The Literacy Conference was honoured that morning with a visit from the Governor-General of Canada, the Honourable Ramon J. Hnatyshyn. The Governor-General congratulated the delegates for their commitment to literacy and for recognizing that without continued attention, "literacy can slip from the public agenda." He reinforced the need to keep working towards greater awareness and "to keep communicating the concern about literacy to the media, to all levels of government, and to your fellow citizens."

The last speaker of the Conference, was Canadian futurist, Frank Ogden, also known as "Dr. Tomorrow". Ogden, a 70-year-old lover of technology and change, stood up and said, "Welcome to the future. It's going to be a time of chaos, uncertainty and golden opportunity." He shook up his audience as he outlined what the electronic and information revolutions will mean to us over the next few decades.

"With the world's knowledge base doubling approximately every 20 months, the future is coming quickly. Change may well be the only constant in the Information Age and maintaining flexibility will be essential for survival. Educational institutions, teachers and their pupils must become masters of change."

"It's all in the way you look at the world," Ogden announced with the enthusiasm of a child holding a new toy. "If you see a crumbling world that's all you're going to be able to achieve, that's all that will be possible in that world. But if you see a much brighter world, you are going to have unlimited horizons."

Unlimited horizons. As much as some people expressed frustrations at this Conference about the magnitude of the task ahead of them, they are also people who believe that anything is possible. To teach people to read, to be someone learning to read for the first time, requires belief in "unlimited horizons". Our world is not going to crumble. We can go on in hope and in fellowship and in the belief that drop by drop, we can and will, make a difference.

And then it was over. The Conference Herald stood on the stage in full costume, blew her bugle and wished us all "God Speed." Each of the 801 delegates headed home, back to their families and to their work, with new ideas to try, new friends to call and special memories to hold on to. For me, The Literacy Conference 1990 lives on in the strength of Jonathan Kozol's words:

"I know that your jobs in literacy are terribly hard and I know that the day-to-day demands oblige us all sometimes to compromise our ideals. I know the mere routine of work is often overwhelming and leaves little time to think of larger goals. I also know that many people working as you do in the vineyards do not like to hear about a larger struggle. It offends them. Sometimes it even threatens them a bit because it seems to dwarf their efforts. I don't want to do this."

"Every decent Struggle is made up of tiny details, day-to-day routines, many inconspicuous and frequently unheralded endeavours. The ordinary teachers who work hard from day-to-day; who stick it out without much praise; who find their best reward within the eyes and growing strength of those they teach; who do not speak of politics as I do but are political by the very look in their eyes, by every intonation of their voice; who cherish freedom and regard the literacy task in much the same way Frederick Douglas viewed the end of slavery; who want the rain and welcome the thunder; who want the ocean and do not fear the roaring of its waves - these are the people I admire most. These are the people who redeem a nation's soul."

"There are hundreds and hundreds of such people here in Edmonton and in Alberta and I salute you. I wish you strength and nerve, and courage and irreverence, and persistence ... and survival."