"We don't want things to be uptight. The Governor General likes to have a hype vibe." On a small stage in the basement of an Ottawa art gallery, a round, middle-aged white guy wearing a goatee and an Adidas track suit and a black woman in traditional African colours — self-described as the godmother of slam poetry — are explaining the rules.

The crowd is mostly black and mostly young, save for a cluster of white politicians and dignitaries, all invited guests at this "urban arts forum." People are packed in front of the stage and into a second room. "The Governor General is here to listen," the hosts continue. "So if you've got a political axe to grind, this is not the place." Furthermore, there will be no "dissing." The aforementioned godmother leads everyone in a chant and the crowd is admonished when it proves timid. "If you're not more hype than this, the Governor General will not be coming out."

A short while later though, Michaëlle Jean arrives, her audience suitably hype. The Governor General finds her way to the stage, smiling in all directions. When the noise diminishes, a female fan seizes the opportunity. "We love you!" she yells.

Jean sits back in her chair, beaming. She is presented with flowers, and then one of her guards approaches the lectern and lays out her speech. "I am here today because I believe in your capacity to make a difference. I believe in your unique message of hope," Jean says in her breathy, deliberate, accented delivery. "I also believe that the arts — whether it is rap, multimedia, sculpture, spoken word, poetry, graffiti, painting, theatre, locking or popping — have a major role to play in bringing us together."

There is the same deferential silence that fills a room whenever Jean speaks. Deference, though, is not to be confused with intimidation. For the next two hours, the Governor General sits, mostly quiet, as a series of teenagers and twentysomethings air their grievances. Jean takes notes as a b-girl laments Ottawa's stodginess. An angry young man rants against racial profiling. The city councillors fidget and hang their heads as he vents.

The setting is hardly royal. A young girl is nearly jeered from the room when she takes too long with a rambling review of her life. But Jean never sits back, never stops nodding, never seems the least bit uncomfortable. Nor does she seem the least bit out of place. "She loves people and people love her," says Oni, the poet. "And I really feel she's speaking for the people."

Says Jean: "I like people who make sometimes the impossible come true. I like people who are thought-provoking. I like people who are very audacious. I like people who have an idea about making a difference and bringing about change around them."

Much of the Governor General's business is conducted in Rideau Hall's main ballroom, below a 12,000-piece crystal chandelier. Two massive paintings bookend the room. In one, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the monarchy seem distant from Canada and estranged from each other. At the opposite end of the room, in a painting entitled Charlottetown Revisited, the Fathers of Confederation appear vampiric in stovepipe hats. Two years into her reign, Michaëlle Jean is equally of this place and resolutely beyond it. "When I was approached with this idea of me becoming governor general, I didn't answer right away," she says. "My first reaction was to propose names. I came up with 30 right away and they said, 'No, we took care of that. We had a committee, you know, but the idea was to ask you.' So I took about four weeks and I knew that to have a person like me becoming governor general would actually provoke a lot of hope in so many people. I knew that. I knew it. And just for that reason it was worth considering."

Now 50, she walks lightly, but with a slight swagger. She smiles and nods and looks every visitor in the eye, but her brow seems incapable of furrowing. Where her husband squirms through ceremonial proceedings, Jean is ever conscious that she is being watched. When particularly humbled, her hand reflexively covers her heart. Speaking underneath that chandelier to a gathering of accomplished and powerful women, she is Oprah-like. She nods on syllables, leans on the lectern and stretches out the vowels in words like hope and pride. She ventures that a woman's first risk is "accepting her unique voice." She explains her purpose: "I never wanted to be someone other than who I was." And she asks the assembled to "defeat those who want to poison our lives with those fears." She leaves to extended applause.

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