From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/French/Richard Jones
Most French immigrants have claimed traditional affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church and in Quebec as well as in some other provinces they found Catholic schools at their disposal. In early French colonies in the west, teaching was normally in French, at least until the arrival of large numbers of non-French-speaking immigrants and provincial language legislation that imposed instruction solely in English. Since the 1960s, education in French has again become widely available in provinces with English-language majorities but it is not known to what extent French immigrants and their descendants have availed themselves of this possibility.
French quarrels over the presence of religion in education appear to have been at least briefly transplanted to the Canadian west. At Notre Dame de Lourdes, in Manitoba, for example, the partisans of lay schools frequently confronted the defenders of Catholic education.
In Quebec, until Bill 101 provided that the children of all immigrants should attend French-language schools, many French immigrants, particularly in Montreal, enrolled their children in English-language schools. A study done in the late 1960s showed that half the French-born respondents with children of high school age were sending them to school in English. Protestant immigrants indeed had little choice as the Protestant sector had no French-language schools until the late 1960s.
The French did found three still functioning schools in Quebec, thanks to financial assistance from France. The establishment of the Collège Stanislas, which opened its doors to 105 students in Montreal in 1938, came about only after arduous negotiations with the Université de Montréal. Staffed mainly by teachers from France, it offered the course of study dispensed by French lycées. It was intended that the school would attract especially the sons of French immigrants living in Montreal on a temporary or permanent basis, but French Canadian students soon became the majority. From 1939, the daughters of French immigrants had access to a similar establishment: the Collège Marie-de-France, whose teachers were also generally from France. The Collège Français was a later private lay foundation.
