Identities in Conflict, 1967–

The Estates General, which held its first session in Montreal from 23 to 26 November 1967, was organized under the aegis of the journal Action nationale and the Quebec federation of Saint-Jean-Baptiste societies. The roughly 1,000 delegates, most of whom were from Quebec, were enjoined to “hold a calm dialogue and define the constitutional future of the Nation” through a determination of “the powers needed by Quebec and the rights that are essential to French Canadians outside Quebec.” In the discussions, the Quebec delegates found common ground in a territorial definition of the nation, and their constitutional proposals were linked to this idea, which could take a number of forms: independence, sovereignty-association, associated states, special status, or a very decentralized version of federalism. Delegates from the other provinces, however, rejected this concept, in which they did not recognize themselves. They did not accept Quebec’s new vocation as the national state of French Canadians, although some delegates, mostly younger ones, took a variety of nuanced positions. As the historian Martin Pâquet has written, “a deep and durable break developed between these people united by language.”

In harmony with other Canadian francophones, Québécois aspired to “equality of cultures and societies.” To achieve this goal, however, they put their trust in a strong state more firmly than ever before. Some believed that this strong state had to be independent. Political groups advocating Quebec sovereignty had been active for several years. A month before the Estates General met, René Lévesque, who as a Liberal minister had been the leading figure in the nationalization of electricity, founded the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association (MSA), which became the Parti Québécois (PQ) a year later. The PQ achieved popularity among teachers, students, professionals, leaders of social movements, and upper-level civil servants. Its ideology was similar to that of the architects of the Quiet Revolution. Lévesque characterized Quebec-Canada relations in the following terms: “If we can’t sleep together, it’s better to have separate bedrooms.”

Observers continued to worry about the stagnation of Quebec’s francophone population: the lowest birth rate in Canada, a population that barely replaced itself, and negative net migration. In addition, the ravages of language assimilation were being felt, especially among immigrants whose mother tongue was neither French nor English. Almost all of these immigrants were attracted towards the anglophone minority. Assimilation was even taking a bite out of the francophone population to the extent that demographers warned that francophones would be a minority in Montreal before the end of the century. When the Quebec legislature passed Bill 63 in 1969, providing legislative support for free choice in language of education, frightening hypotheses of this sort became more credible. There were large demonstrations against the legislation in both Montreal and Quebec City, with 30,000 protesters at each one.

Since the early 1960s, a tiny group called the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) had struggled for independence through clandestine, revolutionary means. In October 1970 the FLQ kidnapped a British trade commissioner and Quebec’s minister of labour and immigration, Pierre Laporte. In circumstances that remain mysterious, Laporte was murdered. Taking advantage of Laporte’s death, the Liberal federal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau used the police and the army to repress Quebec nationalism. The October Crisis would remain an important event in the Quebec nationalist memory.

In a Quebec election held seven months before the kidnappings, the Union Nationale government had been defeated and the Liberals had returned to power under Robert Bourassa. From 1973 on the Bourassa Liberals, like other western governments, were confronted with a difficult economic situation in which both inflation and unemployment were high. On the language front, they introduced Bill 22 in 1974, making French the official language of Quebec. Children had to be educated in French unless they knew enough English to go to English schools. There was much confusion in the application of the law and many people were dissatisfied. Nationalist feeling was on the rise. In the election of 15 November 1976 the PQ, which had promised to be a good government first and foremost and to consult the people about Quebec’s constitutional future, came to power.

The economic situation improved. The decline of the Canadian dollar relative to major international currencies helped boost exports and bring in more foreign tourists. The number of jobs increased as well, as did farmers’ gross income. In the political sphere, the PQ administration sought to govern with integrity and efficiency. Legislation adopted under the PQ included a compulsory public automobile insurance system, an act dealing with the protection of agricultural lands, and a clean water program. The PQ government also reformed Quebec’s electoral practices, especially the financing of political parties. In addition, it brought in another new language law, the Charter of the French Language or Bill 101. Under this legislation French is the official language of Quebec and immigrants are required to send their children to French schools. French is supposed to be prevalent not only in schools but also in business, in government, in the professions, and even on commercial signs. The Charter of the French Language is perhaps the clearest indication that Quebec is now in the hands of its francophone majority.

In a referendum on 20 May 1980, the government asked voters to give it a mandate to undertake negotiations with Ottawa leading to sovereignty-association. Close to 60 percent said No. Quebec francophones’ attachment to Canada was still strong. They loved René Lévesque, but they also admired his nemesis, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. As the political scientist Christian Dufour wrote, “there is a more or less conscious Canadian component to the Québécois identity.”

