British Columbians know what an atmospheric river can do when it overruns our landscape. Roads wash out, towns are cut off, and the ordinary fabric of life is suddenly overwhelmed. Archbishop Richard Smith, in his inaugural address as Chancellor of St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi Colleges, recently reminded us that there are also atmospheric rivers of the mind – currents of thought and ideology that can sweep through a culture and leave it changed, for better or worse.
That image struck me deeply. At our recent 25th Annual Fundraising Breakfast, marking 25 years for Corpus Christi and 70 for St. Mark’s, the Archbishop spoke of the “currents of thought flowing through the atmosphere of the mind.” Some, he said, nourish us; others threaten to flood our ways of thinking and living. Catholic higher education must learn to read these currents to discern which bring life and which erode the ground beneath us.
That is the work we do every day at the Catholic colleges at UBC. Our task is not to dam the river, but to teach students how to swim, engaging with the world’s ideas critically and with confidence rooted in faith.
This year that mission has been tested in new and painful ways. Federal limits on international enrolment and provincial allocations of study places reduced Corpus Christi’s ability to welcome international students by nearly 100 per cent. Overnight, we lost almost a quarter of our student body. No other college or university in the province was stripped so completely of its international cohort. The impact of this loss will be felt for years to come.
Nevertheless, we rally, and despite the challenge, we have worked to continue offering significant scholarships for top academic achievers, including for students facing significant financial barriers. Thanks to our generous donors, we have been able to offer up to $200,000 in scholarships each year, supporting some of British Columbia’s brightest students. Our smaller classes and comprehensive support allow them to succeed in impressive and sometimes astonishing ways.
Their achievements astonish even me. A team of first- and second-year students recently competed in Oxford University’s global Map the System competition. Against graduate-level teams from universities such as McGill, Queen’s, UBC, and more than 1,700 institutions worldwide, they were named Best Undergraduate Team.
St. Mark’s, our graduate school of theology, has also thrived. With support from a prestigious Lilly Endowment grant, St. Mark’s hosted a summit on The Future of Ministry: Forming and Empowering Leaders for Mission, which led to a US$1 million grant to carry the work forward over the next five years.
At the breakfast we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the naming of the Dr. Micallef Library with a new $50,000 donation from the family to strengthen security and stewardship. We announced the creation of a new Chair in Media and Communications, a gift from Mark and Barbara Cullen that will expand one of our most popular academic programmes. And we welcomed a new mascot, a winged lion named Marko, thanks to long-time supporter Jenny Cheng.
Even B.C. Premier David Eby joined us to offer his congratulations and affirm his own gratitude for Catholic education. “I am a defender and a supporter of Catholic education,” he told the audience. “I’ve been a beneficiary of Catholic education for my whole life. Through that education, I believe that, in addition to what is core to what the Jesuits laid out for us – which is that we need to seek truth when faith calls us to seek truth as Christians – is also the importance of compassion, the importance of bringing your values with you when you go to work, when you’re in the community, loving each other, looking after those who are disadvantaged.”
After nearly a century of Catholic higher education in this province, our mission remains unchanged: to form young men and women who can engage the world intelligently, ethically, and faithfully. As St. John Henry Newman wrote in The Idea of a University, Catholic education sends its graduates into “the troubled waters of real life,” not to drown but to swim against the tide, armed with skill, wisdom, and courage.
Archbishop Smith closed his address by calling our colleges “a deep and broad intellectual current flowing through the Archdiocese of Vancouver.” That phrase, like his atmospheric river, will stay with me. The challenge before us is to keep those waters clear and life-giving, ensuring that the currents of Catholic thought continue to refresh this province, its people, and its Church.
Dr. Gerry Turcotte is president and principal of St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi Colleges.
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