I want to create the content I didn't have while growing up.

I came out, as not enough of our stories are told from our perspective. 'Marie Claire' was offering the chance to be a part of a women's magazine, which often celebrates ordinary women doing extraordinary things.

I often feel failed by feminism.

Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn't enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was - the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips - seemed to always prevail and attract Dad's disdain.

Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.

I hope I've been able to show other young girls that as long as you work hard and you're committed to fight for your education, that anything's possible.

Canadians have been very generous toward Haiti after the earthquake and, thanks to you, our most vulnerable people have received food, drinkable water, shelter, medical care and education. For that, we are extremely grateful.

I had an amazing teacher, who was Burmese, and she was living in Paris at the time, and she is one of very few who doesn't actually receive a credit in the film because she still has family over there.