Nipissing announces 2023 honorary degree recipients
North Bay, ON – Nipissing University will present five outstanding leaders with honorary degrees, the University’s highest distinction, during its upcoming Convocation taking place June 13-15 at the R.J. Surtees Student Athletics Centre.
Author and journalist Waubgeshig Rice, philanthropists John and Adrienne Peacock, filmmaker and activist Alanis Obomsawin, and former sports broadcaster and North Bay city councillor, Peter Handley will each be recognized with an honorary degree and deliver an address to the graduating class.
Rice will receive a Doctor of Letters on Tuesday, June 13 at 2 p.m., the Peacocks will receive a Doctor of Letters on Wednesday, June 14 at 10 a.m., and Obomsawin and Handley will each have a Doctor of Education bestowed upon them on Thursday, June 15 at 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., respectively.
“Each recipient has made significant and meaningful contributions to their professions and communities, making them exceedingly deserving of recognition” said Dr. Kevin Wamsley, President & Vice-Chancellor, Nipissing University. “We look forward to formally welcoming them to the Nipissing University community and to hearing their advice to our newest graduates as they prepare to make their own mark on the world.”
Full biographies of the 2023 honorary degree recipients can be found here.
Over the course of three days, 1,050 graduands will receive their degrees. Community members interested in attending Convocation should RSVP to convocation@nipissingu.ca. A livestream of the ceremonies will also be available at http://live.nipissingu.ca/convocation.html
For more information about Nipissing’s 2023 Convocation, including a full schedule, visit www.nipissingu.ca/convocation.
-30-
Media Contact:
Carly Johnston
Communications Officer
Nipissing University
(705) 474-3450 ext. 4035
communications@nipissingu.ca
--
2023 Honorary Degree Recipient Biographies
(in order of presentation):
Waubgeshig Rice
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller.
Rice graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002 and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career.
Rice lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and three sons. His forthcoming novel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, will be published in October 2023.
John & Adrienne Peacock
John and Adrienne met in 1960 while attending St Francis Xavier (StFX) University. Adrienne was a home economics student from Coxheath, Nova Scotia and John was a business student from Quebec City. They were both very involved in campus life - Adrienne with the Dramatic Society and the Model Parliament, and John as President of the Debating Society and Business Manager of the varsity football team. After graduating in 1963, Adrienne qualified as a registered dietitian at University Hospital in Saskatoon and John articled with the accounting firm Clarkson Gordon in Montreal and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1966.
John and Adrienne were married in 1965 and settled down in Montreal where they had two sons, Mark and Kevin. Today, they are the proud grandparents of four granddaughters, Emma, Tea, Lela, and Quinn.
John was admitted to the partnership of Clarkson Gordon (now Ernst& Young) in 1972. He spent the next seven years as an audit partner in Montreal and Quebec City, and one year in New York City with the firm of Arthur Young and Company. In 1979, John decided to join one of the firm’s clients, Fednav Limited, a Canadian ocean-going, dry bulk ship owning and chartering company. John enjoyed a very interesting career with Fednav, retiring in 2007 as Executive Vice-President. In 2018, John was installed as the tenth Chancellor of StFX University.
After moving to Montreal, Adrienne taught home economics at two different high schools and was very active in her University and various local charitable organizations. She was a member of the StFX Board of Governors for six years, chaired the Montreal chapter of the Alumni Association, and with John, was co-chair of the Annual Giving Campaign. A major commitment was serving on the Board and as President of the Royal Victoria Hospital Auxiliary.
Like Adrienne, John also served on many corporate and not-for-profit boards, including as Chairman of Oceanex Inc., Board member with Teekay Offshore Partners, Chairman of the McGill University Hospital Foundation, Director of the Royal Victoria Hospital Foundation, and Trustee for the McCord Museum.
After he retired from Fednav in 2007, John and Adrienne founded The Peacock Family Foundation which has been actively involved in supporting not-for-profit organizations where they felt they could make a difference. They have involved their children in the Foundation and today their daughter-in- law, Giselle Murphy, is the foundation’s Executive Director.
Education has been a primary focus of the Foundation and in 2016 it provided a major gift to support the establishment of a Public Interest Law Clinic at the University of Calgary, and the Dr. John T. Sears Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility at St Francis Xavier University.
In various capacities, John and Adrienne have been long term supporters of the Coady International Institute at StFX, which has been educating leaders in development from around the world since 1959.
The Peacocks, through their service and support, have made a significant contribution to post secondary education in Canada.
Alanis Obomsawin
A member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada’s most distinguished filmmakers, Alanis Obomsawin is a director and producer at the National Film Board of Canada, where she has worked since 1967.
Her upcoming films are Wabano: The Light of the Day and The Green Horse (working title). These will be her 56th and 57th films in a legendary career now spanning 56 years, devoted to chronicling the lives and concerns of First Nations people and exploring issues of importance to all.
Her 2022 film, Bill Reid Remembers, was named to the short film program of Canada’s Top Ten, honouring the best in Canadian cinema.
