Merci, Monsieur le President. Monsieur le President, last Friday Northerners celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Today I would like to show appreciation to the vibrant francophone community that calls the NWT home. The Franco-Tenoise have a long and storied history in our territory. To start with, the first person of European descent to reach the Great Slave Lake was a francophone, Laurent Leroux. In 1786, Leroux built the trading post at Fort Resolution, and in 1790 he founded the original Fort Providence trading post, just 20 kilometres from our modern-day capital. The Franco-Tenoise have dealt with many substantial pressures throughout their history within our territory, but through their tenacity and pride in their cultural inheritance, they remain to this day a vital part of our cultural fabric.
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The Federation Franco-Tenoise was founded in 1978. Their original mission was to provide a radio antenna that could pick up Radio-Canada, but they quickly came to the conclusion that they deserved more cultural recognition within the territory. At the end of the 1980s the federation took an active part in the creation of a French school in Yellowknife, Ecole Allain-St-Cyr, a structure that stands to this day and serves as monument to all future generations that the Franco-Tenoise are here to stay, and to flourish.
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Monsieur le President, at this time I’d ask for unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Merci, Monsieur le President. Merci, colleagues.
[English translation not provided.]
Merci, Monsieur le President.
