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• Professor 1955–2015
• Queen’s University Principal and Vice-Chancellor 1974–1984

From the Queen's Gazette:

Ronald Lampman Watts, the 15th principal of Queen’s University, died on October 9, 2015. He was 86.

Dr. Watts, who served as Queen’s principal from 1974 to 1984, was also one of Canada’s leading experts on federalism.

“On behalf of the entire Queen's community, Julie and I extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Watts' wife Donna and the entire Watts family,” says Principal Daniel Woolf. “Dr. Watts was a beloved and respected member of the Queen’s community, and will be sorely missed. He was also an enormously influential figure in the debates on federalism in Canada over several decades, a greatly respected international consultant on governance, and a fine teacher, many of whose students went on to successful careers in academe, the private sector and the public service.”

Born in Japan to Canadian Anglican missionary parents in 1929, he was educated at the University of Toronto (BAH’52) and attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship (BA’54, MA’59, PhD’62).

He arrived at Queen’s University in 1955 as a lecturer in philosophy, but moved to the Department of Political and Economic Science in 1961. Dr. Watts took an interest in the administration and students of Queen’s, serving as a residence don in McNeill House and helping to plan the many residences built during the 1960s.

He was appointed Dean of Arts and Science in 1969 before becoming principal five years later. At 45, he was the youngest principal since George Monro Grant assumed the office nearly 100 years earlier.

During his time as principal several buildings were expanded including Botterell Hall, a nine-story medical sciences building located next to Kingston General Hospital.

Faced with reductions in government funding Dr. Watts also launched a campaign to cut costs, such as reducing energy consumption, while also maintaining the quality of teaching and research at Queen’s. His second five-year term was highlighted by laying the plans for the Queen's National Scholars program to attract outstanding young faculty members as well as starting the planning for the establishment of the School of Policy Studies.

Dr. Watts’ main academic interest was the comparative study of federal political systems. After retiring as principal, he served as director of Queen’s Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, senior adviser to the federal government on constitutional affairs, and consultant to governments all over the world, including Canada, Kenya, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.

He also published a number of books, including New Federations: Experiments in the Commonwealth, Multi-Cultural Societies and Federalism, Administration in Federal Systems, and Comparing Federal Systems.

Dr. Watts received five honorary degrees and became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1979 and a Companion in 2000.

Brief Biography

Dr. Hugh Garnet Thorburn (1924-2014 ) was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1942 but left the next year to join the Canadian Army, where he was seconded to the British Army Intelligence Corps. Throughout the rest of the Second World War, he served with the Army, rising to the rank of Captain by the time he was discharged in 1946. He returned to Victoria College, where he completed an honours course in Political Science and Economics in 1949. From 1949 to 1952, he continued his studies at Columbia University where he was awarded a PhD.

He was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Political Studies at ���˴�Ƭ in 1956. He rose through the academic ranks to Associate Professor in 1963, Professor in 1964, Head of the Department from 1968 to 1971, and most recently to the distinction of Professor Emeritus, after nearly 40 years of teaching in the department. He was President of the Canadian Political Science Association, the author of numerous books, and the editor of Party Politics in Canada. Dr. Thorburn passed away in Kingston on June 3, 2014, at the age of 90.

To honour Dr. Thorburn's legacy, The Hugh Thorburn Memorial Award was established in the Department of Political Studies. It is awarded on the basis of demonstrated financial need and academic achievement to students in any year of a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree program in the Faculty of Arts and Science with an academic plan in Political Studies. Those who wish to honour Dr. Hugh Thorburn with a contribution to this award, may do so .

Taken from Queen's Alumni Review 2014 Issue #1
By Keith Banting, Arts'69

Richard Simeon, FRSC, one of Canada’s leading political scientists and a faculty member at Queen’s from 1968 to 1991, died in October 2013 at the age of 70. He was a leading scholar of federalism who shaped political conversations during Canada’s great debates over constitutional reform and later advised governments around the world on the potential of the federalist idea.

Richard completed his undergraduate degree at UBC and his doctorate at Yale before coming to Queen’s as a member of the Department of Political Studies in 1968. He was intellectually innovative. His first and most important book brought the framework of international relations – the study of how sovereign states relate to each other – to the analysis of relations between Canada’s federal and provincial governments. The title, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy, neatly captured this insight. In the decades that followed, Richard built a legacy of some 20 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters.

During his years at Queen’s, Prof. Simeon emerged as a public intellectual, equally engaged in the worlds of scholarship and public debate. He became the director of Queen’s Institute of Intergovernmental Relations just two months before the election of the first Parti Québécois government in Quebec gave new intensity to Canada’s constitutional struggles. Under his leadership, the Institute became a central node in the country’s constitutional debates, linking scholars and public officials across the country. The Institute became a magnet for talent in those days, and was a fun place to work. At one Institute conference, everyone ­received a button that proclaimed: “No sex please. All our relations are intergovernmental.”

Richard was by nature a bridge-builder. He sought to understand the different perspectives underlying any intellectual or political conflict and then created links between the contending parties. During his days in Intergovernmental Relations, he built bridges between Quebec and the rest of Canada, creating a neutral site for open discussion between academics and officials in difficult times. He also served as an advisor to Ontario premiers Bill Davis (LLD’68), David Petersen, and Bob Rae.

Richard had recently summed up his approach to such conflicts as follows: “My view then was not so much to take sides or to go to war for national unity, but rather to help promote mutual recognition and understanding across the linguistic divide. This search for compromise, consensus and accommodation, more than any partisan position, was and is my core belief and has shaped my responses not only to many aspects of Canada’s linguistic, regional and Aboriginal differences, but also to international cases as well.”

His contribution to public policy and to Queen’s extended well beyond the constitutional file. In 1983, he served as a research coordinator and member of the report-drafting team for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. In 1985, he became Director of Queen’s School of Public Administration, the precursor of today’s School of Policy Studies. He began the process of building a core of faculty expertise in the School and enhanced its profile nationally and internationally. As always, Richard animated the School with his energy and enthusiasm, setting it on course to become the leading policy school in the country.

Richard moved to the U of T in 1991. In the years that followed, his research and engagements moved in comparative and international directions, focusing increasingly on emerging democracies and the potential role for federalism in reconciling deeply divided societies. This phase of his research brought him back into contact with Queen’s scholars, including Bruce Berman, Will Kymlicka, John McGarry, and Margaret Moore.

Richard’s contributions were widely recognized. Harvard University invited him twice to be its Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies. In 2001, he was made a member of the Advisory Committee of the Club of Rome, an international organization of former heads of state and government dedicated to democratic transition and consolidation. In 2004, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2010 the American Political Science Association awarded him the Daniel J. Elazar Award for a ”lifetime of distinguished scholarship on federalism and intergovernmental relations.”

Richard Simeon was a distinguished scholar and public intellectual whose colleagues found him unfailingly generous and open-spirited. He was a wonderful friend and brought out the best in everyone fortunate enough to work with him. He left us too early, and will be sorely missed. 

Thesis

Consumption and Commodities: The Political Economy of Canada's Growth Model

Brief Biography

PhD Political Studies (Queen's)

MA Political Science (Waterloo)

HBA Political Science (Toronto)

Chris completed his PhD in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University where he specialized in Comparative Politics and Canadian Politics. Chris holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Waterloo, and an HBA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Awards

2018 – Queen’s Graduate Award, Queen’s University, SGS

2018 – Queen’s University Entrance Tuition Scholarship, Queen’s University, SGS

2016 – The Society Scholarship, Criminology & Sociology Undergraduate Review, University of Toronto