Recollections of an Accidental Contrarian

First, I sincerely thank BBCS for this honour. It seems especially appropriate to receive this award in Montreal, where I started my studies many years ago at McGiIl University. As so often in life, I got to McGiIl somewhat by chance. I was finishing off my high school senior year with the Saskatchewan government correspondence school while teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in northern Manitoba. I noticed an ad in the Manitoba Teacher's magazine urging teachers to encourage qualified students to apply for an entrance scholarship to McGiIl. I applied, and to my delight was successful. So I ended up in 1953 living in Royal Victoria College at the corner of University and Sherbrooke, at …