Raymond Moriyama, honourary Doctor of Laws degree recipient, speaking from podium during Convocation held at Centennial Auditorium.

Bio/Historical Note: Born in 1921 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Raymond Moriyama suffered burns as a four-year-old and was sometimes teased about his scars. During the eight months he spent bedridden after the accident, he saw an architect coming and going from a nearby construction site, "with a blueprint under his arm and a pipe in his mouth." Moriyama then decided that he would become an architect. Moriyama's father was an outspoken pacifist who was arrested and made a prisoner of war for his activism. Moriyama was then twelve; his pregnant mother was left with him and his two sisters to run the family hardware store. Shortly after, he and his family were forced out of Vancouver and confined to an internment camp in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia during the Second World War. Japanese Canadians on the West Coast were classified as security threats, in a policy similar to that of the United States. He said these years were influential in his later career. Moriyama described his experiences in internment camps as miserable. During this time, his mother experienced a miscarriage, in which Moriyama then grieved the loss of a potential younger brother. He looked for a place for escape and solitude, and decided to build a treehouse outside of camp, as a lookout point. Moriyama made friends with Canadian farmers who supplied him with lumber and tools to build. After the war, his family reunited with his father and they resettled in Hamilton, Ontario, where he attended Westdale Secondary School and worked in a pottery factory. Moriyama received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Toronto in 1954, and a Master of Architecture degree in civic and town planning from the School of Architecture at McGill University in 1957. Moriyama's first large project as an independent architect was the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, built in 1964. After years of working independently as an architect, Moriyama established his Toronto-based firm in 1958 and in 1970 was joined by Ted Teshima and is now Moriyama & Teshima Architects. Some of their notable early projects include the Scarborough Civic Centre from 1973, and the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library from 1977. Both of these projects won Governor General's Medals. Moriyama was involved in bringing a Japanese cultural influence to Western society. Ted Teshima retired in 2006, and died in 2016. In 1985 Moriyama was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and promoted to Companion in 2008. He was also inducted into the Order of Ontario in 1992. From 2001-2007 Moriyama served as chancellor of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. He has designed several buildings at Brock University from the 1970s onwards. In 2004 he was made a member of the Order of the Rising Sun, a Japanese award given in recognition for his services to Japanese culture in Canada. In 2007 Moriyama was honoured with a postage stamp by Canada Post featuring his design for the Ontario Science Centre. In 2012 he received a Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal. He also created a $200,000 endowment with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada called the Moriyama RAIC International Prize. Moriyama retired from the business of architecture in 2003.