The watercolour War Memorial Window Design for the Great Hall, by Martin Travers, 1924.
Roll of Honour
14 March 2024
APPLY NOW
On the jubilee of Canterbury College, one of the Professors wrote “A University training is a training for the highest kind of life, it aims at producing the most excellent citizen.” Christchurch had reason to be proud of Canterbury College and its buildings, but the greatest contribution the institution has made to the community is the production of good citizens. Some Canterbury students have gone on to be leaders on national and even international stages. Many have simply made valuable contributions in the lives of their families and local communities.
The buildings of the College continue to stand as a testament to the hard work of the people who designed and built it, the professors and lecturers who taught in it, and the community that made it all possible. They are also a reminder of the students who passed through its doors, and went out into the world beyond the walls of the College. The tangible commemoration of their presence is still to be seen today, in the Memorial window located in the Great Hall, which pays tribute to the 440 staff, students, and former students of Canterbury College who served during World War One. Of those, 98 were never to return, among them the College’s first Rhodes Scholar Henry Stokes Richards, and Wimbledon lawn tennis winner Anthony Wilding.
The watercolour War Memorial Window Design for the Great Hall, by Martin Travers, 1924.
Christchurch and the wider Canterbury Province has benefitted from countless teachers, artists, musicians, journalists, scientists and engineers that the College had a hand in teaching. John Macmillan Brown knew this when he told students in 1878 “We cannot, then, look for manifest proof of the success of our work in the immediate present; to the future, perhaps the far future, we must look; in your careers, in your afterlife it is we hope to find a more enduring monument of our labours.”
A small sample of the well-known graduates of Canterbury include:
| Names of Graduates | Names of Graduates |
Geoffrey Alley – All Black, librarian | Roger Kerr - businessman |
Oscar Thorwald Alpers – lawyer, judge, writer | |
Charles Adams – astronomer and surveyor | Howard Kippenberger - military leader |
Rita Angus - painter | Douglas Lilburn - composer |
William Balch – All Black and Teacher | Jordan Luck - musician |
FH Bakewell – inspector of schools | Euan MacLeod - painter |
Don Brash - politician | William Marris - administrator |
WD Campbell – war correspondent | Ngaio Marsh - author and thespian |
Thomas Cane - architect | John McMillan - economist |
Neil Cherry - environmental scientist | Trevor Moffitt - painter |
Russell Clark - artist | Sam Neill - actor |
Alan MacDiarmid - Nobel Prize in Chemistry | |
Michael Cullen - politician | |
Sir Apirana Ngata - Māori politician | |
William Alfred Orange - Anglican churchman | |
G. F. J. Dart – teacher | Evelyn Page - artist |
Peter Dunne - politician | Graham Panckhurst - High Court Judge |
Denis Dutton - philosopher | William Pickering - engineering administrator |
Brian Easton - economist | J. G. A. Pocock- historian |
Kate Edger - teacher | |
Michael Endres - pianist | |
Stevan Eldred-Grigg - historian and novelist | |
John Angus Erskine – scientist and businessman | David Shearer - politician |
Kevin Smith - actor | |
Denis Glover – poet, journalist, publisher | |
Robert H. Grubbs - chemist | HTJ Thacker –Mayor of Christchurch |
Clive Granger - economist | |
CM Gray – Mayor of Christchurch | |
Joel Hayward - academic | |
Ken Henry - Secretary to the Treasury (Aus) | |
Cal Wilson - comedian, television personality | |
Glenn Wilson - psychologist | |
Jock Hobbs - All Black Captain | |
Marian Hobbs - politician | |
Alexander Ivashkin - musician | |
Bruce Jesson - writer | |
Catherine Judd - politician | |
