Champions of entrepreneurship and community service honoured
For immediate release - November 6, 2009
Victoria, B.C. -The son of a train dispatcher who went on to become the chair of CN rail and two young university graduates who married in 1954 and - together and individually - became icons for community-giving will be honoured at Royal Roads University today.
Under a white marquee on the lawn above Esquimalt Lagoon at the Hatley Park National Historic Site - the university's heritage campus - Royal Roads University will present a Chancellor's Community Recognition Award to Helen and Ted Hughes during the morning convocation ceremony scheduled to begin at 9:30. And in the afternoon, at the ceremony scheduled to begin at 2:00, the university will confer an honorary degree on David McLean.
McLean is founder, chair and chief executive officer of the McLean Group. A highly respected leader and outstanding entrepreneur, he started a small family-owned investment company in 1972 with a focus on the real estate industry. Today, the McLean Group encompasses film production, communications and aviation. McLean, in fact, heads the largest film and television production facility in Canada - Vancouver Film Studios Ltd. - responsible for, among other projects, Battlestar Galactica (IV) and the upcoming V: The Series. As chair of the Canadian National Railway Company, McLean is credited with playing a key role in its privatization. In 1999, McLean was appointed to the Order of British Columbia and, in 2006, made a Fellow of the Institute of Corporate Directors. Royal Roads University welcomed him to its inaugural Fellows Council in 2008.
"David McLean has a gift. He can see opportunity where others might not," says Pedro Márquez, dean of RRU's Faculty of Management. "This gift has given him an innate ability to guide enterprises through profound organizational change. And it has helped him turn a family business into a multi-faceted success story."
Helen and Ted Hughes have been married for over 50 years and, for all that time, have demonstrated an unwavering dedication to improving the lives of people around them.
"Individually and together, they possess an uncommon ability to target problems most pressing in their community - and then to solve them," says Peter Robinson, Chancellor of Royal Roads University. "This is what makes them true leaders. Not content to wait for others to point the way, they are quick to identify a challenge and address it head-on.
Helen Hughes, a Victoria city councilor for 18 years, is well-known for her work in community service and youth programs. With the Medical Health Officer, she helped to organize the Capital Region Action Team on Sexually Exploited Youth. She has worked with the Victoria Youth Empowerment Society to raise funds for its programs, including a summer drop-in centre and a Youth Hospitality Training Centre, and she initiated a massive spring cleaning of the whole downtown area called the 60 Minute Scrub Up. Hughes also created the "Souper Bowls of Hope" fundraiser for the Victoria Youth Empowerment Society and, as a member of the Victoria Public Library Board, founded the Lifelong Learning Festival held on International Literacy Day.
Ted Hughes, like his wife, has devoted himself tirelessly to public service and, like Helen, has contributed both as a volunteer and in a professional capacity as a lawyer, a judge and an adjudicator. He is well-known for chairing numerous commissions of inquiry, not only in British Columbia, but also in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon. Appointed B.C.'s first conflict-of-interest commissioner in 1990, Ted Hughes has served as a federal chief land claim negotiator and federal chief adjudicator with regard to alleged harms and abuse arising out of attendance at Indian Residential Schools. He has chaired Juan de Fuca Hospitals and the CNIB capital fundraising drive, and co-chaired the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness.
Of 1,022 students graduating today, 740 will receive degrees, certificates or diplomas from graduate level programs and 282 from undergraduate level programs. More than 356 are from countries other than Canada including Austria, China, Columbia, Germany, India, Iran, Kenya, Korea, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Taiwan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States and Venezuela.
Royal Roads University was established by the Province of British Columbia in 1995 as a special purpose university charged with advancing professionals in the workplace. It is the only public university in Canada exclusively designed for this demographic and, as such, all its programs and research are focused on applied, real-world relevance and experience.
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For media queries, contact:
Communications Officer, Phil Saunders
phil.saunders@royalroads.ca 250-391-2526, cel 250-812-5065 or,
Community Relations Director, Stephanie Slater
stephanie.slater@royalroads.ca 250-391-2712, cel 250-361-5020
