Honorary doctorates to be awarded at spring convocation ceremonies

Naïm Kattan

Arts and Science
June 12, 3 p.m.

Novelist, essayist, short-story writer, critic and author of some 40 books, Naïm Kattan was born in 1928 in Baghdad. In 1947 he received a scholarship from the French government to continue his studies of literature at the Sorbonne.

He immigrated to Canada in 1954. Several months after arriving in Montreal, he founded Bulletin du Cercle juif, serving as its editor for 12 years. He taught at Université Laval and was an editor for the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

In 1961, he joined the editorial staff of the Nouveau Journal de Montréal. Since l962, he has been a literary critic with the Montreal daily Le Devoir. He has taken part in numerous radio and television programs in Canada, France and Belgium, and contributed to many newspapers and reviews.

From 1967 to 1991, he was head of the Writing and Publishing Section and then Deputy Director of the Canada Council of the Arts, where he made an indelible impression, founding and directing numerous programs, prizes and exchanges.

After retiring from the Canada Council, he became writer in residence in the Department of Literary Studies of Université du Québec à Montréal. He has travelled widely, giving lectures in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

His many honours include the Order of Canada, the Ordre du Québec, officier des Arts et des Lettres de France and chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, the Royal Society of Canada, the Académie des lettres du Québec, the Prix Athanase-David, and the 2005 prize of the Conseil International d’Études Francophones.

 

L. Jacques Ménard

John Molson School of Business
June 13, 10 a.m.

Jacques Ménard is chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns and president of BMO Financial Group, Quebec.

He is a director of Bowater Incorporated, the Canadian Public Accountability Board, the Montreal Heart Institute, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Montreal Alouettes football organization.

He is on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Corporate Directors (Quebec chapter) and a Board Associate of Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc.

Over an active 30-year career, his executive activities have also included Hydro-Québec, the Montreal Exchange, Trans-Canada Options Corporation and the Investment Dealers Association, Gaz Métro and Rona Inc.

He is a governor of the Conseil du patronat du Québec, and served as president of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and a member of the Economic Council of Canada. He chaired a Quebec government task force on the health care and social services system, which presented its findings, known as the Ménard Report, in July 2005.

His many fundraising activities have included a campaign for St. Justine Children’s Hospital, and direction of Centraide/United Way of Greater Montreal.

He has received many honours for his social commitment, including an Award of Distinction from Concordia’s Faculty of Commerce and Administration in 1993.

He became a Member of the Order of Canada in 1995, and was elevated to Officer in 2000. Since 2005, he has served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Order of Canada.

 

Michèle Thibodeau-DeGuire

Engineering and Computer Science
June 13, 3 p.m.

Michèle Thibodeau-DeGuire is president and executive director of Centraide of Greater Montreal, which helps half a million underprivileged people each year.

Through its annual fundraising campaign, it provides financial assistance for more than 340 community agencies and projects in the Greater Montreal area. Centraide’s work depends on the dedication of more than 68,000 volunteers.

Mme. Thibodeau-DeGuire was trained as a civil engineer, graduating from the École Polytechnique in 1963 and working for almost 20 years for the consulting firms of Francis Boulva et Associés, and Lalonde, Girouard, Letendre et Associés.

In 1982, whe was appointed Quebec’s General Delegate to New England. From 1985 to 1991, she served as assistant to the president and public relations manager at the École Polytechnique.

In June 2005, she was made a chevalier of the Ordre National du Québec. In May 2005, HEC Montréal awarded her an honorary doctorate. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2003 and in 2001 was admitted to the Academy of Great Montrealers.

She has been named Personality of the Year by the magazine Les Affaires, and has won awards from the alumni association of the Université de Montréal and the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers.

Thibodeau-DeGuire is a member of the Canadian Engineering Academy and the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, which gave her its Grand Prix d’Excellence 1995.

She is a board associate of the Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. as well as a governor of the Association des Diplômés de Polytechnique, which awarded her its Prix Mérite 1994.

 

Alfred Leslie

Fine Arts
June 14, 3 10 a.m.

Alfred Leslie, born in 1927, is one of the surviving members of the School of New York, a postwar community of artists, dancers and musicians who had a lasting impact on the way we make and think about the arts.

His work has been included in important national and international group exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, the Carnegie and the Walker Art Center.

Working in set design, film and literary projects, he is as much a filmmaker as a painter. In 1959, his film Pull My Daisy, made in collaboration with Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, was released to widespread acclaim, and is now a classic of independent cinema.

At the height of his fame he moved into a loft at the corner of Broadway and 22nd St., where he consolidated his painting and film production, and edited The Hasty Papers, a radical literary review that included the writing of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Sartre.

In 1967, after a fire destroyed his studio and all of its contents, he turned back to painting, bringing his cinematic and narrative ideas onto the canvases and referring to his enterprise as “Postmodern.”

In this second phase of his career, Leslie was championed as the godfather of a return to Realism. Leslie continues to paint and has in recent years returned to filmmaking, using digital technology to revisit and reinterpret his lost films and paintings.

In 2003, he received a lifetime achievement award in film from the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Most recently he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.