice, although almost none of us in the Political Science Department has had as many students travel through our classes. For generations of Political Science students, Professor Matheson’s legendary first year lectures were their introduction to the discipline. The great political thinker Hannah Arendt commented on more than one occasion that for some individuals the ‘who’ of a person – his presence – is greater than the sum of his accomplishments. Think of those lucky thousands of Brock students who got to experience the ‘who’ of Professor Matheson.
– Leah Bradshaw
“Bill Matheson’s legacy was anything but common,” The Brock News, December 12, 2017.
