REMEMBERING GABRIEL FISCHER
As most members of AUFA will know, our colleague Gabriel Fischer passed away last May, at the age of eighty-five. Gabriel was a strong supporter of our association, an engaged teacher, and a progressive voice on and off campus. The tragedy and horror of the Holocaust brought undeniable cogency to Gabriel’s teaching, which urged especially Nova Scotia students to become vitally alert to the world beyond their home towns. His view that peace studies needed to be near the centre of an adequate liberal education led to a course financed from anonymous friends of Acadia, in the best tradition of the Acadia Spirit. Like AUFA members here during and those who followed his time at Acadia, Gabriel was courageous in defence of his commitments, standing up and being heard on issues of human dignity and economic justice. With Lois Vallely-Fischer, with whom he shared a deep, loving and progressive relationship, Gabriel brought to campus some remarkable guests of international standing, leaving students with poignant examples of the life of the politically attuned intellectual and of the political actor governed by just causes and principles. Hopefully, as Acadia turns to the future, the values Gabriel Fischer professed will only be strengthened.
Greg Pyrcz