Rideau Hall, Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Welcome to Rideau Hall, the home of the people of Canada.

It is a privilege to recognize some of Canada’s best and brightest students and teachers of history.

These awards honour excellence in community programming, museum work, popular history, scholarly research and teaching.

We are also here to celebrate young ambassadors and students of our past, who have realized early on in life a simple but important truth about this country’s history:

It is fascinating.

This may run counter to what some would say about Canadian history. I won’t speculate as to why some people call our history uninteresting, but I will say this:

They’re wrong!

Pick any given date in the calendar—today, for example, the 19th of November.

Of course, many things have happened on November 19 during the life of this country, but let me choose one day in particular:

November 19, 1775.

On that day—on this day, 238 years ago—one of my early predecessors, Guy Carleton, arrived in Quebec City under quite difficult circumstances, to say the least.

The difficulty was that Quebec—at that time the colonial capital of British North America—was under siege by “American” rebels seeking independence from Britain.

The siege lasted for months. After a long, cold winter of nighttime attacks, artillery bombardments and even firewood raids outside the city walls, British reinforcements finally arrived to lift the siege in May 1776.

This wasn’t the first time the people of Quebec had found themselves under attack. For almost two and a half centuries, the settlement was repeatedly besieged by those who wanted to control North America.

As historian André Charbonneau writes:

“On five occasions – 1629, 1690, 1759, 1760 and 1775 – the enemy appeared before Quebec. On five occasions, the colonial capital’s people and defensive system were put to the test. On five occasions, civilians and soldiers joined forces to save this part of the country.”

And they say Canadian history is dull!

Each of you knows that our history is not only interesting, but important, as a means of understanding who we are and where we have come from.

A knowledge of our history provides us with invaluable context to help us make sense of the present and to inform our choices as individuals and as a society.

In this era of rapid and profound change, the value of history’s ability to anchor and guide us should not be underestimated.

Of course, to borrow a phrase from historian Margaret Macmillan, history can also be used and abused, and we must take care to not distort the past or allow ourselves to become unduly beholden to it.

Your efforts as students and teachers of history are vitally important to the smarter, more caring Canada we aspire to.

Together, you are carrying the torch of our history into the present, shedding light on events in new and exciting ways.

As governor general and as someone who is continually surprised and fascinated by the richness and variety of Canada’s history, I wish to thank you for your efforts.

And to those of you who represent the next generation of Canadian historians, I encourage you to keep up your hard work. Be curious and bold in learning and telling our story.

Congratulations to all of you on receiving this honour. I wish you the very best.