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ADDRESS TO BE DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR GENERAL
BEFORE THE WOMEN'S CANADIAN CLUB OF TORONTO ON TUESDAY,
NOVEMBER 28TH, 1939, AT 3.00 p.m.

NOT TO BE RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE PRESS BEFORE
4.00 p.m. ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH.

I.

I have had the privilege of addressing Canadian Clubs
up and down the Dominion, but this is the first time since I
became Governor General that I have addressed a Women's Canadian
Club. But it was an old promise of mine to come one day to you
in Toronto, and the fact that we are now at war makes no
difference to that promise. Indeed, it makes it easier to
fulfil. A Governor General, as you know, is very limited in
his choice of subjects. There are many matters on which he dare
not touch, matters of controversy, above all, matters of party
controversy. Politics in the ordinary sense are forbidden him,
and that does not make it easier for a person like myself, who
was a Member of Parliament at Home, and to whom politics was a
principal topic. So I am afraid - I am very much afraid - that
in my many speeches since I came to Canada I may have sometimes
bored my audience by harping on the same subjects. There is a
story of a new minister in a Scottish village who preached his
first sermon there, and an old woman in the congregation, a
celebrated critic of sermons, was asked what she thought of him.
Her answer was "I thocht nothing of him. He was neither edifyin'
nor divertin' ". I fear that too often I have been neither
edifying nor diverting!