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- As a student who excelled at both academics and athletics, Hugh Keenleyside was known on the UBC campus as someone who was "generally starting something". Attending university at the old Fairview site from 1916 until 1920, Dr. Keenleyside served as president of his second year Arts class, associate editor of the Ubyssey and originator and first president of UBC's Historical Society.
An accomplished soccer player, Dr. Keenleyside was two years the goalkeeper for UBC's varsity soccer team. He was also given credit for initiating the first ever Great Trek Fun Run race held February 12, 1920. Though his class, which issued the initial challenge, did not win the 7.8 mile race from Point Grey to 12th and Laurel, it did start a featured UBC intramural tradition that is carried on to this day.
During the years after his UBC graduation, Dr. Keenleyside served as a UBC professor, a Canadian Ambassador and a Director General with the United Nations. He was also Canada's Deputy Minister of Resources and Development as well as Commissioner for the North-West Territories and Arctic Regions.
Keenleyside was a facilitator, as a youth on the campus of the young UBC, and in his subsequent years participating in the national and international arenas. (http://www.legacygames.ubc.ca/aboutus/divisional-names.cfm)
From Wikipedia (accessed 16 Aug 2005)
Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside (1898 - September 27, 1992) was Commissioner of the Northwest Territories from January 14, 1947 to September 15, 1950.
In 1969 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
He was the 1982 recipient of the Pearson Medal of Peace for his work in public service.
The Hugh Keenleyside Dam in British Columbia is named in his honour.
Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside (1982) http://www.unac.org/en/news_events/pearson/1982.asp
Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside is the recipient of the 1982 Pearson Peace Medal. The Pearson Peace Medal is Canada?s version of the Nobel Peace Prize, established four years ago by the United Nations Association in Canada to honour, in Lester B. Pearson?s name, Canadians who have made an outstanding contribution to international understanding and cooperation. Previous winners include: Cardinal Paul-?mile L?ger in 1979; J. King Gordon in 1980; Lt-Gen. E.L.M. Burns in 1981; Hugh Keenleyside in 1982.This year (1982) the official presentation took place on Thursday October 28th and the three previous recipients were all invited to be present. It is a pity that they could not attend because their biographies, together with that of Dr. Keenleyside, read like the pages of a first-class history book: four fascinating lives which together touch most of the great themes in Canadian public life of this century.
Hugh Keenleyside?s public career began in 1928 when he joined the fledging Department of External Affairs: one of only two candidates accepted out of 256 who wrote the first examinations ever held by the Department, The other successful candidate was a young history instructor and athletic coach at the University of Toronto named Lester Pearson. Almost immediately thereafter, in 1929, Keenleyside was sent off to open the first Canadian mission in Japan where he remained until 1936. Appointed Assistant Under-secretary of State for External Affairs in 1941, he served as Canada?s Ambassador to Mexico from 1944 to 1947 before being tapped for the very different role of Deputy Minister of Mines & Resources and Commissioner of the North West Territories.
From 1950 to 1958, Dr. Keenleyside served as Director-General of the UN Technical Assistance Administration. There he earned a reputation for energy and foresight during the early seminal years of international development cooperation. In 1959 he was named Under Secretary-General of the UN for Public Administration, but left that position the same year to return to his home province of British Columbia in order to head first the B.C. Hydro and Power Authority.
Hugh Keenleyside has also been active in a host of voluntary organizations. During the war years he acted as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of Carleton University, later serving as a member of the Senate of the University of British Columbia and as Chairman of the Board of Governors and Chancellor of Notre Dame University of Nelson B.C. He is founder of the Arctic Institute of North America and a Life fellow of the Asiatic Society of Japan. He was also Honorary Chairman of the Canadian National Committee on the UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat) and Associate Commissioner-General of Habitat in 1976. And in spite of a record and range of experience that reflect great credit both on himself and on his country, he still found time to write several books (including two volumes of memoirs) and to read, practice gourmet cooking and play poker, the three leisure interests he listed in the International Who?s Who.
Biographies of Prominent Quebec and Canadian Historical Figures
http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/bios/hughkeeleyside.htm (accessed 16 Aug 2005)
Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside
(1898-1992)
?
Damien-Claude B?langer,
Department of History,
McGill University .
?
Historian, diplomat, civil servant, and soldier, was born at Toronto. His family moved to British Columbia while he was still a boy. After completing high school, he served with the 2nd Canadian Tank Battalion, and then enrolled at the University of British Columbia, graduating with a B.A. in 1920. Three years later, he completed a doctorate at Worcester , Massachusetts' Clark University. In 1925 he became an instructor at the University of British Columbia 's Department of History. His interest in international affairs brought him into the service of Canada's Department of External Affairs in 1928. Keenleyside served in Tokyo from 1929 to 1936 and was the Canadian secretary of the Permanent Joint Board of Defence from 1940 to 1944. He was an opponent of the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. In 1944 he became Canada 's ambassador to Mexico, but left the Department of External Affairs in 1947. From 1947 to 1949 Keenleyside was the federal deputy minister of mines and resources. He served as the federal Commissioner for the Northwest Territories from 1947 to 1950. Keenleyside was the director general of the United Nations' Technical Assistance Administration from 1950 to 1958. As the chairman of the British Columbia Power Commission from 1959 to 1962 and of the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority from 1962 to 1969, he played a key role in the development of hydroelectric power in that province. Keenleyside received a number of awards and distinctions during his long and distinguished career, including the Order of Canada and the Pearson Peace Medal. He published his memoirs in 1981-1982. Published in 1929 by Knopf of New York and revised in the fifties, Keenleyside's Canada and the United States: Some Aspects of the History of the Republic and the Dominion was the first book-length study devoted to the history of Canadian-American relations. He attended the 1937 and 1941 conferences on Canadian-American relations organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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