The vast social changes that have affected the Quebec francophone community in the last thirty years are so well known that noting them has become an almost trivial exercise. In the area of demographic patterns, the birth rate has continued to decline, the population has been aging, and the traditional family structure has been weakened. Along with a low rate of infant mortality and a stable adult death rate, the low birth rate has contributed to the aging of the population. In 1990 life expectancy was 73.2 years for men and 80.5 years for women. The family structure has undergone major changes. Marriage is no longer the norm for many Quebec francophones, especially educated ones. More and more people live outside the traditional nuclear family – by themselves or in a single-parent household. The divorce rate has continued to rise. In 1982 there were more marriages that ended through death or divorce than there were new marriages.

There have also been remarkable developments in the area of relations between the sexes in the last quarter-century. The status of women in the workplace has improved in all sectors, and women’s economic autonomy has increased as a result. As their public role has broadened, women have gained at least some degree of power in trade unions, the professions, and politics. But despite these elements of progress, many women are still limited to traditional occupations and wage discrimination persists. In 1971 a woman working full-time earned half as much as a man on average. While the gap has narrowed, it has by no means disappeared: the ratio is now two-thirds. And if the large number of women working part-time is taken into account, the wage gap is even wider.

Since 1967 Quebec’s interest in the islands of the francophone archipelago has waned. It sees them only as examples of the fate that awaits Quebec itself: language assimilation. Premier Lévesque undertook highly publicized negotiations with the premiers of the other provinces, promising to soften the terms of Quebec’s language legislation if the other premiers agreed to provide more support for the teaching of French in their respective provinces. It was a seductive idea at the time. But the Fédération des Francophones Hors-Québec (FFHQ), founded in 1975, took the position that the French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec whom it claimed to represent did not want to be hostages in bargaining between sovereignists and federalists.

Looking for allies, the Quebec government set up Entente-Québec, a program of cooperation with the minorities of the diaspora. It opened Quebec government offices in various parts of North America, and their mandate included a cultural component. In 1978 it organized the first Fête du Retour aux Sources in Quebec City to commemorate Champlain’s arrival there in 1608. Placing advertisements in newspapers serving all of the francophone islands, from Texas to New England and across Canada, it invited people of French origin to attend this gathering at the source of French life in North America. The Fête du Retour aux Sources became an annual event, with emphasis on youth, seniors, or sectors of activity such as the press.

In October 1981 the success of these initiatives led the government to establish a permanent agency, the Secrétariat Permanent des Peuples Francophones (SPPF), financed by the executive council and close to the premier’s office. It was mandated to coordinate projects aiming to promote francophone ethnic identity in North America, and the governing body for gatherings of French-speaking North Americans, the Corporation des Rencontres Francophones, was placed under its umbrella. The Lévesque government’s policy towards Canadian francophones, unveiled in 1985, took it for granted that Québécois and francophones outside Quebec had convergent interests. The Parc de l’Amérique Française was opened in Quebec City, also in 1985.

Thus, francophones outside Quebec benefited from the fallout from Quebec nationalism, which rekindled their pride and awakened their fighting spirit, even though they often resisted it. Sometimes spurred on by new arrivals from Quebec, young people were caught up in the currents that swept the western world: generational conflict and claims for redress by disadvantaged groups. They challenged both the methods and the leaders of the traditional struggle for cultural survival. The old activists had been based in the Church and the professions; the new ones were teachers, civil servants, journalists, and community organizers, and they institutionalized the new identities that had been developing for half a century. A number of organizations replaced the term “French Canadian” with expressions such as “Franco-Ontarian,” “Fransaskois,” and the like, indicating that their cultural frontiers were limited to the borders of the province in which they lived.

New associations were formed, such as the FFHQ in Canada and the Assemblée des Franco-Américains (AFA) in the United States. Although the idea of a national federation of French Canadians could be traced back to the Estates General, the FFHQ was the product of a federal initiative. It published several daring reports, including Les héritiers de Lord Durham (“The Heirs of Lord Durham,” 1977), Deux poids, deux mesures (“A Double Standard,” 1978), and Pour ne plus être sans pays (“To Be Without a Country No Longer,” 1979). In 1971 students at the University of Maine at Orono established the Franco-American Resource Opportunity Group (FAROG), aiming to revive the ethnic consciousness of Franco-Americans. The organization began publishing a monthly newspaper, Le FAROG-Forum (Orono, Maine, 1971– ), which now comes out a few times a year.

