Remarks by
The Honourable Anita Neville, P.C., O.M.
Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba
IMAGINE A CANADA CEREMONY AND CELEBRATION
Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Friday, May 23, 2025, 9:00 a.m.
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Students and educators, dreamers of a new and better Canada – it’s a pleasure to join you today for this celebration of creativity and reconciliation.
To those of you watching on the livestream from across Canada, I’d like to welcome you to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, in the heart of Treaty One land and in the heartland of the Red River Metis.
As the capital city of a province that is the ancestral and present-day home of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Dakota, Dene, Inuit and Red River Metis peoples, Winnipeg is a place where the work of reconciliation is carried on all around us. We are all engaged in learning, listening, imagining and building a better country – for everybody.
Today we are celebrating education in its deepest sense.
The Imagine a Canada project invites students from Kindergarten to grade 12 and CEGEP to go on a learning journey to a better Canada, to a country that puts the principles of truth and reconciliation into practice every day.
It’s the kind of learning journey I was dreaming of more than 30 years ago when I was a school board member.
I saw then how students became truly energized and developed a love for learning when they were invited to do more than learn a set list of facts or follow specific instructions.
Students learn when they are able to ask questions, when they are able to use their imaginations, when they are able to engage with the world beyond the classroom.
The artworks, essays and projects created through Imagine a Canada show us what can happen when young people are able to bring their whole self to school.
The learning and transformation that students go through in Imagine a Canada is an example of what the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has brought to its mission. The NCTR has been at work on a nationwide project of learning, to help Canadians of all ages understand the past and present and create a future of opportunity, fairness and justice.
And all of you – as participants in the Imagine a Canada project – are helping to create that future.
To all of the students whose work is being recognized today, congratulations on your successes in learning and creativity. And to all who have made this possible, thank you for supporting transformation through education.
Thank you. Merci. Meegwich. Shalom.
