In Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

I wasn't planning on posting anything until I got back to Montreal but I have some free time on my hands so I thought I'd do a quick update.

Maryn's graduation was on Monday and it was a pretty nice ceremony. Sure, it was long and full of pomp & circumstance but it's nice to have all the bells and whistles sometimes.

Erin Blanding's valedictory address was great and so was the convocation address by Canadian publisher, Cynthia Good. I wasn't a graduate this time around but I felt as if Good was speaking directly to me when she spoke of her passion for writing and literature.

But the real reason I came back to Mount Allison was not to listen to Cynthia Good but to celebrate my Maryn's accomplishments. We're all so proud of Maryn! On top of earning a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in French Studies, she received a number of prestigious awards:

1) The William Morley Tweedie Memorial Gold Medal (Awarded to the student graduating with the highest record in all subjects counting for the Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours)
2) John Edgar Peters Prize (Awarded to the student graduating with the highest general average in the Arts course)
3) James Robert Inch Memorial Prize (A prize to the graduating student with the highest overall average in French Studies)
4) Prize of the Ambassador of France (Awarded to outstanding students in French Studies)
5) Prize of the Ambassador of Switzerland (Awarded to the graduating student with the highest average in the Senior Year in French Studies)
6) Bilingual certificate

This girl is amazing and is going to do some spectacular things when she goes to do a PhD in French at Yale. There must be something in the air or the water in Yarmouth because a number of Yarmouth's young minds are going on to do great things. Like Kyle Hill - another Yarmouthian and former classmate of Maryn's - who has been selected to be a Rhodes Scholar to study in Oxford, England in the fall and will be working with NASA this summer. Hmmm... time to drink a lot of tap water and breathe really deeply when I go outside.

Update: They put a nice article about Maryn on Mount A's website. Read it here.