Thanks to the folks at CBC Radio's Q for allowing us to post their take on Project Bookmark Canada. From Monday's show, here's what Jian Ghomeshi had to say about Bookmark:
"Hi There. Happy Monday.
Let's start this week by talking about... plaques. Yeah...stick with me. A plaque was unveiled last week on the Prince Edward Viaduct here in Toronto.
Not a historical plaque, or one of those alarming "feeling blue, call this number..?" signs...which always adds a touch of melancholy to a splendid old bridge.
Nope, this plaque contains nothing but a passage from Michael Ondaatje's 1987 novel "In the Skin of a Lion".. A passage all about the Prince Edward Viaduct.. or the Bloor Street Viaduct, as most Torontonians call it. Right near my house.
The plaque is the first in something called Project Bookmark Canada...a series of dedicated signs featuring work by Canadian writers, installed in the places that inspired them.
The project imagines plaques from coast to coast to coast.. involving the work of Carol Shields in Winnipeg, Michael Crummey in St. John's, Dennis Lee in Toronto.
A great idea, by the way, and why stop there?
What about David Adams Richard's Miramichi...Douglas Coupland's Vancouver...?
George Elliot Clarke's Halifax?
Now, this little Canadian project caught the eye of the UK's Guardian newspaper, who posted on their website on Friday an article that said essentially "why didn't we think of this first?".
Though when you think of it, the plaque project of Project Bookmark is quintessentially Canadian.
We are, as Prime Minister King famously put it, a country of too little history and too much geography.
You can't walk through London or any UK city and not come across a little round blue plaque... signifiying someone famous lived there. They've been putting them up for the last 140 years.
Canada can't compete with that. But we know we do have outstanding writers, poets, and storytellers who bring to life in words Canada's small towns, big cities and yes, monuments like the Prince Edward Viaduct.. in order to make sense of this disparate place.
So here's to beating the UK at it's own game. To celebrating what the power of words can do. A plaque on you.
I'm JG
This is Q."
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