The Association Canadienne des Éducateurs de Langue Française, meanwhile, expanded its role and became an organization that promoted French-Canadian identity. It took an interest in all dimensions of francophone Canadian life through community activities that had an educational dimension. In 1976 the ACELF had 230 constituent groups in all parts of Canada and it took a stand on every contentious issue. Thus, in the summer of 1973 it sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Trudeau asking for assistance for provincial associations devoted to the French fact. With the establishment of the FFHQ, however, the ACELF increasingly limited itself to the cultural and educational spheres.

In Ontario, the Association Canadienne-Française d’Éducation de l’Ontario broadened the scope of its responsibilities and changed its name in 1968 to become the Association Canadienne-Française d’Ontario (ACFO). Instead of being limited to protecting the educational rights of French Canadians, the organization now sought to protect Franco-Ontarians’ rights and promote their interests in all areas of their social life: communications, culture, the economy, education, identity, the legal system, politics, religion, health, social and community services, sports and recreation, work. The ACFO thus became an umbrella organization. Each of the ACFO’s regional councils had its own community organizer whose job was to make communities aware of their needs and resources and to expedite the development of those resources. At the same time, the ACFO maintained its role as a pressure group trying to influence governments and adapted its traditional emphasis on cultural survival to the new circumstances. In 1985 the ACFO diversified its sources of income by establishing a financial institution, the Fondation Franco-Ontarienne, to support educational, cultural, and artistic projects.

In this context, a new round of struggles over schools broke out. From 1968 on, under bills 140 and 141, Franco-Ontarians in some regions could have access to public secondary education in French. Parents’ groups were set up in an effort to obtain French schools in regions not affected by the legislation, and they were successful in Sturgeon Falls in 1972, Cornwall in 1974, Elliott Lake in 1978, and Windsor and Penetanguishene in 1980. However, this success came at the price of tension created in these areas, both between francophones and anglophones and within francophone communities themselves.

In 1982 the Canadian constitution was repatriated and article 23, which guarantees parents’ right to send their children to French primary and secondary schools in all provinces wherever numbers warrant, was entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since then, legal challenges have largely focused on the establishment of homogeneous French-language public school councils that could increase francophones’ administrative control over education. In addition, Franco-Ontarians have had the right to use French in civil procedures since 1985.

Under Bill 8, passed in 1986 after a decade of evasion, the Ontario government offers services in French in regions where there are at least 5,000 francophones or where at least 10 percent of the population is francophone. For the ACFO and Franco-Ontarian activists, this legislation is only a step towards official bilingualism in Ontario.

In Manitoba, teaching of French at all levels began in 1963. Under Bill 59, which was adopted by the Manitoba government four years later, 50 percent of the material taught could be in French. A number of schools immediately applied the provisions of the new act. Others, however, opted for a gradual increase in the proportion of French in the classroom. In 1970 the province passed legislation on the equality of English and French in education, and in 1975 the government established the Bureau de l’Éducation Française. Four years later the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the official status of French in Manitoba.

Parallel developments occurred in Saskatchewan and Alberta. In 1988 the Supreme Court ruled that article 110 of the Northwest Territories Act was still in effect: citizens had the right to use French in the courts and the two provinces had to issue legislation in both official languages. However, they had the right to repeal article 110, and they quickly did so. Also in 1988, Saskatchewan francophones gained the right to obtain an education in French and to manage their schools where numbers warranted. Alberta had recognized the equality of French and English as far as grade 9 in 1964 and four years later extended it to grade 12. Forty percent of children in Alberta whose mother tongue was French attended bilingual or immersion schools in 1979. In the wake of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Mahé ruling of 1985 forced the Alberta government to establish exclusively French schools, despite deep divisions within the francophone community and what can charitably be described as the great timidity of the Association Canadienne-Française de l’Alberta. Franco-Albertans have also had access to French-language television since 1970 and there are visible signs of cultural vitality.

In British Columbia, the Fédération CanadienneFrançaise de la Colombie-Britannique put intense pressure on the government to allow some schools to teach in French for four or five hours a day, and this demand was granted in 1968. In practice, however, French is used for only an hour or two a day as a result of children’s inability to function in French – a good indication of the ravages of assimilation in British Columbia.

