Inside Gallaudet

Canadian students enrolled at Gallaudet now have another source of support to continue their educational goals at the University, thanks to The Robert Elder Sowerby Scholarship for Canadian Students Fund.

 

The endowed fund was established by Nova Scotia residents Robert Charles and Minnie Sowerby and named for Robert’s late father, Robert Elder Sowerby, a great supporter of Gallaudet and the deaf community.

 

“Dad spoke highly of Gallaudet. He saw it as a way for deaf children to improve their education and, by extension, their ability to provide for themselves,” said Sowerby.

 

Sowerby, who lived from 1893 to 1971, was an important figure in the Canadian deaf community. A resident of Moncton, New Brunswick, he was known as the “grand old man of the Maritimes,” the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. He was involved with many organizations, principally the Maritime Association of the Deaf, of which he became a director at age 17. Sowerby next became vice president, then president, and finally secretary for the organization, a post he held for 25 years. He also worked with the newly-founded Eastern Canadian Association for the Deaf, which actively promoted the cause of equal pay for equal work for the deaf. 

 

Known as a man of many talents, Sowerby apprenticed as a tailor, but settled on a career with the Canada Post, where he worked for 42 years and boasted the largest route assigned to any postal worker in Moncton. Sowerby put his apprenticeship to work, however, by making his own suits. He was also a professional photographer.

 

Resourcefulness and tenacity were perhaps Sowerby’s greatest talents, and the ones that inspired his son this most. “My father was the only surviving member of his family and at no time did he ever feel sorry for himself or use his deafness or lack of brothers and sisters as an excuse for not working to better his family’s position in life,” the younger Sowerby recalls. “How can one not respect a man that worked hard to provide for his family and the betterment of Moncton’s deaf community? Thus the scholarship.”