The Right Honourable Mary Simon was installed as Canada’s 30th Governor General on this date in 2021. An accomplished Canadian diplomat, she became Canada’s first-ever Indigenous GG. From Arctic Quebec, who grew up on the land, she spoke of her youth during her installation address.
“What I valued most about my upbringing was my parents teaching my siblings and I how to live in two worlds—the Inuit world and the non-Inuit southern world,” she said. “This foundation of core values has both served and shaped me throughout my life, and I believe helped me get to an important turning point as a young girl, when I stopped being afraid. It took time before I gained the self-confidence to assert myself and my beliefs in the non-Indigenous world. But when I came to understand that my voice had power and that others were looking to me to be their voice, I was able to let go of my fear.”
You can read her entire speech that historic day at this link: https://www.policymagazine.ca/to-be-there-for-all-canadians-governor-general-mary-simons-installation-speech/
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.