The cultural revival even extended to Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and the lead-mining hinterland of Missouri. In Missouri, some twenty people began attending weekly French classes in 1979, and French folklore came back into fashion as it did elsewhere in French America. A universal element of the new ethnic awareness and emerging identities is a rediscovery of roots, and new value is attached to the diverse forms of people’s common heritage. Throughout what was once the French-Canadian archipelago, new historical and genealogical societies have been formed. In Quebec efforts have been made to protect the national heritage: monuments, paintings, sculptures, objects, legends, songs, archives. As they reconstitute their historical memory, Québécois are discovering that they are infatuated with French America. Songs such as Sylvain Lelièvre’s “Kérouac” and Garolou’s “Aux Illinois” testify to this new interest, as do books, special issues of magazines, radio and television programs, films, records, and other cultural products.

In Ontario, a cultural and artistic life with a specifically Franco-Ontarian base is emerging. Writers, artists, playwrights, singer-songwriters, and filmmakers capture the Franco-Ontarian experience in their works and express it in forms that can be appreciated by a wider public. “Artists see themselves as the primary catalysts of the community,” the literary historian René Dionne has written, “and the main interpreters of the Franco-Ontarian identity that is seeking to assert itself.” In northern Ontario, where the Franco-Ontarian cultural revival has been most pronounced, an artistic cooperative, CANO, was formed in the early 1970s. This movement strongly encourages Franco-Ontarian artistic creation, at the expense of imports from France and Quebec. The considerable success of the CANO musical group owes much to the initial inspiration of this movement, as does the Prise de Parole publishing house, established in Sudbury in 1972. La nuit sur l’étang (“The Night on the Pond”) and the Festival Franco-Ontarien are yearly manifestations of this cultural renewal. In addition, the extension of the CBC’s French radio network in 1979 and the establishment of TVOntario’s Chaîne Française in 1987 have provided new links among Franco-Ontarian communities.

Some activists promoting cultural survival recognize the advantages that Quebec nationalism brings to them and realize that they can benefit from Quebec’s increased prestige on the international scene. Most of them, however, fear the negative consequences of Que-bec’s eventually becoming independent. These activists face a difficult struggle with their own provincial governments and the anglophone majorities that these governments represent, and they do not feel any connection with the desire for sovereignty that many Québécois have. As a result, they become even more strongly tied to the federal government, which is only too happy to use them in its own conflict with Quebec nationalists.

In 1969 Ottawa passed the Official Languages Act, which institutionalized bilingualism. In emphasizing the need to expand the place of French in the civil service and the armed forces, Prime Minister Trudeau succeeded in substantially increasing the number of positions for francophones. Outside Quebec, the legislation resulted in greater visibility for francophones and federal subsidies for official language minorities. According to sociologists Danielle Juteau and Lise Séguin-Kempton, the concept of Francophonie hors-Québec, an overall community of francophones outside Quebec, came directly out of the Official Languages Act, which contributed towards extending the rights of francophone minorities and improving the conditions of their lives, and towards encouraging francophones’ mobility in the federal civil service.

A growing number of Québécois were sovereignists, while most francophones outside Quebec were federalists. The conflict between these two positions made headlines during the Superfrancofête, an international francophone gathering in Quebec City in the summer of 1974. Young Franco-Ontarians were astonished when they were booed for waving the Canadian flag in the streets of the city. Quebec nationalists tried to explain that people were expressing disapproval of the Canadian emblem, and not of francophones outside Quebec. However, many francophones in other provinces felt further distanced from Quebec by this gesture. Adrien Pouliot, a longtime defender of francophone rights and former president of the Conseil de la Vie Française en Amérique, wrote a long letter to Le Devoir in which he publicly apologized to all his “French-Canadian brothers in other provinces for the contempt they were subjected to and the insults they endured during their visit to Quebec City.”

As the 1980s began and the economy sank into recession, neoliberalism reared its ugly head. Even the PQ government, a direct descendant of the Quiet Revolution, shifted its emphasis to policies favouring private enterprise and undertook budget cuts, provoking considerable resentment within the PQ’s constituency. With the defeat in the 1980 referendum and the recession, along with the unilateral repatriation of the constitution by the federal government in 1982, the idea of sovereignty was shelved. A split tore the PQ apart in 1984, and in the summer of 1985 a worn-out René Lévesque announced his retirement from politics. The election of 2 December 1985 was won by Robert Bourassa and his Liberals. The new government’s budget cuts were even deeper, and one of the victims was the Secrétariat Permanent des Peuples Francophones, on 31 March 1992. Not only was the agency closed, but all the newspapers and magazines that had been collected there for more than ten years were destroyed as well.

