Convocation is a ceremony of ancient traditions and weighty symbols.
Once graduating students have entered the ceremony, faculty members enter walking two by two, followed by university officials, all in their academic finery. Near the end of the procession, a selected faculty member will carry the Mace, a traditional symbol of the university’s authority.
This solid silver and ebony wand was given to the university in 1965 by the family of the late Stanley F. Leavine, and was designed by Toronto artist Eric Aldwinckle and crafted by silversmith Harold Stacey to symbolize the university as it was at that time. It displays lions, chevrons, and the shield of the province of Ontario, from which the university holds its charter to grant degrees.
The lions and chevrons also appear on the shield that is the university’s coat of arms and that is imprinted on the graduates’ diplomas. Derived from traditional heraldry, it has been used since 1961 and was registered with the Court of the Lord Lyon in 1987. The shield uses the official colours of gold, black, and white, and its symbols refer to the university’s base in the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo.
The unusual double chevrons were borrowed from the coat of arms of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and the red lions are like those on the coat of arms of the Duke of Wellington, victor at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. The lions also reflect the tough and innovative spirit of the university’s founders and builders, and the black and white in the chevron are the colours of Prussia, reflecting the Germanic background of many Waterloo County settlers. Beneath the shield appears the university’s motto, Concordia cum veritate, “In harmony with truth.”
Thus the university’s symbols reflect its roots as well as looking to its future. The ritual of Convocation, too, remembers the roots of the university as well as being a beginning for the students who now enter a new stage in their lives. Indeed, both the symbols and the ceremony look back far beyond the beginning of the University of Waterloo, back to the centuries of university life in western civilization which Waterloo joined five decades ago.
The founders of this university were eager from the beginning to make it part of that long tradition, although they proudly asserted that they were building a new and innovative university, with close ties to industry and an emphasis on practical knowledge for building the future.
The University of Waterloo grew out of an older institution, Waterloo College. A still older one, the University of St. Jerome’s College, soon became federated with it, and the College of Optometry of Ontario joined the family in 1967. Although all these institutions were newcomers compared with Oxford and Harvard and the Jagiellonian, the connection to the traditional role and style of a university remains clear.
Tradition underlies the proceedings of Convocation, the continuity of this university with centuries of academic experience. Passion brings the proceedings to life, along with the enthusiasm with which the university recognizes new achievements and new ideas.
