The 6th year 1960 Reunion sounds a fun idea
and the associated website, Mike, is great. Perhaps I may be permitted
to add something even if (i) I am unable to attend the reunion,
and (ii) I belong to the 1959 6th year!
I have been in Education all my life and
the more I reflect on it, the more I have come to appreciate how
privileged we were to be on the receiving end of the Scottish
education system of the 1950s. We did not, of course, realize
this then. I owe much to my time at Tain Royal Academy and two
teachers in particular stand tall as mentors to me. First, Bob
Hay who laid the solid grounding in Euclidean geometry, trigonometry
and calculus that I have needed professionally often since, and
who personally tutored me for Elementary Analysis in his office.
Secondly there was Andrew Gardner, with an infectious excitement
for the physical sciences. I came to know quite early on that
I wanted to share in that excitement. So it was that October 1959
saw me, nervously and apprehensively, off to the "big city"
of Aberdeen to study Chemistry with Mathematics.
Boarding with a group of students reading English, Engineering
and Agriculture exposed me to a wide range of new opinions and
ideas and introduced me to everything from snooker to cryptic
crosswords to classical music. Of course, chemistry was my chief
concern and it was a demanding but thoroughly interesting programme.
For two summers I chose to do research: in 1961 with the UK Atomic
Energy Authority at Dounreay, and in 1962 with a professor in
Aberdeen. I loved every minute of it. To cap everything off I
had the good fortune to head my 1963 graduating class and that
brought with it offers of fellowships towards further study. I
opted to accept an offer from one of Canada's leading research
institutions, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I was
not venturing abroad blindly, for my mother had been born in Toronto
and we still had relatives and friends there.
I spent the summer of 1963 relaxing and touring in France and
Spain, then in late August sailed on the "Empress of England"
from Greenock to Quebec City. The ship was full of returning Canadian
and American students and the five day crossing was fabulous.
From Quebec City I proceeded via Montreal and Toronto to Hamilton.
Ph.D. studies in Canada have no
fixed duration, however, what seemed feasible was one year to
complete lecture course requirements plus three years to complete
thesis research. Fortunately all went well for me and I was able
to meet that schedule. It was four years of work hard, play hard.
I joined in baseball, football, ice-hockey and volleyball activities
both as a spectator and a participant. That first winter I was
able to get with friends to Ottawa, Kingston, Niagara Falls and
to Buffalo N.Y. We went to plays, concerts and festivals. The
summers afforded opportunities to travel further afield. In 1964
three of us motored and camped across the Canadian prairies, through
the spectacular Rocky Mountains, to Vancouver and the Pacific.
From there we drove south as far as Los Angeles and returned along
the famed US Route 66 via the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert,
Texas, Oklahoma, St. Louis and Detroit. What an experience! The
next summer I went to the World's Fair in New York taking in at
the same time the usual tourist sights, the Statue of Liberty,
the UN, the Lincoln Center, Coney Island etc. In 1966 it was the
turn of Washington DC and the Virginia and Pennsylvania battlefields
of the American civil war. 1967 was Canada's centennial year with
a World's Fair, Expo '67, in Montreal. I spent a week there.
In September 1967, a doctorate under my arm, it was time to move
on. My research had been in molecular structure and it so happened
that the leading lab for such work in the world was at the National
Research Council in Ottawa. I was granted a post-doctoral fellowship
for two years in Pure Physics, in a group headed by Gerhard Herzberg
who, a few years later, was to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The Herzberg lab had a steady stream of international visitors
and I had the opportunity to brush shoulders with many leading
physicists and chemists.
In the spring of 1969 I received an offer to join the faculty
at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, as an Assistant
Professor of Chemistry. I promptly accepted and have remained
there ever since. They made me a Professor in 1982. About 40%
of my time is devoted to lecturing and other aspects of teaching,
another 40% is spent on research, with the balance going towards
administration. I have taught at all levels from first year through
graduate school although most recently I have concentrated on
chemistry for engineering students and introductory physical chemistry.
My research with doctoral students (two Ph.D. students at present)
has focused on problems of molecular structure and bonding using
lasers. To date I have published more than 100 research papers
in chemistry, physics and astrophysics. This work was recognized
in 1985 in the award of a D.Sc. by Aberdeen University. I have
had the opportunity to lecture around the world in places as distant
as Poland, Japan and India. The University has granted me several
years of paid leave to gain research expertise, first to France,
then to Sweden, to Ottawa, and most recently to Oxford.
Also joining the University of Victoria in 1969 (as an Assistant
Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature) was a pretty young
graduate of Reading University and the University of British Columbia.
Rosemary and I married a few years later. We have two daughters,
Annemarie and Jennie, who have gone through university and "flown
the nest". Annemarie took an honours degree in Biology and
is about to complete her second degree, this time a B. Eng. in
Computer Engineering. Jennie completed a B. Mus. in composition,
plays bassoon and works in the Victoria Public Library.
When our children were young Rosemary chose
to be a stay-at-home Mum and resigned her position at the university.
Since 1985 she has taught world literature at Lester B. Pearson
College of the Pacific, one of a network of United World Colleges
offering the International Baccalaureate. She also teaches part
time at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.
We have enjoyed many summers camping and hiking in the Canadian
Rockies. During the winter months we are active participants in
several Scottish country dance groups, one of which I help to
run. I am current Provost of the Saltire Society of Victoria,
an organization devoted to the encouragement and preservation
of the culture, history and traditions of Scotland. In the past
I have served as President of the Victoria Philatelic Society
and Vice President of the Victoria Genealogical Society. [You
can check the Balfour family tree out at www.rootsweb.com].
As you will gather I have had a most interesting and rewarding
career since leaving the halls of Tain Royal Academy. Canada has
been good to me. I feel enormously gratified to have had a job
where I am paid to do what I truly love to do, in a beautiful
city in a beautiful part of the world, where I can bike to work
or walk to the ocean's edge in fifteen minutes. Add to this a
lovely, loving wife and children to be proud of and one could
not ask for more. If your path should take you anywhere near this
neck of the woods I should be delighted to see you.
Contact details
Walter J. Balfour
2966 Ashdowne Road
Victoria, BC, Canada V8R 5P3
Tel: 250-598-6456; Fax: 250-721-7147; email:
balfour@uvvm.uvic.ca