Rhodes Scholars

2005 Rhodes Scholar Bryony Lau

Thirty-five Rhodes Scholars from Trinity: it’s an impressive record that averages out to one every three years since the award was created. Among Canadian undergraduate colleges of similar size, Trinity – with just 1,700 undergraduates – stands among the very top in the Rhodes Scholarship arena. And in a recent three-year span, from 2003 to 2005, Trinity fostered an amazing five of these young scholars (four students, plus one Academic Don), a stellar start to its rate of Rhodes scholarship in the 21st century.

So why does Trinity do so well in the Rhodes race? The college’s high admission standards are part of the answer. More than half of Trinity’s entering students have an average of more than 90 per cent. And Trinity chooses well-rounded students and encourages them to be leaders. The Rhodes Scholars listed below are part of a worthy tradition of academic excellence that’s burgeoning here at Trinity in the 21st century.

Trinity Rhodes Scholars

The Trinity Rhodes Scholar cohort totals 35 graduates. There are 38 if you count three recipients who were closely associated with the College when they received the scholarship. (Graduation years follow each name. If a year appears in brackets, it indicates when the scholarship was taken up.)

Arthur Griffin 1915
John Lowe 1922
Escott Reid 1927: Escott Reid turned down a teaching position at Harvard University at the outset of his career to become the first permanent secretary of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA). From then on, he was pivotal in shaping Canadian and international policies while serving in the Department of External Affairs for more than two decades, along with the UN and NATO. In the area of international aid, he was an early advocate for collective security and adequate financing of development programs. After retiring from work in foreign affairs, he wrote seven books on everything from the founding of the UN to his personal relationship with Nehru. His most important work, Time of Fear and Hope, is considered the essential reference on the genesis of the North Atlantic Treaty. He was a tireless advocate for education and served as the first president of York University’s Glendon College. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971.
William Lyndon Smith 1928
George Cartwright 1929
C. Herbert Little 1930
John Leslie Stewart Jr. 1932
George Ignatieff 1936: In more than two decades of Canadian diplomacy, George Ignatieff served variously as the assistant undersecretary of state for external affairs, the Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, a representative to the UN and NATO and, finally, as disarmament ambassador. A diplomat of rare breadth, he was president of the UN Security Council from 1968 to 1969. After his years in the foreign service, Ignatieff turned to academia, first as provost of Trinity College from 1972 to 1978 and then as chancellor of U of T from 1980 until 1986. His memoirs, entitled The Making of a Peacemonger, are emblematic of the quality of his work: Ignatieff was a statesman ultimately interested in international peace. As a thinker ahead of his time, he advocated for poverty relief and the protection of the environment. In 1984, he won the Pearson Peace medal and became a Companion of the Order of Canada.
James George 1940
William M. Cox 1951
David M. Harley 1952 (1953)
Andrew M. Watson 1952 (1953)
Ronald Watts 1952
Peter H. Russell 1955: As a professor of political science at U of T from 1958 until 1996, Peter Russell had a broad range of influence. His work focused on aboriginal peoples and judicial and constitutional politics, along with issues surrounding security intelligence and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He was pivotal in the formation of the Canadian Law and Society Association, serving as its president from 1987 to 1989. Over his long and varied career, he was particularly respected for his tolerance and accommodation of dissent. Since retiring, Russell has become a key advocate for retirees’ rights in Canada and was part of the group that last year negotiated U of T’s new retirement agreement disallowing mandatory retirement. He is currently serving as the honorary president of RALUT, U of T’s association of retired academics and librarians.
Stephen H.E. Clarkson 1959: Stephen Clarkson is a professor emeritus of political economics at U of T. The first volume of his most notable work, Trudeau and Our Times, co-authored with his wife, Christina McCall, won the Governor General’s award for non-fiction. In part, this work grew out of Clarkson’s earlier investigation of Canada-U.S. relations during the Trudeau era. Relationships have been the central focus of Clarkson’s research overall. Early in his career, he examined the dynamic between the collapsing USSR and India. Most recently, he has shifted his attention to Canadian-American relations in a globalized world, focusing on NAFTA and the WTO. Currently, he is serving as a key researcher in the Globalism Project, a collaborative research effort among four countries examining neo-liberal globalism. This work involves a comparison of Canada and Mexico as peripheral players to the United States. In 2004, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Timothy H.E. Reid 1959 (1960): Tim Reid is a graduate of the University of Toronto, Yale and Oxford and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard. On returning from Oxford, he joined the Hamilton Tiger Cats and played in the 1962 "Fog Bowl" Grey Cup before moving to York University as assistant to the founding president and a member of the faculty. In 1967, he was elected in the riding of Scarborough East to the Ontario Legislature, where he served for four years as education and university affairs critic for the Liberal Opposition. Reid moved to Paris as an economist with OECD and then joined the federal government, rising to the rank of Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Board. In 1985, he became Dean of Business at Ryerson University and from 1989 to 1998, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He was the Prime Minister's personal business representative on APEC'S Pacific Business Forum. In 2002, he was elected an alumni member of the University of Toronto's Governing Council and sits on its executive committee. He is the recipient of the Queen's Jubilee Medal and U of T's Arbor Award. In 1998, he was inducted into the university's Sports Hall of Fame.
Arthur R.A. Scace 1960 (1961): After completing degrees at Trinity College, Oxford University, Harvard University and Osgoode Hall, Arthur Scace was called to the bar in 1967. He rose to national chair of McCarthy Tétrault and served as the treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada. In 1983, he wrote an authoritative work on income tax law in Canada, which along with his work in the fields of tax litigation, corporate tax and personal tax planning, has made him widely respected as a legal expert in Canada. He has won many awards for his work, including the Robinette Medal in 2003, Osgoode Hall’s highest award of achievement for alumni excellence, and became a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005. He remains active with the Rhodes Trust and is the current secretary of the scholarship in Canada. He and his wife Susan were pivotal in the dedication of a reading room in the John W. Graham Library to the Rhodes scholars of Trinity College. Scace currently serves as the chairman of the board for Scotiabank and is past-president and current chair of the Canadian Opera Company’s board of directors.
George D. Butterfield 1961 (1963): In 1966, recently out of Trinity, George and Martha (’63) Butterfield, along with Martha’s brother, Sidney Robinson (’61), came up with an idea to lead a biking trip for students across Europe. What began that summer as a small idea grew into Butterfield & Robinson, a luxury biking and walking travel company that leads trips in more than two dozen countries across the globe. As the company celebrates its 40th year, Butterfield maintains a hands-on approach and still leads the occasional biking trip across France or sea trip across Antarctica. He is currently chair of the Ontario College of Art and Design’s capital campaign.
Modris Eksteins 1965: Modris Eksteins, a historian of Europe with a special interest in the relationship between war and culture in the 20th century, has taught at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus since 1970. His many books include Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, which received the 1989 Trillium Prize and the Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association. More recently, Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Heart of Our Century was awarded the inaugural Pearson Prize by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Eksteins is a past vice-president of the St. Antony’s Society at Oxford University and a senior fellow at Massey College.
Derek P.H. Allen 1969
Brian Morgan 1972 (1973)
John C. Allemang 1974
John S. Floras 1975 (1977)
Christopher R. Honey 1984 (1986)
J. Elizabeth Elbourne 1985 (1987)
Kerry Stirton Non-grad, former Junior Fellow (1985)
John M. Caccia 1988
Karl G. Hansen 1988 (1990)
Michael Szonyi 1988 (1990)
Jonathan E. Bays 1990 (1994)
Katherine A. Cochrane 1990 (1991)
Phyllis (Ali) Binnie 1997
Naana Jumah Non-grad; former St. Hilda’s resident (2001)

