As Lieutenant Governor
Onley's appointment as lieutenant governor was announced on July 10, 2007; he was privately informed of this after a July 4, 2007, taping of Home Page: "I just had reached the top of the Don Valley Parkway... and there was no place to pull over. And when the Prime Minister of your country calls, all you can try to do is stay in the same lane, avoid any fender-benders and have a meaningful conversation, which I did."
He was sworn in on September 5, 2007, at Queen's Park in Toronto. As the province's first lieutenant governor with a disability, Onley said he would use his vice-regal position to help remove physical barriers to Ontario's 1.5 million people with disabilities, as well as focus on other issues affecting the disabled, including obstacles to employment and housing. Onley also stated, in his installation speech, that he would expand on his immediate predecessor James Bartleman's First Nations literacy initiatives, his aim being to see computers on every student's desk in northern schools. For his installation, Onley approached the legislature on his electric scooter, however he ascended the Throne on foot, using leg braces and canes. Onley also travelled to China to represent the Queen and Canada at the 2008 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony.
Onley and his wife continue to reside in their Scarborough home; Ontario is one of three provinces that does not have an official vice-regal residence.
Read more about this topic: David Onley
Famous quotes containing the word governor:
“Ah, Governor [Murphy, of New Jersey], don’t try to deceive me as to the sentiment of the dear people. I have been hearing from the West and the East, and the South seems to be the only section which approves of me at all, and that comes from merely a generous impulse, for even that section would deny me its votes.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)