Ms. Obomsawin’s 2019 production, Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, completed a seven-film cycle devoted to the rights of Indigenous children and Peoples.
Her body of work includes such landmark films as Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), documenting the 1990 Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) uprising in Kanehsatake and Oka, as well as her groundbreaking Incident at Restigouche (1984), a behind-the-scenes look at Quebec police raids on a Mi’kmaq reserve.
From April 7 to August 6, 2023, the Vancouver Art Gallery is presenting The Children Have to Hear Another Story – Alanis Obomsawin, an exhibition tracing Obomsawin’s artistic activism over five decades, first shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2022. An accompanying book, Alanis Obomsawin: Lifework (eds. Richard William Hill, Hila Peleg and HKW), is published by Prestel.
On April 18, 2023, she will be honoured with a tribute in the Senate of Canada, and in June, Obomsawin will receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Toronto—her 13th honorary degree.
On July 23, Obomsawin will receive the Edward MacDowell Medal, recognizing individuals who have made significant cultural contributions. She is the first woman filmmaker to receive this award in its 63-year history.
In 2021, the Toronto International Film Festival presented Obomsawin with the Jeff Skoll Award in Impact Media, recognizing leadership in creating a union between social impact and cinema, along with a career retrospective entitled Celebrating Alanis.
In 2020, Obomsawin received the Rogers-DOC Luminary Award at the DOC Institute Awards, in addition to the Glenn Gould Prize.
Peter Fleming Handley
Peter Handley was born in London, Ontario in 1933 and lived in Kenora and Toronto before his family moved to Kingston in 1942 where he grew up. He later graduated from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1955.
He started his radio career in 1949 at the age of 15 and has been involved in the media for nine decades. He helped found a high school weekly program (“KCVI on Review”) in 1949 on CKWS Kingston and in 1952 became an Arts staffer at CFRC, the Queen’s radio station. Two days after graduating from Queen’s he started his professional career at CKWS radio/television.
Handley transferred to North Bay and radio station CFCH in early 1958 where he worked in local radio, television, and print media until 1995 as a sports director, hockey play-by-play announcer, newscaster, radio host, interviewer, chief announcer, reporter, and columnist. He also spent 15 years freelancing with CBC Sports North and 17 years teaching interviewing and broadcasting at Canadore College.
He spent decades fulfilling various executive roles on local, regional, and provincial sports associations, including the Ontario Amateur Softball Association (38 years); Northland Softball Association (26 years); Gateway Major Fastball Association (42 years) and the Northern Football Conference/ NORFU (38 years). In 1977, he helped found and write the original constitution for the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame (NBSHF) where he served as its founding Secretary and later as Secretary-Treasurer from 1980 through 2022.
He was a play-by-play announcer for almost 1,000 Northern Ontario Hockey Association (NOHA) Junior A, POHA and Ontario Hockey League (OHL) games including 13 years for the North Bay Centennials. He kept shots on goal at Memorial Gardens for North Bay’s premier hockey teams for over 50 years and scorekept over 2,000 softball games at the local, regional, and provincial level. For 30 years, he chaired the North Bay Sports Awards Committee which chooses the recipients of many of North Bay’s key individual sport awards.
As a broadcaster, he hosted a folk music program for 32 years and volunteered with local cable television for three decades where he produced and hosted over 900 interviews for “Life Is” on MacLean Hunter and then Cogeco Your TV.
Entering municipal politics in 1994, he was elected to North Bay City Council in three consecutive elections, serving for a total of nine years before retiring in 2003. During his tenure, he served as Chair of Community Services, Chair of Public Works and as Vice-Chair of General Government. While on Council he served as the mayor’s representative on the Nipissing University Board of Governors for five years.
Handley was a member of the North Bay Public Library Board for 27 years and helped found the North Bay Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee/Municipal Heritage Committee in 1996 where he served as chair for 19 years. Under his guidance, the committee instituted a Heritage Site Program and the “Diary of Our Shared Past” podcast. With Brent Pigott, Handley wrote a pair of books for the NBSHF -“They Were Our Heroes” and “Flashbacks” and he also edited “Anent Mike Rodden” which detailed the Mattawa native’s life in Northern Ontario in his own words. He is currently working on a unique North Bay history based on the transcripts of over 60 interviews he recorded over a period of a half-century.
He is a member of the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame, the NFC Hall of Fame, and the Musicians and Entertainers Hall of Recognition. He is the recipient of numerous local, regional, provincial, and national awards including the Queen’s Jubilee Medal, the Syl Apps Award for Softball, the Provincial Electronic Media Award, the NEORSC Sportsperson Award, the Ontario Amateur Softball Association (OASA) Feaver, the Palangio Sportsperson and Davedi Club Award of Merit.
He married his wife Pam in 1962 and although given numerous opportunities to ply his trades elsewhere, opted to stay in North Bay where their children, Mairi and Peter Jon, were raised. Both earned degrees from Canadore College and Pamela earned a Bachelor of Arts from Nipissing University as a mature student in 1980.
Handley is still recognized by the catch phrase - “A Good Sport is Good for Sport!”