THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARDS, ENGLISH DRAMA.

    Acceptance speech: Kent Stetson. 

Rideau Hall: November 14, 2001

    Excellencies, Fellow Laureates, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen;

    “Canada’s Artists Ought to Grow Up”  barks the National Post.  “Official culture is an affront to democracy and liberty.”

     Elizabeth  Nickson. What are you thinking? She tells us . . .

     “The Government must get out of funding the arts.  We must largely decommission the Canada Council and the provincial arts councils . . .”

    (As I read this, I am en route to the launch of  The Harps of God,  in  Toronto, Canada’s pre-eminent American city)

    “. . . and ask our artists to grow up and learn how the real world (she cites the United States) works.”

    The real world. Hmmm...

    Scene:  A fantasy;  It is April 1994.   Artistic Director Donna Butt and I discuss funding possibilities for my new project, a tragedy in three acts for twenty men arising from facts surrounding the Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914.   Who needs the Canada Council?  We believe the Market Place and the Private Sector will be on The Harps of God like a duck on a June bug.  We make a National list of the fattest corporate and private sector possibilities.  We stress the following selling points;

    1.    In Newfoundland, in 1914, corporate greed and stupidity caused the deaths of eighty sealers, maimed and emotionally scarred forty others.  Ah, there’s no need to distress the audience by over playing the death card... maybe a note in the back of the program.

    2.    The Harps of God holds that the livelihoods of  Newfoundland fisherman are more important than the sensibilities of animal rights activists, or the drive for corporate profit.  We believe that your Corporate Vision and our play’s theme can be ‘tweaked’ into a perfect match.  Therefore, The Harps of God will promote the interests of the Fishing Merchants and Brigitte Bardot,  not those of Newfoundland fishermen.

    3.    The play will  best be served by three long acts.  Harps will run for five nights, to only one hundred souls per performance. It  will be produced out doors at a remote location, accessible only by small boat. In Newfoundland.  In August.  During the performance, it will almost certainly rain and may well snow.

  4.     Fleece blankets with your corporate logo prominently displayed are only one of many marketing possibilities; we also suggest a handsome line of skinning knives, and gaffs suitable for clubbing those irresistible, big, round, fat baby seals.

5.    We mistrust the arms length policy of the Canada Council, and the provincial arts councils.  We admire the short, muscular arms and grasping hands of commerce; and the sweeping ‘vision statements’ of Corporate culture.  

    And they said irony was dead.  The real world.  Commerce  adores melodrama; but abhors the greatest of the Arts, tragedy.   The real world I know and love is not the United States, not corporate “culture” (ours or theirs),  or popular culture, where all is for sale and little has value.  The real world I know and love is Canada.  I love being Canadian.  I’m good at it, and  I intend to get better.  This award will help.

    I don’t believe the market place has the spiritual well being of the Canadian people —  and the culture which defines our higher selves — as its priority.  I know the Canada Council does.

    Time is the playwright’s Holy Grail.   The Harps of God  benefited from time provided by the provinces of Newfoundland, and Quebec.  The Canada Council, commissioning company Rising Tide Theatre — thank you Donna — The National Arts Centre and The Canadian Stage Company all share this award.

    Thank you, Angela, for this beautifully realized publication.  Thank you,  Canada Council,  for this marvellous gathering...  and this wonderful, publicly funded award.