Honourable senators, I rise today to pay tribute to Sheree Fitch, the talented writing powerhouse with the beautiful heart, the pride of River John, Nova Scotia, and my friend who was recently named to the Order of Canada for her outstanding contributions to children’s literature and to the Canadian literary community as a writer and literacy advocate.

Lian Goodall describes Sheree Fitch as a:

Dazzling disco ball of word energy and Canada’s spunky, funky queen of nonsense poems and stories for the very young who has slow danced her way into the minds of novel readers.

This award-winning single mother, grandmother and wife of the deeply dimpled Gilles Plante has written dozens of children’s books, including Sleeping Dragons All Around; books of poetry, including In This House Are Many Women; and novels, such as Pluto’s Ghost.

Sheree is a storyteller and educator who has travelled the globe from Baffin Island to Bhutan. Her Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe and Dreamery is a magical creation and a gift to all children, young and old.

In the foreword to her book If You Could Wear My Sneakers, Peter Gzowski wrote:

Sheree, as you’ll see, creates sounds for every living creature. She is open to everything as only a child can be and as with any child, she plays with words, wisdom and a sense that the world can work. We should listen to her; she speaks for children everywhere.

Sheree’s poem The Way it Is goes like this:

Why doth the sloth

Moveth so slow?

Why doth the sloth

Have three sloth toes?

Why doth the sloth

Hangeth upside down?

Why doth he?

The sloth is

Just weird, I suppoth.

I sayeth! Saith the sloth

I am slow because

That’s the way it is

The way it was

My three toes doth

What three toes do

I am happy for me

As you are for you

And the wayeth the world

Spinneth upside down?

It’s just different, not weird

My sky is your ground

And if-eth you thinketh

That faster is better

I sayeth to you

That it doesn’t much matter

For if you’re a sloth

Slow seemeth just fine

You doeth things your way

I’ll doeth things mine.

Thank you, Sheree Fitch, for sharing your creative genius with us and for caring so deeply about children, their imaginations and rights. Congratulations to you on your Order of Canada; that honour is so richly deserved.