FROM LEFT: UNIVERSITY OF KING’S COLLEGE PRESIDENT WILLIAM LAHEY, GORDON SINCLAIR EARLE, BA’63, DCL’22, CHAIR OF KING’S BOARD OF GOVERNORS DOUG RUCK
The Gordon Earle Scholarship, originally known as the Prince Scholarship, is available to an African Nova Scotian student entering the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College and who will be pursuing a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) or Bachelor of Music.
Dr. Earle, BA’63, DCL’22, was the first recipient of the scholarship in 1959. At the time, it was the only scholarship dedicated to African Nova Scotian students offered by any university in the province. After being discontinued in the 1970s, it was reinstated by King’s in 2018. Today the scholarship is valued at six thousand dollars a year, renewable for four years.
The scholarship was originally named after Dr. Samuel L. Prince (1886-1960) the pioneering sociologist, Anglican priest and King’s professor who was a builder of the social welfare state, in Nova Scotia and Canada, and who played a leading role in founding the Maritime School of Social Work at Dalhousie University.
About Dr. Gordon Sinclair Earle
A leader from a young age, Dr. Earle’s life is replete with firsts. In addition to being the scholarship’s inaugural recipient, he was one of King’s first African Nova Scotian students. Later, as Nova Scotia’s chief human rights officer, Dr. Earle drafted Nova Scotia’s first Human Rights Act. When, in 1982 he was appointed ombudsman for Manitoba, he became Canada’s first African Canadian ombudsman.
Upon his return to Nova Scotia, Dr. Earle was appointed to the position of deputy minister of housing and consumer affairs, making him the first deputy minister of African descent in the history of Nova Scotia’s civil service. He subsequently became the first African Nova Scotian to sit in the House of Commons, elected as the Member of Parliament for Halifax West for the New Democratic Party.
A deep commitment to social justice forms the throughline of Dr. Earle’s personal and professional occupations. He successfully advocated for a public inquiry into abuse at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children and he was one of the first to call upon the federal government to apologize for the racist treatment of No. 2 Construction Battalion members during and following their service in the First World War. An apology was finally delivered by the federal government in July of 2022. That same year, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Civil Law (honoris causa) at King’s 232nd Encaenia.
Read more about previous recipients.
