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Salient.The Newspaper of Victoria University College. Vol. 19, No. 4. April 6, 1955

Tribute To Boyd-Wilson

Tribute To Boyd-Wilson

Professor Boyd-Wilson sired by a stationmaster, spent his early childhood travelling from one one-horse town to the other. His first voyage of academic interest was to Nelson College, whence he gained a Junior University Scholarship to take him to CUC. Here the activities which seemed to him of most nostalgic interest, were becoming the secretary of the Rugby Football Club and distinguishing himself as a hooker in the first representative team to play the Australian Universities, in 1908. However, he also managed a first-class in English and French, together with a B.Sc to demonstrate the catholicity of his interests.

Off on his travels again, he taught for a year at King's College, Auckland, and thence proceeded to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Here he sold oranges and matches, instructed the sons of nobility in rudimentary French and did the recently-instituted Modern Languages Tripos.

After obtaining a first-class pass here, he crossed the Channel to teach English in a German Government school in Antwerp. This brings us up to 1914, when ho escaped with what he had to England, leaving books, pipes and football gear to the Germans. Thence he returned to New Zealand via Sydney Boys' High School (where he taught German and French) and Perth University (where he was head of the department of French). Ho was appointed to the Chair of Modern Languages at VUC in 1920.