OUR RECENT RHODES SCHOLARS

Thomas Ringer 2003: Thomas Ringer, who graduated in 2003 with a double major in English and Ethics, Society and Law, earned his MPhil in Politics at Oxford. The 25-year-old is now in his first year at Yale Law School. This summer, he says, “I’ll probably be working with an NGO in Thailand to document human rights abuses by the Burmese government,” which is said to be providing internationally funded oil projects with illegal forced labour. He continues to run triathlons in his spare time. After graduation, he hopes to work in public interest law related to environmental and native rights issues or international human rights.
Zinta Zommers 2003: Zinta Zommers, who graduated in 2003 with a degree in biology and environmental studies, spent the next two years getting her MPhil in Development Studies at Oxford. Now 26, she has begun work there on her doctorate in zoology with the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, studying zoonoses (diseases transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans), research that is helpful for understanding new diseases such as avian flu. As part of her doctoral work, Zommers is proposing to study the commercial bushmeat trade, widespread in Africa and Asia, and its influence on the emergence of zoonoses.
Maria Banda 2004: Maria Banda is completing her two-year MPhil in international relations at Oxford this year. Since June 2004, she has worked for the International Labour Organization and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and has done policy analysis for the UN Association in Canada. She hopes to continue her graduate studies in global governance, international law, and human security when she starts studying law this fall in the United States.
Navindra Persaud 2004: Navindra Persaud is not a graduate, but was a medical student and a physics and chemistry don at Trinity when he won the Rhodes Scholarship. The scholarship enabled him to take a break after his second year at U of T’s medical school to study in the Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology program at Oxford. In the summer of 2005 he visited his native Guyana and volunteered on a Red Cross project helping patients with diabetes and high blood pressure to make lifestyle changes. He plans to return to his medical studies at U of T next year.
Bryony Lau 2005: Trinity’s newest Rhodes Scholar, Bryony Lau began studying for her MPhil in international relations at Oxford in the fall of 2005. Formerly a volunteer with Frontier College, she is now co-ordinating outreach efforts in schools for a student organization that aims to increase women’s political involvement. A doctorate at Oxford remains a possibility for Lau, who thinks she will eventually become an academic.