Hamilton, Ontario, Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Good morning everyone!

What a pleasure to visit this school—home of the Wever Wildcats!

One question: do graduates of this school go on to be Ticats?

Forgive me, folks—this is Hamilton after all!

Seeing you here today tells me something important about this place and about all of you.

It tells me that this school belongs to this community, and vice versa: this community belongs to this school.

Now that’s what I call a foundation for success!

And all of you are building upon that foundation with the ABACUS project, which brings the community together for a very good cause: improving access to post-secondary learning.

It’s very enlightened of you to focus your attention on access to post-secondary education at this stage of learning.

Because believe it or not, kids, there is life after middle school!

In fact, as those of us who have been around awhile know, it’s just around the corner!

And you know what? It gets better and better.

I’m delighted to have this chance to learn more about ABACUS and to hear from the people involved—especially students.

Back when I became governor general, I called on all Canadians to “cherish our teachers” because of the important work they do.

The flip side of that is to also cherish our students, and to give them every chance of success in their learning.

I should say “our” learning, because really we’re all students—and I mean all of us.

Learning is one of the most important things we do in our lives, and that’s especially true in our rapidly changing world.

For the students here today who are about to enter secondary school, these are pivotal years.

Your success today sets the stage for your success tomorrow!

I want to commend the Hamilton Community Foundation and the Fairmount Foundation on the design and delivery of ABACUS. It has a wonderful focus on learning, mentoring, goal setting and incentives.

And I want to thank and congratulate everyone associated with this school for your hard work.

A smart, caring community is one that does everything it can to make barriers to learning easier to overcome or, better yet, it removes them entirely.

But as you know: doing so takes time, and effort, and resources.

I’m very pleased to be here today, not just to learn more about ABACUS, but to encourage all of you to keep going and never give up!

Smart, caring initiatives like this one are how we’ll build a better country.

So whether you’re a student, mentor, parent, teacher, volunteer or donor, I thank you for your efforts.

Keep up the great work!