Scholarship Information
Dr. Elaine Harrison Award
Faculty of Arts
Criteria:
Awarded to a second-, third-, or fourth-year full-time student who is talented and working toward an Arts or Music degree, and has a demonstrated financial need.
Awarded to a second-, third-, or fourth-year full-time student who is talented and working toward an Arts or Music degree, and has a demonstrated financial need.
Background:
Elaine Harrison attended Dalhousie University, graduating in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts with distinction in Latin and English. She moved to Prince Edward Island with her family that same year, when her father, the late Archdeacon G. R. Harrison, became Rector of St. Mary's Anglican Church in Summerside and St. John's Church in St. Eleanor's. She began her 30-year teaching career in Summerside in 1939. She spent many years teaching English and Latin at Summerside High School and, for a few years, taught geometry, German, and art. Carrying on the tradition of women artists throughout the century, Harrison was an inspired teacher, believing that education was not a means to an end but a way of life. Education was not simply about facts and figures but also included nurturing the creative mind. She was a self-taught artist. She was drawn to the work of the modem masters: Van Gogh, Picasso, Kandinsky, Rouault, Tom Thomson, and Emily Carr, to name a few. Expressionistic artists who seek an emotional or spiritual truth, something beyond straight realism, touch her poet's soul. Harrison painted the wonder of her world: the sea and sky, trees and flowers, children at play, portraits of people and cats. Her work was inspired by her beloved Windswept, her Femwood, PEI home by the sea where she loved to listen to the waves crashing against the cliffs or lapping against the shore. Her work is deeply textured, and, often, one image is painted over another, with a loose, thickly loaded paint knife. Throughout her teaching career, Harrison painted and was an active member of the PEI Art Society and the Great George Street Gallery. Since her retirement from teaching in 1968, Harrison has devoted her extraordinary energy to painting, writing, and environmental activism. Harrison's influential work as a teacher has been publicly acknowledged by a scholarship set up in her name in 1981 by former student George Rankin Schurman and with a medal for Meritorious Service to the education of the province's youth from the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). In 1997, she received an honorary degree from UPEI. Dr. Elaine Harrison left a generous bequest to the University of Prince Edward Island. The estate fund created several awards for talented and needy students working on or studying toward a degree in either Arts or Music. These awards are in addition to the Eleanor Reesor Wheler Memorial Scholarship in Music, which Dr. Elaine Harrison had established in 1997.
Elaine Harrison attended Dalhousie University, graduating in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts with distinction in Latin and English. She moved to Prince Edward Island with her family that same year, when her father, the late Archdeacon G. R. Harrison, became Rector of St. Mary's Anglican Church in Summerside and St. John's Church in St. Eleanor's. She began her 30-year teaching career in Summerside in 1939. She spent many years teaching English and Latin at Summerside High School and, for a few years, taught geometry, German, and art. Carrying on the tradition of women artists throughout the century, Harrison was an inspired teacher, believing that education was not a means to an end but a way of life. Education was not simply about facts and figures but also included nurturing the creative mind. She was a self-taught artist. She was drawn to the work of the modem masters: Van Gogh, Picasso, Kandinsky, Rouault, Tom Thomson, and Emily Carr, to name a few. Expressionistic artists who seek an emotional or spiritual truth, something beyond straight realism, touch her poet's soul. Harrison painted the wonder of her world: the sea and sky, trees and flowers, children at play, portraits of people and cats. Her work was inspired by her beloved Windswept, her Femwood, PEI home by the sea where she loved to listen to the waves crashing against the cliffs or lapping against the shore. Her work is deeply textured, and, often, one image is painted over another, with a loose, thickly loaded paint knife. Throughout her teaching career, Harrison painted and was an active member of the PEI Art Society and the Great George Street Gallery. Since her retirement from teaching in 1968, Harrison has devoted her extraordinary energy to painting, writing, and environmental activism. Harrison's influential work as a teacher has been publicly acknowledged by a scholarship set up in her name in 1981 by former student George Rankin Schurman and with a medal for Meritorious Service to the education of the province's youth from the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). In 1997, she received an honorary degree from UPEI. Dr. Elaine Harrison left a generous bequest to the University of Prince Edward Island. The estate fund created several awards for talented and needy students working on or studying toward a degree in either Arts or Music. These awards are in addition to the Eleanor Reesor Wheler Memorial Scholarship in Music, which Dr. Elaine Harrison had established in 1997.
