F E AT U R E S T O R Y
Halfway Across the
Bridge of Difference
The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean’s speech from her visit to Ridley for the MGI Gordon Speaker Series.
Excerpts taken from “To Be Consumed in Service in a World on Fire: Working for Positive Change in the 21st Century,” The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean’s speech from her visit to Ridley for the MGI Gordon Speaker Series.
Terar Dum Prosim. It’s our school’s motto, proudly displayed around campus, taken to heart and deed by Ridleians for more than a century. But what does it mean, in today’s world, to be consumed in service? It was the question posed to young audience members by Michaëlle Jean—Canada’s 27th Governor General and Commanderin-Chief—on her visit to Ridley this past January for the MGI Gordon Speaker Series. And as she stood at the podium, illuminated by the light of the Mandeville Theatre, she spoke of what’s increasingly at stake: from civil discourse, to the plight of the
50
flourishing
disenfranchised, to the health of our planet. She implored students to consider how best to channel their passions, and showed them, through the power of storytelling, how their “most precious asset”—the stories of our collective past—can be used to move forward, together. Beyond words and the local idiom, there is something even more powerful we can call the shared language of our universal and shared humanity: expressing the ideas and thoughts that speak to our common experience helps us re-imagine and re-shape the world as a space where we can share solidarity, cooperation, fundamental rights and freedom, dignity, global justice, inclusive and responsible development,