Ottawa, Monday, June 5, 2006

Thank you for the great honour you do me in conferring upon me this honorary doctorate. I am especially moved because I learned at a very young age that acquiring knowledge was the best, if not the only way to escape misery.

My father dedicated his life to teaching, and I am always touched to hear from his former students, who tell me how much he gave to them. My father always valued knowledge and knowledge institutions above all else. I also grew up with a mother who taught me to read and write on her knee. She was the first to tell me about the great classics and thinkers. She introduced me to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, knowing full well the risk she was taking.

And then there was my grandmother, who told us time and again that education is the key to freedom. Our families are indeed our first school, and mine gave me an insatiable love of learning and hard work.

My upbringing gave me a fondness and a respect for the pursuit of knowledge that time has not diminished. I have always maintained that love of learning, a love that some of us will always know. And I hold in the highest regard all those who allow thought to flourish, to express itself, to explore.

I cannot thank you enough for giving me this opportunity to share with you a few thoughts on how important—nay, how vital—it is to preserve these places of thought in our cities. History reminds us that those societies that encouraged thought and expression have enriched the heritage of humanity. And it is in institutions such as yours that thoughts are expressed and shared, becoming a strength for us all. Let us never forget this.

The role that universities play in affirming who we are is essential, perhaps even crucial at a time when the risks of the homogenization of cultures and the subsequent impact on the identity of individual peoples are like Pandora’s box, just waiting to be opened.

When thinking about culture, one cannot help but wonder just what that word means. We could simply say that it refers to all intellectual and artistic endeavour. Some do without hesitation.

But I believe that culture is broader in scope, encompassing all of the behaviours that describe how we think, create, dream, invent, act and live. It is every action, every nuance, every sensibility through which each of us contributes to the bigger picture. We are like the branches of a tree, individual yet rooted to one another, reaching out to a better future for us all.

Like memory and tradition, our culture is the fruit of that tree. Barthes once remarked that [translation] “everything is culture, from clothing to books, food to images, and culture is everywhere, a part of every social class.”

This is true of the evolution of our cultural adventure. We live in a country where, rather than turn our backs on the values of the past, we have chosen to embrace them, moulding them to the hopes and dreams of those who have chosen to interweave their roots on this land so that from the earth a new tree, a majestic tree will grow that each of us can climb to gain a better view of the world and thus broaden our horizons.

Culture is not an abstraction; it is palpable, rooted in soil that we must tend; emerging from a place whose possibilities it comes to express. The history of civilizations is teeming with examples of women and men who have left their mark, which time has not erased. It marks the passage of brilliant minds and unparalleled action. Through thought and action, humanity has gifted us with its most wondrous creations.

There is nothing stopping this quest for truth and beauty, provided that in this day and age, as relationships between peoples begin to globalize culture, we can resist the temptation to whittle culture down to a common denominator and erode all means of expression.

Now more than ever, thinking is not without responsibility. We must continuously weigh the interests of some against the needs of others. We must find a balance between openness to the world and the cultural imperatives of each. Let us not turn thought, and the technologies that disseminate it, into instruments of subjugation and exclusion.

Learning and expressing oneself are not privileges bestowed upon a chosen few, the wealthy, the powerful; learning and expressing oneself belong to all societies around the world whose originality ensures there will never be a cultural monopoly.

It is perhaps worthwhile to consider ethnologist Claude Lévi‑Strauss’ warning about the limits of cultural homogenization.

“There is not, and can never be, a world civilization in the absolute sense in which that term is often used, since civilization implies, and indeed consists in, the coexistence of cultures exhibiting the maximum possible diversities. A world civilization could, in fact, represent no more than a worldwide coalition of cultures, each of which would preserve its own originality.”

In our time, we have come to see that the emergence of economic blocs and the free flow of goods are not enough to bring peoples together who value and cherish their originality. The principle of supply and demand, to which globalization must far too often yield, can be brutal and weigh heavily on the agents of culture, because to force them to fit a mould is to paralyze their creative spirit. Culture cannot sustain any form of homogenization, lest it begin to fade away without the stimulation of daring creativity.

I do not believe that such daring can be separated from the act of thinking. It is the opportunity we are all given to compare the present with the past, to invent new conventions, to change mentalities, to shape our surroundings, to improve our lives, to expand our points of view.

