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May 2012 Honorary Degree Recipient

Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)

Peter Sanger received his BA in history from the University of Melbourne, a Masters in history from the University of Victoria and a BEd from Acadia University. Peter was employed as a professor in the Humanities Department at Nova Scotia Agricultural College from 1972 to 1998 where he taught thousands of students English literature, technical writing and agricultural and scientific history.

During his 30 year career at NSAC, Peter published countless articles, poems, essays and reviews in a wide variety of periodicals and anthologies and wrote two critical reviews and three collections of poems starting with The America Reel in 1983 to Iron Works in 1995 with renowned photographer Thaddeus Holownia. Since his retirement in 1998, Peter has written nine books, the latest of which has just been published. Clearly, Peter has made an outstanding contribution to agricultural life, has demonstrated high quality scholarship and has been a model of integrity and intellectual capacity.

Perhaps Peter's greatest contribution has been to the generations of students he has influenced at NSAC. There is a danger in a field like agriculture that teaching can become solely focused on facts. Students need to be introduced to the broader philosophical and cultural perspectives that make a student truly educated. Peter Sanger is an example of someone who has a deep love and appreciation of agriculture but can add the artistic and historical dimension that places agriculture at the centre of society and human development.

Professor Sanger wove themes of rurality and environmental sustainability into classes long before these became societal buzz words. He created such powerful word pictures of Thoreau's place in nature that students saw nature in a different light. Peter offered agricultural students an opportunity to enlarge their perspective on the world. He never introduced or forced a paradigm shift, instead his influence was as a "seed of perspective" change.

Peter has also helped record and preserve rural life and history in Atlantic Canada, through the establishment and development of the Agricola Archival Collection. This collection, situated at the NSAC Library, is a treasure trove of images, books and artifacts from both Maritime farming and NSAC history. Without Peter's initiative and love of the unique, many precious examples of agricultural life and history would be lost.

Peter Sanger was the keeper and treasurer of Maritime agricultural artifacts, the person who tried to open the eyes of NSAC students to life beyond agricultural production and the scholar who believed in the dignity and beauty of the rural landscape and rural enterprise.

Honorary degrees are often granted in recognition of the recipient's contribution to scholarship, to arts and culture, or to community. Peter Sanger merits recognition on all these counts. Peter's life and work encourages us to seek that beautiful balance between living and thinking, to engage the world around us and to express what we see with wit and clarity.

In 1999 Peter received the recognition of Professor Emeritus of NSAC.

Mr. President and Vice-Chancellor, it is with great pleasure that I present Peter Sanger, teacher, poet, historian, critic, scholar and professor for the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

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