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Date: 1916
Newspaper Article

HONORS CONFERRED AT CONVOCATION
Annual Commencement Exercises of University of Toronto Impressive.
MANY MEN IN KHAKI
Of 2,500 Graduates on Active Service 51 Have Laid Down Their Lives.

Those ebullitions of boisterous student hilarity which in by-gone years enlivened the annual commencement exercises at the University of Toronto. were almost entirely eliminated from the ceremony held at Convocation Hall yesterday afternoon. Even the appearance of the graduates in the science of agriculture and in veterinary science provoked only a mild outburst of barnyard sounds. The fact that 2,500 graduates and under-graduates of the University are on active service with the expeditionary forces and that 51 have laid down their lives since the outbreak of war, and the appearance of a large number of students in khaki no doubt tended to give a graver tone to the proceedings. They were a few occasions on which college and class cries were heard, but mainly the audience contented itself with applauding the young soldiers who came forward to kneel before President R. A. Falconer and be admitted to the academic rank for which they had qualified.
Six candidates were admitted to the honorary degree of doctors of law. Prof. Frank Dawson Adams, who fills the chair of geology at Mc Gill University was introduced by Prof. Coleman, who occupies a similar place in the faculty of Toronto University; Mr. Frank Darling, the well known Toronto architect, who last year received the Royal Gold Medal for architecture from King  George, was presented by Provost Macklem, of Trinity College. The Very Rev. William Richard Harris, honored for his work as an archeologist and writer, was sponsored by Mr. Justice Kelly. Mr. Benjamin Suite, the distinguished French-Canadian author of historical works, was made known to Convocation as a descendant of a soldier of Montcalm and a true Imperialist. Mr. Justice William Renwick Riddell was introduced by Hon. Featherstone Osler; and Mr. Horatio Walker, the artist who has gained fame by his pictures of rural life on the Island of Orleans in the River St. Lawrence, by Prof. James Mavor. Prof. Charles Ambrose Zavitz, who occupies the chair of field husbandry at the Ontario Agricultural College, was presented by Dr. C. C. James, for the degree of doctor of science. Prof. Zavitz, Dr. James said, had by his work encouraged the increase of field production and had by so doing rendered valuable service to the Dominion now at war. The degree of doctor of philosophy was conferred upon Messrs. Hardy Vincent Ellsworth, M.A., and William Harvey McNairn, B.A., and that of doctor of medicine upon Mr. James Henry Cotton, M.A.

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