page_title: Franco-Albertans
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Franco-Albertans / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord head office. Français&#160;: Siège social du Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord.
context_page_description: Franco-Albertans are francophone residents of the Canadian province of Alberta. Franco-Albertans may also refer to residents of Alberta with French Canadian ancestry, although publications from the government of Alberta use the term Franco-Albertan to refer to its francophone residents. In the 2016 Canadian Census, there were 86,705 Albertans that stated their mother tongue was French. In the same census, there were 411,315 Albertans that claim partial or full French ancestry.
  Francophones were the first Europeans to visit the province, with French Canadian voyageurs employed in the fur trade exploring the region in the late 18th century. French Canadians settled into a number of communities in the Northwest Territories during the 19th century, including communities in present day Alberta. In 1928, the Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta was formed to promote francophone rights, and to lobby the interests of Franco-Albertans to the province.
context_section_description: The English-only policies of the 1890s were continued after the region was severed from the territory to form the province of Alberta; with no mention of linguistic rights in the province's establishing statute. Attempts to advance French language education rights were made by the French Canadian clergy, as they involved themselves in public separate school boards. In 1925, francophones in the provinces formed the Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta as a lobby to demand linguistic rights from the provincial government.
  The mid 20th century saw the early development of several Franco-Albertan institutions, such as agricultural cooperatives, credit unions, and new Roman Catholic parishes. The Edmonton-based CHFA-FM, predecessor of Radio-Canada's French-language regional radio station, made its first broadcast in November 1949.
  The enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 prompted Franco-Albertans to approach the public Catholic and secular school boards of Edmonton to establish a fully francophone school, although both school boards rejected the proposal. The refusal to provide public funding for a francophone school led the Association de l’École Georges et Julia Bugnet to bring forward a case that the provincial School Act conflicted with Section 23 of the charter. The case was eventually accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada, who made a ruling in March 1990, stating that language minority groups, such as Franco-Albertans, were guaranteed a "degree of management and control," of their education system. Another decision made by the Supreme Court in 1993 on Franco-Manitoban schools also further French language rights in other anglophone provinces in Canada, when the court asserted the rights of linguistic minorities to control their own education. The following decision prompted the province to create five new regional francophone school boards in 1994.
  In 1997, the province signed the first Canada-Alberta Agreement on French Language Services, which is a joint federal-provincial fund aimed at funding French language services in the province. In 1999, the government of Alberta created the position of Francophone Secretariat to act as a liaison between the Franco-Albertan community and the government, and joined the Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie.
  The push for linguistic rights by minority French Canadian populations in the 1980s and 1990s saw a reaction from anglophones in the province, prompting the provincial government to curtail the French language in other areas. Following the Supreme Court's ruling on R. v Mercure, a case involving a Fransaskois in Saskatchewan, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta passed the Languages Act in 1988, in which English was declared the province's official language, and replaced many of the French language rights permitted under the North-West Territories Act; although the Act still permitted the use of French in its legislature, and for judicial cases concerning provincial offences as directed by the court. French language access to the latter was later expanded in 1995, when a francophone service system was created for criminal proceedings.
caption: Offices for the Greater North Central Francophone Education Region school board. Francophone school boards were established in Alberta in 1994.
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