Canada and the founding of PLAIN
Plain language professionals from Canada have been a part of this movement for a long time: doing research, sponsoring conferences and travelling the world.

Phil Knight also helped to lead the Plain Language Society out of Vancouver in the 1980s, along with Wendy Putman, Richard Darville, Dianne Bodnar, Shirley Dommisse, Peter Buitenhuis, Stephen Carlman, and Sheila Jones.

In George Orwell's scary year of 1984, a community literacy worker named Ruth Baldwin had for some time been monitoring Clarity and the Plain Language Society and adapting Chrissie and Martin's training materials in order to consult with Canadian government agencies in Ottawa about their bumf. Tannis Atkinson and I came to train with Ruth in that year.

The Canadian Legal Information Centre, or CLIC, under the leadership of Gail Dykstra and Gwen Davies, had assembled a library of plain language resources that is still a part of our national library.

At the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy, Betty-Ann Loyd and colleagues developed brilliant training models for plain language workshops that many of us still draw from.

The early founders of PLAIN
I have left some extraordinary people to end this history with. They are the people who founded the International Plain Language Network, the forerunner of this association. Their work has included previous conferences, high-quality newsletters, and a far-sighted and early grasp of the Internet, which began to connect us all by the mid-1990s.

[Here I ask you all to stand and applaud the founding work for our association done by: Kate Harrison of Winnipeg, Judith Bennett of Melbourne, Australia, and especially Cheryl Stephens and Janet Dean of Vancouver.]

When I was a little girl, I went to Sunday School, and I learned the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a lesson I took to mean that great cultures crash and burn without a common language, a common understanding.

How terrifying that image of a crashing tower has become for us now.

This conference is dedicated to clear communication, across disciplines and around the world.

A conference is a campfire. Around our campfire, let's argue, but let's laugh too, about this perplexing profession of ours.

Nobody goes away from a campfire agreeing completely, because we all still have so much to learn.

May we keep talking and learning. Good luck everyone. Thank you for being here.

This is going to be a wonderful conference.