And creating, for me, is not simply blending into the community by doing what is safe or expected; it is also questioning where we fit into the world; it is also shaking up our certainties; it is also risking everything for everything. It is this ongoing questioning that gives rise to our own originality. And that originality is the fuse that sparks creativity.

I strongly believe that in order to enrich who and what we are, we must look to the creative and to the inquisitive, who have a vital and, I might add, a civic responsibility: to reflect and encourage all forms of thought. It is through thought that individuals discover new ways to celebrate life, perhaps even make it easier, to harmonize it with the interests of as many people as possible.

It is through thought that societies evolve. And it is the absence of thought that leads to boredom, desperation and, most tragically of all, to violence. Violence is always blind and deaf.

There is another pitfall that we must avoid, and that is the erosion of thought, made worse by the increasing means of communication and the relentless deluge of à la carte information and easy entertainment intended to lure consumers with new sensations.

Sure, our televisions entertain and keep us connected to the world, but they have been largely stripped of their usefulness as vehicles for thought. The demands of profit mean that too often, they can barely scratch the surface and merely fill our minds with little more than watered down, lifeless images.

But neither should thinking be the imposition of a single vision of the world in which we live. Instead, it should provide multiple viewpoints on the world, stimulate debates, continuously dig beneath the surface for possible solutions.

We all know the extremes of one‑track thinking. We have seen the brutal results under totalitarian regimes over the past century. And we continue to see it in action today.

Above all, we should refuse to become mired in what we have already learned, instead delighting in how much there is yet to be discovered. Finding endless pleasure in opening our minds to the world around us.

The world is challenging us more than ever. We need to go beyond our certainties. Life, as well, has become so precious because of its complexity. And, as my father often told me, and as I often say to my own daughter, the more effort you put in, the greater the reward.

It is a reward that cannot be bought. It is a reward that cannot be consumed. And that may be the one true freedom that nothing and no one can ever take away from us: the freedom to understand, to explain, to create, to wonder. A freedom one should never take for granted.

I adore universities because they stand as one of the few enclaves where the freedom to think is still possible. But the drive to think is something we must carry within ourselves beyond the institution walls. The learning that begins at university prepares us to continue thinking until the end of our days. Such thinking is key to reviving culture and strengthening the ties that bind all humans to one another. A culture that no longer thinks is a stagnating culture. A culture that no longer thinks is a dying culture.

Without culture, there would be no points of reference, neither in time nor in space, and, as Fernand Dumont put it, without culture, [translation] “my memory would be lost.”

This independence of thought, to this day little more than a dream in many of the world’s hot spots, must always be asserted. Even in our most evolved democracies, we must constantly reclaim it through our own search for meaning, rekindle it through our own questioning, revitalize it through our own aspirations.

Nothing is more detrimental, more obscene, in this day and age than the contemptuous attitude that it is better to remove all thought from the public forum under the assumption that most people just don’t want to have to think.

It is precisely because they remain bastions of thought that we must protect universities and ensure their place in society.

We hear a lot these days about the clash of civilizations. Let us stop dwelling on our differences. It is so important that we instead focus on the values we all share and that have the power to halt barbarism in its tracks. What is barbarism? Where does it come from? It is born of ignorance, frustration, injustice, exclusion. Worse still, it sees terror, horror, destruction, even death as the only possible outcome.

All of us here tonight have a duty to stand up to this threat by reinforcing the importance of dialogue and the need to celebrate the values we share and that form the basis of our collective strength. We must take stock of those values that hold us to one another and define our common humanity.

All of you gathered here today, who embody the university as you administer, teach and learn, have a responsibility to keep alive and share the act of thinking. I salute you, the Class of 2006, and, as I have done across this country whenever I meet young people, I must tell you that my grandmother was right. Education really is the key to freedom. It is now up to you to pursue your dreams, to take these past few years of thought with you as you go forward into the world, and to keep the promise of a better future.

I invite you to embark on the adventure before you with great passion, and I am honoured to begin that adventure with you this evening. Remember that even a single thought that is not fully engaged in the world around you is a wasted opportunity to help put a human face on humanity.

May success and happiness find you always.