Authors’ festival boss gets a title of his own
IFOA director now a knight in French artistic order
If he’d gone to pick up his registered mail, he might have known a bit sooner. But it took a few days before Geoffrey Taylor, director of the International Festival of Authors, found out that he was, in fact, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — the equivalent, in French, of a knight.
When he finally went to pick up the parcel, “It was an envelope from the French Embassy in Canada and there was a suitable-for-framing Diploma of Knighthood, and there was a letter from the ambassador and a letter from the culture minister saying that I am a knight,” said Taylor in an interview Monday.
In that letter, Audrey Azoulay, France’s minister of culture and communications, said that Taylor had been given the honour for his “significant contribution to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance.” French Ambassador Nicolas Chapuis noted that Taylor’s IFOA role was also being honoured.
It’s an outlook reinforced by IFOA president A. Charles Baillie, who said in a statement that an “international acknowledgment of this stature helps draw awareness to the extraordinary work Geoffrey, as Director of the International Festival of Authors, has undertaken in Canada and abroad to promote culture and the arts.”
Taylor has been at the helm of the festival, held annually at Harbourfront, since 2003, but he was modest when asked Monday about why he thought he received the award. “It’s somewhat hard to say really. I’m ac- tively involved with a number of foreign countries on an ongoing basis because of what we do here. So I’ve been on some committees for France, I’ve done things for the consulate, we’ve had some French authors here, we’ve helped program (events) in France.”
He has been involved with the IFOA organization since around 1990. Taylor is also a founding member of Word Alliance, a partnership of eight international literary festivals, including one in Saint-Malo, France.
Taylor will be presented with a medal — in English the honour’s name is Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters — at a formal ceremony on October 24. The order was established in 1957 to pay tribute to those who have contributed to further the arts, both in France and around the world.
Other Canadians who have been given the honour include Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, John Ralston Saul and Jane Urquhart.
Meanwhile, while he won’t be called “Sir” as in the English tradition, “Monsieur” might be rolling off people’s tongues a little more frequently.