Remarks by
The Honourable Anita Neville, P.C., O.M.
Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba
75th ANNIVERSARY, ROYAL WINNIPEG BALLET VOLUNTEER COMMITTEE
Manitoba Club
Wednesday, May 21, 2025, 1:00 p.m.
(please check against delivery)
Friends and fellow Manitobans, supporters of culture and community, welcome to this diamond anniversary celebration.
We are gathered this evening in the heart of Treaty One land and the heartland of the Red River Metis, in a province born through a coming-together of peoples. A province that is the ancestral and present-day home of the Anishinaabe, Cree and Dakota, Dene nations and the homeland of the Red River Metis – and that includes northern lands that are home to the Inuit – is also a place of music, dance and all forms of cultural expression.
As Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, I am honoured to serve in a province committed to truth, reconciliation and collaboration among all of those who call this place home.
Winnipeg audiences are known for being generous in bestowing applause. If a performance moves us, makes us laugh, makes us think, makes us say “wow” – we’re on our feet, clapping our hands, and shouting “bravo.”
While it’s the performers up front taking their bows who gratefully accept that applause, I like to think that our audiences are also clapping for the many people who make art possible.
We know that the show can’t go on without the technicians and designers, stage managers and prop builders, and everybody else who keeps an arts organization running.
And it can’t go on without support in the community from the people who raise funds and work to build an audience.
For 75 years, the Volunteer Committee of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet has been making those standing ovations possible through its fund-raising work.
Your volunteer service – at every performance and throughout the year through your boutique Things – has earned you the distinction of the longest-running ballet fund-raising organization in Canada or even in all of North America.
Like the dancers you support, you’ve taken some impressive leaps of faith, since the board of the ballet formed a women’s committee to raise funds. Opening your boutique, and later expanding it in the midst of covid, took an impressive degree of courage and grace.
When we take hometown pride in the RWB’s history of artistic achievements, premieres, and tours, we can also do some justified boasting about the contributions of Manitobans who support the ballet with time and donations.
And so, it’s a pleasure to be here today at this celebration to see and hear the applause aimed straight at a group of arts supporters who have worked to keep those ovations coming year after year, decade after decade.
Thank you for your contributions to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and to the city and province we call home.
Thank you. Merci. Meegwich. Shalom
