Senator Hugh Segal: Massey's fifth master
Published: December 13, 2013
Senator Hugh Segal – distinguished author, policy advisor and academic – is to become the fifth master of Massey College at the University of Toronto.
Segal succeeds John Fraser, who retires on June 30, 2014, from the position he has held for nearly two decades.
The Governing Council of the University of Toronto on December 10th gave assent to the election of Segal by Massey College’s governing corporation. There will be a six-month transition period during which Segal will continue to serve in the Senate until he takes on his new position.
An independent, interdisciplinary college within the University, Massey College opened in 1963. It is host to the annual Walter Gordon Symposium on Public Policy and co-host (with CBC and the House of Anansi Press) of the annual Massey Lectures. Appointed to the Senate in 2005, Segal is Canada's special envoy to the Commonweath and a former member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group.
"For 50 years [Massey College] has been the leading intellectual home in Canada for outstanding graduate students, distinguished senior academics, scholars-at-risk (caught out in intolerant conditions around the world), as well as non-academic leaders from journalism, politics and the public service," said Segal. "My term as master will be a rewarding opportunity and challenge to work with this remarkable community, especially with those exceptional young Canadian and international scholars who constitute our future.”
The Kingston, Ontario-based Segal is widely regarded as a "red tory" and has served as chief of staff to former Ontario premier Bill Davis and former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Segal's most recent book, The Long Road Back: The Conservative Journey, 1993-2006, was published by HarperCollins in 2006.
In a letter to all members of the Massey Community, Fraser praised the work of the selection committee.
"It is a help to me to know that such a warm, engaging and energetic figure as Hugh Segal is to take on the leadership of this amazing college," Fraser said. "It is going to be an important, challenging and ultimately triumphant change for the college: all good transitions are. It is a time to evaluate what works, what doesn’t work so well anymore, what can be improved, what needs to be cherished. That’s how successful institutions survive and thrive.”
Celebrated Canadian novelist and journalist Robertson Davies was the first master of Massey. He was succeeded by the pioneering computer researcher, J.N.Patterson Hume, the Irish studies scholar Ann Saddlemyer, and Fraser, an author and journalist.
