His Excellency comes home
Posted Oct 25, 2010 04:02:51 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
“It’s wonderful, I’m back home.” That’s how Governor General David Johnston describes being back at the University of Waterloo.
Johnston gave the address at the school’s 101st Convocation on Saturday, and was also named the school’s President Emeritus.
After the ceremony, Johnston sat down for a one-on-one interview with 570 News to talk about his three-week old role as Governor General, and what it means to visit Waterloo again.
He says it’s an honour to be named President Emeritus, adding it’s “the icing on the cake” of his wonderful experience of being with the school for over 11 years.
As for the day-to-day work of being the Queen’s representative in Canada, Johnston says it’s impossible to tell if he would ever be called upon to decide to prorogue Parliament as his predecessor was.
Johnston says there are some predictable Constitutional features to his new job, and some that are less predictable, and he’ll deal with them all as they come along.
And Johnston says he’ll stay busy on the job, doing a lot of traveling, in part to visit Canadian families, as he said he would in his installation speech as Governor General on October 1.
In fact Johnston will be in four different provinces in the next month, he says.
And he will continue to work on the three pillars he spoke of in that speech, especially fostering education in this country.
Johnston specifically mentioned looking forward to a future visit at Jeanne Sauve School in Stratford, where Grade 6 students sent him a poem in his honour, called “Grampa Book goes to Rideau Hall.”
He says if the students translate that poem into French, he will read it to them when he’s there.