The conflict between the identity of francophones in Quebec and that of francophones in the rest of Canada came to the fore after the Parti Québécois came to office again in September 1994 under the leadership of the veteran sovereignist Jacques Parizeau. The new government announced its intention to hold another referendum on Quebec’s constitutional future in October 1995. No one was surprised when the francophone leadership outside Quebec, worried about the fate of minority communities in Canada if Quebec left, aligned itself with the No side, with federal encouragement and financial support. Even though Quebec nationalists extended a hand to francophones of other provinces, their position was not regarded as credible. In Ontario, a poll taken just before the referendum showed that 79 percent of francophones were against sovereignty, and results in other provinces would undoubtedly be the same. Francophones outside Quebec greeted the federalist victory in the referendum with relief. A majority of Quebec francophones, however, voted Yes.

Anne Goulet, a twenty-four-year-old Franco-Ontarian with relatives in Quebec, captured the sense of diverging identities when she told a Canadian Press reporter, “My cousins [in Quebec] are separatists. They tell me I should move to Quebec. But they don’t understand that I am as proud of being a Franco-Ontarian as they are of being Québécois.” Quebec francophones, on the other hand, had a hard time understanding how someone could demand language rights and at the same time go back and forth between French and English in the same sentence – or, even worse from their point of view, make common cause with the anglophone minority in Montreal in campaigns for bilingual signs.

At the end of the twentieth century, the survival of the French language in Canada is still in danger, even in Quebec where the birth rate continues to decline steadily and where infatuation with American culture and the English language seems to have reached new heights. Outside Quebec, only French Ontario and Acadian New Brunswick are in a relatively good position. Even in Ontario, despite the phenomenal institutional development and cultural renewal that have taken place, the population of French-Canadian origin declined by 27.5 percent between 1971 and 1986. Among people of French ethnic descent in Ontario, half no longer speak French, and only a narrow bilingual band along the Quebec border is holding out as best it can.

Francophones in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories are in a much more serious situation. West of Ontario most francophone parents, not wanting to isolate their children or “live a marginal life,” choose English schools or French immersion rather than francophone schools. Walking the streets of an old francophone enclave such as Saint-Boniface or Maillardville is enough to provide a good picture of the ravages of language assimilation. What the anthropologist Pierre Anctil has written about the once largely French city of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, applies equally to a number of old French-Canadian communities in western Canada and even in Ontario: “All of people’s French culture has been reduced to the intimacy of family gatherings and religious and social activities where enough old people are present to support the awareness of being francophone.”

In general, the struggle for cultural survival continues to be waged by what the journalist Lise Bissonnette has called a francophonie d’élite, an elite group of francophones who are the most active people in politics and ethnic affairs. The number of active individuals in the provincial francophone associations is not very large. Most francophones feel far removed from the struggles for cultural survival, and their children stop speaking French once they get good jobs or marry non-francophones.

Finding new sources of replenishment is the great challenge for the francophone minorities. As in Quebec, the only lifeline for language survival seems to be the integration of immigrants, but until now mutual lack of understanding between new arrivals and established francophones has prevented the two communities from converging towards a common culture. Even in the old francophone communities of Ontario and western Canada, the integration of new arrivals from Quebec and Acadia is not always smooth.

However, immigration, acceptance of difference, and the creation of a new cultural mix are what francophone spaces in Canada appear to need in order to survive and develop. Evidence of this connection can be seen in the francophone community of Toronto, which, despite being surrounded by a non-French environment, has demonstrated considerable dynamism as it has become more diverse. And has it not been a mistake to link cultural identity too closely with survival of the language? In the United States, where the socio-political context is much less favourable than in Canada, there is no proof that the various francophone minorities have stopped existing as distinct groups even after they have assimilated in terms of language.

Since the publication of The Heirs of Lord Durham in 1978 iand especially since Dessein 2000 (“Plan 2000”) came out in 1992, the francophone intelligentsia and leadership outside Quebec appear to have embarked on a course aimed at having their communities take control of their own destiny. The concept of space (political, economic, cultural, institutional, electronic) as a tool of development, as put forward in Dessein 2000, is especially promising. New technologies and globalization are understandably seen as synonymous with uncertainty. They also contain immense possibilities, however. New technologies are relatively inexpensive and can allow the dissemination of culture on a country-wide scale. They can also mobilize individuals and develop new institutional forms, such as distance education and community radio. “New technologies,” wrote the authors of Dessein 2000, “make it possible to move beyond the disappearance of our francophonie and encourage the coming together of individuals and communities.”

It goes without saying that francophone Canada is currently undergoing profound change, and this change is a source of worry for community leaders. However, changes in identity have always been at the centre of the francophone experience in North America.