Montreal, Friday, May 28, 2010
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Receiving an honour is like living a beautiful, unforgettable day.
It is a bright spot in our memory that we cherish our entire lives.
And I am especially touched by the honour of receiving an honoris causa doctorate from the Université de Montréal because, I am very proud to say, this is my alma mater.
Being back here today, in the places I used to visit as a student, allows me to outline the journey I have taken.
After travelling as a young woman in Europe in the 1970s, I discovered Italy, where–after the May 1968 demonstrations–imagination was well and truly a powerful force.
I will never forget being in streets alive with the cries of workers, feminists, artists and students, who were all pouring their whole, joyful hearts into shaking up certainties and reinventing the social pact.
Voices everywhere were rising up, like a call to freedom.
Yes, for a young, blossoming woman–a rebel in her days–who, with her parents, fled a universe reduced to whispers by dictatorship and oppression; for that child of exile who found refuge and security in Canada, a country where everything is possible, the experience of that trip was like a resurgence of the power of words, one, like Dante’s trip, that ended in paradise.
Filled with an irrepressible desire to prolong that experience, I returned to Montreal after an exciting year.
Upon my return, I remember telling my mother–with a determination that only the young possess–that I was going to enrol in the faculty of Italian studies at the Université de Montréal to push the adventure further; that is how passionate I felt about this way of speaking and living.
Those years of discovery and learning helped mould me into the person I have become and have allowed me to better define the values that have always guided me and that I still defend as Governor General of Canada.
Values that, as a whole, prevent us from limiting ourselves to what is already a given and invite us to be surprised still and always by the extent of everything that we still need to gain through effort.
Therein perhaps lie the very foundations of the freedom that nothing and no one can ever take away from us: by this I mean the freedom to understand, to elucidate, to create, to marvel at, and to change our lives.
But I do have one regret with regard to those years of study, a regret that is highly personal.
I regret never finishing my master’s thesis, which was to focus on the notion of exile in the works of the magnificent Dante and a few Caribbean writers.
I sometimes think about how that study would have turned out, but, over time, it has pleased me to think that this reflection on exile has been replaced by a call to solidarity, the defence of which is central to all my convictions.
Dante himself comforts me in this belief, as he said that, “some people wait for time to change. Others tackle it and act!”
Dear friends, I have seized it eagerly and wholly, as though my entire life course to this point were summed up from exile to solidarity.
I am a woman of exile–of exiles, to be more precise–exile from the country of my birth, certainly, but also exile from the certainties that block the horizon of possibilities, and the biases that do not allow our ways of living or expressing ourselves to change.
A woman of exile called to solidarity, which–I believe–brings feelings and action together to strengthen the spirit of human dignity that moves me more than anything.
Whether working with women in abusive relationships, or on Canadian public television, or in the role I have occupied since September 2005, I have never stopped intensifying my efforts to make solidarity the cardinal value of all my actions and of all my ambitions.
And I sincerely hope that you, the graduates of 2010, hold this same conviction beyond this institution that I love and that we all love.
Because university prepares us to constantly extend this work of thought in new directions so that–above all–it regenerates and strengthens the ties humans invented to better live together and to live better together.
That is the fundamental reason why I believe that universities play a vital role in training and strengthening thought.
It is therefore with great emotion that I would like to take this distinguished opportunity to thank this institution for everything it has given me and everything it has allowed me to imagine “pour la suite du monde,” to use Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault’s beautiful expression.
And I now call upon your own commitment, dear friends, so that the world to follow will meet your aspirations.
I wish you all every success and happiness!
