Author Robert J. Sawyer received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Laurentian University on 2 June 2007. The doctorate was given “in recognition of his international success as a science fiction writer.” Sawyer also gave the convocation address to graduating arts students that day.
Laurentian, in Sudbury, Ontario, Candad, is a bilingual English-and-French institution. Sawyer’s trilogy—Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids—is set largely in the Sudbury area, including at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and at Laurentian University itself.
A video of the 2 hour and 10 minute convocation is available at this link. Sawyer is introduced at 27 minutes, 30 seconds into the program.
In other Sawyer news, he is the cover photo of the May 2007 issue of Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal. The issue features a profile of Sawyer; a round-up article about 10 other Canadian SF authors; and a group interview with Robert Charles Wilson, Julie E. Czerneda, Karl Schroeder, and Cory Doctorow called “The Great SF Brain Drain: Why Do Canada’s Science Fiction Authors Have to go South to get Published?”