Obituaries

David attended St Andrew’s College from 1946 to 1949 and graduated from Rhodes University with distinction in History and Economics. He was a Rhodes Scholar in 1952 and, whilst at Oxford University, he achieved a Boxing Blue. David was a member of the St Andrew’s College staff from 1957 to 1993, a total of 36 years. During his time at College, David held a number of leadership roles including as Head of Biology, Head of Agricultural Science, Head of Economics, Master-in-Charge of Boxing, Hockey, Tennis and Squash and Second Master (1992).

Served as Principal of Queen’s University, Canada, from 1974 to 1984 and was also one of Canada’s leading experts on federalism. Professor Watts arrived at Queen’s University in 1955 as a lecturer in philosophy, but moved to the Department of Political and Economic Science in 1961. He was appointed Dean of Arts and Science in 1969 before becoming principal five years later. Professor Watts’ main academic interest was the comparative study of federal political systems. After retiring as principal, he served as director of Queen’s Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, senior adviser to the federal government on constitutional affairs, and consultant to governments all over the world, including Canada, Kenya, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. He also published a number of books, including New Federations: Experiments in the Commonwealth, Multi-Cultural Societies and Federalism, Administration in Federal Systems, and Comparing Federal Systems. Professor Watts received five honorary degrees and became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1979 and a Companion in 2000.

Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering. Professor Bilger's career started with post-doctoral research in the US and UK, before joining the department of Mechanical Engineering at Sydney University in 1965 as a senior lecturer. He became a professor in 1976 and also served as the head of the Engineering Department on several occasions.

Rev. Sandys-Wunsch studied theology at Christ Church College during his time as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford. As well as having an accomplished professional academic career as a professor of religious studies at Queen's College and Memorial University of Newfoundland and later as Provost of Thorneloe University in Ontario, he was an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. Prior to his academic career, he ministered to several congregations on the west coast including Tofino and Courtney with one year spent at St. John the Divine in Victoria. After his retirement he continued to be involved in the church as well as having an active interest in scholarly research in theology.

Mr Becker was a theatre critic and financier who acquired Janus Films with a partner in 1965, expanding its catalogue of art-house and Hollywood classics and eventually broadening their distribution to university audiences and home viewers on DVD. Founded in the mid-1950s by two former Harvard students, Janus originally prospered by exposing American filmgoers to the avant-garde work of ground-breaking but largely unfamiliar post-World War II European and Japanese directors, including Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson and Kenji Mizoguchi. After acquiring the company, Mr. Becker and Saul J. Turell, a documentary producer and television pioneer, secured the rights to a vast trove of international films, including Jean Renoir’s “Grand Illusion” and Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” as well as vanguard American works like Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” and the original “King Kong.”

From 1968 to 1970 Mr Smith served as the consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, as the poet laureate’s post was then known. He was the author of many volumes of poems throughout his life, as well as criticism, memoirs, translations of poetry from a spate of European languages and children’s verse. At his death he was an Emeritus Professor of English at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Mr Smith’s poems for adults were praised for their diction and thematic variety. They ranged over the natural world, love, the experience of war, his Choctaw ancestry and many other subjects.

Justice Mercer spent one year at Queen’s University Law school before winning the Rhodes Scholarship, and then completed his law degree at Oxford, where he took a B.A. in Jurisprudence in 1969 followed by the graduate BCL degree in 1970. Upon his call to the Newfoundland Bar in 1971, he practiced law with the firm Mercer, Spracklin and Mercer for three years. In 1974 he joined the Department of Justice and quickly rose to the rank of Assistant Deputy Minister and then Associate Deputy Minister. In 1992, he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, Trial Division.

Dr Linda Fletcher graduated with a BA from Vanderbilt University, Nashville and was awarded an Msc Physiology at Oxford whilst a Rhodes Scholar. Subsequently, she received a medical degree specialising in radiology at Harvard Medical School. Linda worked as a radiologist at the Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, Plains Township.

Practiced law before joining ESSO, where he worked in the marketing department before becoming Managing Director and working in Africa, Geneva and London.