Remarks by
The Honourable Anita Neville, P.C., O.M.
Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S AWARD FOR HISTORICAL PRESERVATION AND PROMOTION
Government House
Thursday, May 8, 2025, 5:00 p.m.
(please check against delivery)
Fellow Manitobans, keepers of knowledge and tellers of stories, welcome to Government House and this celebration of those who keep our history alive.
I begin by acknowledging the depth of our history as a province that is located on the treaty territories and ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Dakota, and Dene and the homeland of the Red River Métis; and that includes northern lands that were and are the ancestral lands of the Inuit.
Here on Treaty One land and throughout our province, we remain committed to working in partnership with First Nations, Metis and Inuit people in the spirit of truth, reconciliation and collaboration. And understanding our history plays a key part in that partnership and collaboration.
Since 2011, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Historical Preservation and Promotion has recognized the work of men and women across Manitoba who find, preserve and interpret artifacts and historic sites, write and teach history, build and maintain archives and in other ways allow a living connection to our past.
In the years since this award was established, the importance of that work has never stood out more prominently than it does right now.
Suddenly, all around us, Canadians are looking to history to understand the strange time we’re in and to propose solutions for our dilemmas. We’re hearing references to the War of 1812, the National Policy of the Macdonald government of the 1880s, and much more.
And of course, Canadians are turning to history to express who we are as a people, what our country means to us and what accomplishments inspire our love for Canada.
Our desires for self-understanding and for past parallels that can help us understand our present make it more important than ever that we have the historical resources needed. And not just the resources. We need people who can put the incidents and objects and personalities into context so that we can recreate the past in our own imaginations.
The work we are celebrating today requires a lot of special skills and a lot of passionate commitment. The individuals we are recognizing today need to have filing cabinet minds capable of holding and accessing volumes of detail. They need to have judgement and imagination to envision the lived experience of the past. They need to be great communicators, so that they can inspire others to share and even build on that vision of history.
As Oscar Wilde quipped: “Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.” He might have added, “to preserve, rebuild and maintain it.”
Thanks to the work of today’s award recipients, people across Manitoba are better able to see how the past lives with us every day, shapes our institutions and values and gives us templates for understanding our present and predicting our future.
And thanks to the Manitoba Historical Society, those who value history are able to share ideas and celebrate success in awards such as these.
To all who keep our understanding of history fresh, thank you for your dedication to knowledge and to our province and country.
Thank you. Merci. Meegwich. Shalom
