From: CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CZ94)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Schooling in Quebec
Date: 28 Jul 92 00:36:40 GMT
Organization: McGill University

In article <1992Jul24.124623.4881@spxtech.qc.ca> steven@spxtech.qc.ca (Steven C. Potter) writes:
>From article <23JUL92.13904111.0071@VM1.MCGILL.CA>, by CZ94
> <CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> (Tom Box?) writes:-
>
>> One of the early battles in this language of schools question was
>> in St. Leonard in 1968, between Italo-Canadian parents who wanted
>> to send their children to English Catholic schools, and a board
>> which wanted them to attend French Catholic schools.  Only a single
>> school board was involved.  It was not a battle between English and
>> French school boards, as I understand it.
>
> Have you got that right?
>
> I may be mistaken, (please quote reference if I am wrong) but I thought
> that, traditionally, the French Catholic schools would not accept non-
> Francophone students. That is one of the reasons that the French community
> actually thought that "all the immigrants choose English school".
>
Okay.  My references are "A Brief History of Quebec Education", by
Roger Magnuson (1980), "The Long Road to Reform -- Restructuring
Public Education in Quebec", by Henry Milner (1986), and "Pressure
group politics: case study of the St. Leonard schools crisis", by
John Parisella (1971).  BTW, Milner is (was?) a prominent anglo
pequiste, while Parisella is now a senior official in the office
of Premier Bourassa.

Let's recall that the Quebec school system is organised primarily on
denominational (Catholic/Protestant) lines, rather than linguistic
(French/English) ones.  When the public school system was evolving in
the mid 19th century, there were significant French-speaking Catholic,
English-speaking Catholic, and English-speaking Protestant communities,
but very few French-speaking Protestants.  Hence, the Catholic system
had both French and English sectors, while the Protestant system was
almost exclusively English.  (As Steve has pointed out, this has
changed in recent years, and there are now many French Protestant
schools).

I'm not sure if non-Catholic immigrants were ever formally banned from
attending Catholic schools, but it's easy to understand how they
would prefer Protestant schools.  Milner says:

"...accomodating the needs of the Jewish population corresponded to
the nature of the Protestant schools as they were evolving.  There
being no single Protestant ideology analogous to Roman Catholicism,
the Protestant view of religion in education in the schools tended
to be pluralistic and non-doctrinaire....the Jews in the end had no
difficulty in finding their place in the Protestant system.  The
same was true of certain other groups who arrived later, most notably
the Greek Orthodox who were also tacitly assumed to be Protestant for
educational purposes.

"The francophone Catholics did not object.  Inherited from the ultra-
montaine counter-revolution was a view that had won hegemony over
Catholic religious institutions, and become intimately linked to the
nationalist views espoused by Canon Lionel Groulx and other leading
intellectuals, then manipulated politically most effectively by
Maurice Duplessis in the 1950s. It was a conservative nationalism,
reflecting the experiences of a conquered and colonized people, the
"French-Canadian race."  While sometimes dreaming of a far-off
independent state, Groulx's immediate message was essentially negative.
The nation's survival lay in its traditions, and not in political or
economic power, which was not its to have.  As far as the schools were
concerned, it meant keeping them as free as possible of any and all
outside influences.  As late as the 1950s, this conservative nation-
alism constituted a kind of uncontested official doctrine."

Magnusson says, "From the outset Jews chose to send their children
to Protestant rather than to Catholic schools because the former's
language of instruction and cultural values more closely represented
their own.  Protestant schools taught in English, were only mildly
religious, and steered their students toward higher education."

So non-Catholics, whether Protestant or not, tended to send their
children to Protestant schools, which until recently meant English
schools.

Catholic immigrants were not barred from French Catholic schools.
Magnuson says, "Before the (Second World) War the Italian school
population had been equally divided between French and English
Catholic schools."  However, it seems that the authorities were
not unhappy to see immigrants prefer English schools.  Milner
says, "The francophone Catholics were quite content to let the
non-Catholics find their way into the Protestant system.  The logic
was the same as that which fostered the creation of an autonomous
English-Catholic sector to serve not only the Irish but, later,
a good many children of other Catholic non-francophone origins who
might otherwise have attended French schools.  Direct descendents of
nineteenth-century ultramontaine Catholicism, the elites of the early
twentieth century espoused a conservative nationalism.  Central to
it was the conviction that the French-Canadian nation's survival --
its essence -- lay in its language and religion and the institutions
that maintained them.  What mattered, thus, was the strength and
security of its families, schools, and parishes.  A vital mainstay
of the world it sought was the local French-Catholic school, to be
kept as free as possible of any and all outside influences."

So basically you're right when you say that traditionally French
Catholic schools did not want immigrant students.

However, the St. Leonard affair was not based on traditional Quebec
nationalism of the Lionel Groulx variety, based on "race" and
religion, but on a newer form of nationalism centered more
exclusively on language.  As described by Parisella, St. Leonard
was transformed from a sleepy rural parish to a booming Montreal
suburb by the construction of the Metropolitan Blvd (Autoroute 40).
The first group to move in were middle-class francophones, many of
whom espoused this newer form of nationalism, and who controlled
the local school board.  They were soon followed to St. Leonard by a
large group of Italians. The Italians sent their children to a bilingual
primary school, in which half the courses were taught in French and
half in English.  Most of the pupils went on to do their secondary
school in English.  This displeased the St. Leonard School Commission,
controlled by francophones, which decided to change this school from
bilingual to entirely French.  Here we see a new form of nationalism
at work, in which francophones want to assimilate immigrants into
their group, rather than excluding them in order to maintain a homo-
geneous society.

The Italians resisted this change, but lost at the school board level.
However, they won (temporarily) at the provincial level, since this
affair led to the adoption of Bill 63, providing for freedom of choice
in language of education.  The francophone backlash to this law led
to Bills 22 and 101.

Tom Box
CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA