Winnipeg, Tuesday, October 18, 2005

My husband Jean-Daniel Lafond and I sincerely thank Premier Gary Doer and his wife, Ginny Devine, as well as members of the Government of Manitoba, for hosting this dinner in our honour. I am touched by the welcome given to me by you and your fellow Manitobans. Earlier today I said how delighted I was that my first official trip as governor general of Canada has brought me here to Manitoba. Not only because your province represents the geographic centre of our country, midway between the East and West that have shaped our national imagination, and not only because I have already had the opportunity to meet some Manitobans on earlier visits.

There are so many other reasons that I could mention, and that you know better than I. First of all, Winnipeg has Canada's largest urban Aboriginal population. Next, Manitoba is home to a dynamic Francophone community that is known far beyond the province. There are so many examples showing the readiness of Manitobans to build on the rich mingling of cultures that, in my view, gives today's Canada its strength.

Allow me to mention as well, and it is very much to your credit, that Manitoba was the first province to grant women the right to vote, in 1916, as well as the right to hold public office. Nellie McClung called Manitoba home, and I admire what she did for Canadian women and to combat poverty.

The coming days will take me to many places where citizens are working to improve the lot of their fellow Manitobans. I am a woman of action and, as I like to say, one citizen among equals. I am eager to meet the true builders who often work in the shadows, the women and men who make our country what it is. We are all of us privileged to be citizens of a country as rich as ours—rich in its freedom and the opportunities it offers to each and every one of us. But the privileges from which we benefit must not make us forget the suffering of so many people around us who are confined to solitude and despair. And nothing good ever comes out of despair.

I say before you again that I want to give the voices of citizens their rightful place so that together we may develop the capacity to offer the world an extra and much-needed measure of harmony. It is with this aim that we are going to give more relevance to the position I occupy. I am counting on your help in this task.

And now, I would like to propose a toast and lift my glass to friendship and to our fruitful collaboration over the years to come.