Mr. Speaker, April 23 is Canada Book Day. I want to celebrate it by telling you about the Writers' Development Trust of Canada, why the trust was founded and what it does.
A nation's culture is inseparable from its storytellers. Our writers not only entertain and enlighten us, they help define us as a people. It was the recognition of the seminal importance of Canadian writing that in 1976 led four visionary Canadians, Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson and the late Margaret Laurence, who lived in Peterborough riding, to create the Writers' Development Trust of Canada.
Then as now, its purpose was to nurture the growing community of Canadian writers, to ensure that amid the din of competing voices our own stories would be gathered and told in exquisite poetry and compelling prose.
In the intervening years, the writers' trust has remained faithful to the founding vision, establishing programs and prizes that celebrate and reward our distinctly and uniquely Canadian perspective.
Let us celebrate Canada Book Day.