Presentation of the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards

Rideau Hall, Wednesday, December 10, 2008 

It has become something of a tradition, for the Governor General and myself, to take advantage of the fact that the recipients of the various Governor General’s Awards have gathered in one place, by inviting them to join us in discussing and reflecting on a particular issue relating to their artistic field. We have been holding these forums, entitled Art Matters, for the past three years, which enables us to get a sense of what is happening in the artistic community, whether here in Ottawa, across Canada, or during our State visits—as was the case during our recent trip to Central Europe. These forums, which we have opened up to the public this year, provide us with the opportunity to meet and talk with local artists and to take a closer look at the pact that exists between creators and society. Yesterday evening, at the Ottawa Public Library, we held the 33^rd Art Matters forum, which explored the theme of “A Passion for Reading.”

We celebrated the rich and stimulating coming together of reader and writer. We considered the conditions and consequences of their meeting in a society that focuses on entertainment, novelty and speed—values that seem to run counter to the practices of reading and writing. As Marshall McLuhan said: “It’s easy to produce writers, but a public is much harder to come by.”

The panellists shared their innovative ideas for inspiring and developing a passion for reading. Margaret Eaton of the ABC Canada Foundation reminded us that the passion for reading is, for thousands of Canadians, a simple need to understand the world that surrounds them. Ms. Eaton, along with some of the other participants in last night’s discussion, shared with us stories of adults who, thanks to literacy workshops, now have the means and the tools to fully participate in the life of their communities and of their country. 

A voracious reader, illustrator Geneviève Côté described various ways of making books more exciting in elementary schools, of making them more appealing to young people. Whether we come to reading through drawings, newspapers or the simple texts we come across every day, the important thing is to find that personal path that will lead you to the magic of words.

Writer and blogger Kerry Clare praised new technologies, in particular blogs that inspire people to read. Through these new forms of technology, the love of reading can surpass the reach of the book and extend around the world virtually, as Kerry demonstrates in a kind of virtual book club.The exchanges in these virtual clubs are proof that reading is not a solitary or silent act.

I believe that the opposite is true; I think that reading is just as lively and polyphonic as writing. The book is what links them, and this work of art is itself a pact between the writer and the reader, for better or for worse. Jean-Paul Sartre set out the clear and lapidary terms for this pact in relation to the novel when he said that a novel is the undertaking of a single person, but reading is taking part in the risks of that undertaking.

It can be said that Myriam Cusson, director of the Salon du livre du Grand Sudbury, is keeping that pact between writer and reader alive. She and her team are proof that a French-language book fair in a minority setting can awaken the desire to read and to discover one’s environment through writers who have lived there and helped to shape it, including Jean-Marc Dalpé and Patrice Desbiens, to name only two.

Whether you are a reader or a writer as you are dear laureates, we are all affected by what Roland Barthes so cleverly called a passion for reading. I would like to share an idea from En lisant en écrivant, a wonderful book by French writer Julien Gracq. He believed that reading and writing are united in a continuous process, with no beginning and no precedence, a little like the “chicken and egg” relationship: we write because we have read and we read because others have written before us.

Every reader therefore has the potential to be a writer, a creator in his or her own right; and every writer is actually a reader.  

Laureates of the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards, your stories, translations and illustrations are spaces for us to come together and connect, spaces that open onto the plurality of life. I hope that our fellow citizens will accept your invitation to meet you in your works, and that they have the privilege of seeing the world by your side.