Four to receive honorary degrees from Western

The incoming chairperson of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, a former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, one of Canada's most influential policy strategists and an award winning Canadian author will receive honorary degrees when Western University hosts its 304th Convocation this fall.

The ceremonies are scheduled for the following days:

Heather Munroe-Blum
Thursday, October 23, 10 a.m.
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LLD)

Heather Munroe-Blum served from 2003 to 2013 as the 16th Principal and Vice-Chancellor (President) of McGill University, the first woman to hold this position.

A distinguished academic administrator and scholar, renowned in the fields of psychiatric epidemiology and public policy, Dr. Munroe-Blum served as Vice-President (Research and International Relations) at the University of Toronto, prior to her appointment at McGill.

Dr. Munroe-Blum is the author or co-author of more than 65 scholarly publications, in addition to her policy reports. She developed the groundbreaking report 'Growing Ontario’s Innovation System: The Strategic Role of University Research (1999)' that led to the creation of a new framework of science policies and programs in Ontario. She was a founder and founding Director of the Toronto-based (MARS) Medical and Related Sciences Discovery District and a founding Director of Genome Canada, where she also served as founding Vice-Chair of the Board. She was a founding Member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council of Canada (STIC), and founding Co-Chair of the biannual State of the Nation Report of STIC.

Currently serving as a member of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the President's Council of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Trilateral Commission, she is also Chair of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and is a Director of the Royal Bank of Canada. 

From 1989 to 1994, Dr. Munroe-Blum served as Dean of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Earlier, she was a professor at York University and McMaster University, respectively. Prior to her doctoral studies, and subsequent research, policy and administrative career, she worked as a psychiatric social worker in an academic health setting. Following her doctoral studies, she led a number of major clinical and population-based psychiatric research studies and contributed to the development of mental health policy and programs.

Dr. Munroe-Blum has received numerous honours and awards. An Officer of the Order of Canada, she holds numerous honorary degrees from Canadian and international universities. She is a Specially Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Officer of the National Order of Quebec and a Senior Fellow of Massey College.

Dr. Munroe-Blum holds a PhD with distinction in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MSW from Wilfrid Laurier University and BA and BSW degrees from McMaster University. 

Munroe-Blum is married to screenwriter, Len Blum. They have one adult daughter, Sydney.

Irving Abella
Thursday, October 23, 3 p.m.
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LLD)

Irving Abella is the past J. Richard Shiff Chair of Canadian Jewish History at York University and the Distinguished Senior Fellow of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is currently President of the Academy of the Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada.

Born and educated in Toronto, he received his doctorate in history from the University of Toronto in 1968.

Abella is the author or co-author of seven books including None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948, for which he received the National Jewish Book Award in the United States for the best book on the Holocaust (1984) and the Sir John A Macdonald Book Prize for the best history book published in Canada (1983). The book was also selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one the 100 Most Important Books published in Canada since 1900. His other books include A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada, the Joseph Tanenbaum Literary Award-winning Growing Up Jewish in Canada, Nationalism, Communism and Canadian Labour, Twentieth Century Canada, On Strike, and The Canadian Worker in the Twentieth Century.

The celebrated writer has also published more than 100 articles and has lectured at many of the world's leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Duke, Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and Hebrew University.

Abella was elected to the Order of Canada in 1994, to the Royal Society of Canada in 1993, and to the Order of Ontario in 2014. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2001 and Bishops University in 2008.

President of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1992 to 1995, Abella also served as president of the Canadian Historical Association (1999-2000); chair of Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East (1986-19930; chair of the Governor General Literary Awards (1990-1993); chair of Vision TV (1996-2008); editor of Middle East Focus; founding editor of Labour/Le Travail: The Canadian Journal of Labour History; chair of the Holocaust Documentation Project (1982-1992); and chair of Canadian Jewish Archives (1980-1992).

Abella has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, several Canada Council and Social Science and Humanities of Canada grants, the Samuel Bronfman Medal for contributions to the Jewish Community of Canada. He was also the Walter Gordon Fellow of York University for the 1985-86 academic year and recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association of Canadian Jewish Studies.

Thomas d'Aquino
Friday, October 24, 10 a.m.
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LLD)

Thomas d'Aquino is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, corporate director, author and educator. He is Chairman of Thomas d'Aquino Capital and Chief Executive of Intercounsel Ltd., a private company that he founded in the 1970s.

Serving on the Board of Directors and as Lead Director of Canada's largest technology company, CGI Group Inc., d'Aquino is also a Director of Coril Holdings Ltd. and is Chairman of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation. He also serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor, Global Business and Public Policy Strategies, at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs; and as Honorary Professor at Western University's Ivey Business School. At Ivey's Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management, he is a member of the Advisory Council and is Founding Chair. 

Earlier in his career, d'Aquino served as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Canada, as an international management consultant in London and Paris, and as Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa, lecturing on the law of international trade and global business transactions. He has served as Special Counsel and Senior Counsel to two of Canada's leading law firms.

From 1981 to 2009, d'Aquino was Chief Executive and President of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), an organization composed of the chief executives of 150 of the country's leading enterprises and pre-eminent entrepreneurs and assumed leadership of the Council in its formative stages. Upon his retirement from the CCCE (December 31, 2009), CCCE member companies accounted for $850 billion in annual revenues, $4.5 trillion in assets and for the vast majority of Canada's trade, investment and job training. In recognition of his exemplary leadership, he was named by the Council's Board of Directors as a Distinguished Lifetime Member.

A native of Nelson, British Columbia, d'Aquino was educated at University of British Columbia, Queen's University and London University at its University College and the London School of Economics. He holds BA, JD (LLB), and LLM degrees and honorary degrees from Queen's University and Wilfrid Laurier University.

The author of Northern Edge: How Canadians Can Triumph in the Global Economy, d'Aquino has addressed audiences in 40 countries and more than 100 cities worldwide.

Jane Urquhart
Friday, October 24, 3 p.m.
Doctor of Letters, honoris causa (DLitt)

Jane Urquhart was born in Little Long Lac, in the far north of Ontario, and grew up in Toronto.

She is the author of seven internationally acclaimed novels: The Whirlpool, which received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France; Changing Heaven; Away, winner of the Trillium Award and a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Underpainter, winner of the Governor General's Award and a finalist for the Rogers Communications Writers' Trust Fiction Prize; The Stone Carvers, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award, and for Britain's Booker Prize; A Map of Glass, a finalist for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, and Sanctuary Line, a finalist for the Giller Prize. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass, and four books of poetry, I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace, False Shuffles, The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan and Some Other Garden.

Her work, which is published in many countries, has been translated into numerous foreign languages. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award and the Harbourfront Festival Prize and is also a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Urquhart has received numerous honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto and the Royal Military College, and has been writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and, during the winter and spring of 1997, she held the Presidential Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the University of Toronto. She has also given readings and lectures in Canada, Britain, Europe, USA, and Australia, has twice been a keynote speaker at the annual Canadian Congress of the Humanities, and has served on the Board of PEN Canada and on the Advisory Board for the Restoration of the Vimy Memorial.

She has served on several international prize juries including that of the International Dublin IMPAC Award, the Giller Prize, The Governor General's Award Fiction Jury, and the American International Neustadt Award.

Urquhart now lives in southeastern Ontario with her husband, artist Tony Urquhart, and for the past two decades, has spent part of each year in County Kerry, Ireland.

Her new novel, The Night Stages, will be released in April, 2015.