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 31, 2024, 9:00 a.m.
(please check against delivery)
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 home 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.
For nearly a decade the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has been helping Canadians understand the past and the present, and the means to 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.
From kindergarten to high school and CEGEP (College of General and Professional Teaching), young people are helping each other and their families and communities understand what reconciliation can look like.
In your art projects, in your poems and essays, in your educational projects, you are showing us a way forward.
- It takes imagination to come up with your ideas.
- It takes practice to get the words or the images just right.
- It takes hard work to organize special events or learning projects.
But most of all, it takes an open heart to explore and a willingness to learn from the storied history surrounding Canada’s residential schools.
To all who have taken part in Imagine a Canada – thank you for helping us feel and see and understand. And to all the teachers and elders and the staff at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, thank you for your commitment to imagining a new Canada.
Thank you. Merci. Meegwich. Shalom