Fifty Years On TORONTO’S DIVERSIFIED FRENCH-SPEAKING COMMUNITY!
– Graham Fraser, Commissioner of Official Languages
The organizers of the Forum de la francophonie torontoise, held at Glendon College on March 22, 2013, had the brilliant idea of inviting Graham Fraser, Commissioner of Official Languages, to make the closing remarks at this event. Fraser used this opportunity to review la francophonie in Toronto and in Canada 50 years after the work done by the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.
He reminded the audience that la francophonie was nowhere to be seen in the Queen City 50 years ago; in fact, it was actually in hiding. “It was even difficult to say whether there were any French-speaking parishes and areas in Toronto; and 40 years ago francophones arriving in Toronto from Québec felt they were in exile,” he added. What strikes us about the Forum de la francophonie torontoise is the diversity of the francophone communities in Toronto, and “just as Toronto is a world city, I think that its francophonie is representative of the world’s francophonie. This is a success story, a key to the future and cause for pride.”
The Royal Commission: Background
Graham Fraser reminded his audience that the original idea for a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was put forward by André Laurendeau in 1962. The Commission was created the following year. He also made reference to Gilles Grégoire’s struggle for bilingual services in federal government departments and, for the benefit of his audience, recalled the insulting remarks about francophones made by Donald Gordon, President of Canadian National – remarks that brought down the wrath of Quebeckers and led to demonstrations in Montréal. In Fraser’s view, English-speaking Canadians held an unflattering and condescending opinion of French Canadians in those days. This was also the time when the FLQ was founded and, in March 1963, three military complexes were targeted for bomb attacks. April brought a second wave of attacks and a night guard was killed in an FLQ attack. A federal election took place in April, ushering in Pearson as Prime Minister. Maurice Lamontagne then tried to convince Laurendeau to co-chair this Commission. Although he was very hesitant, Laurendeau did agree in the end.
Laurendeau’s co-chair was Davidson Dunton, a man of grace and moderation who was then President of Carleton University. He played an important role in smoothing the tensions between the Commission and the government and in keeping the sometimes spiky personalities of the Commission working together. According to Fraser, it is fair to say that the key debates, and the principal tension on the Commission, were between Laurendeau’s approach and that of Frank Scott.
Laurendeau and Scott
The key question for the Commission was the existential one that Laurendeau and Dunton asked at the beginning of every public hearing: “Can English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians live together, and do they want to? Under what conditions are they prepared to accept this and what are these conditions?” The questions struck at the core of the existence of the country. As Commissioners, they were particularly sensitive to the needs of Québec, the only province in Canada with a francophone majority.
When Frank Scott was approached to become a Commissioner, he was the Dean of the McGill Faculty of Law – a position he had taken up 10 years after he should have been appointed. Scott had been excluded from being Dean because the Faculty found his political ideas to be unacceptable. He was a socialist, one of the authors of the Regina Manifesto, a constitutional lawyer and a fierce defender of civil rights. Scott had met and come to know Laurendeau in the 1930s, when both were trying to build bridges between Montréal’s francophone and anglophone intellectuals. Scott was named as the only representative of the English minority in Québec. That role was a key to his identity in many ways: he knew all the Québec members of the Commission and, with the exception of Dunton, none of the members from the rest of Canada, even though he had a national reputation.
Laurendeau and Dunton were co-chairs, but the real debate, intellectual and emotional, linguistic and national, was between Laurendeau and Scott. Both of these sophisticated men had political idealism, personal charisma and a poet’s sensibilities. As Guy Laforest puts it in his essay on the two men, both were “éminences grises,” or intellectual leaders of Québec and English-speaking Canada, respectively. Scott’s view was that, although French Canada could legitimately be considered a nation, Québec should be a bilingual society. His ideal was that the bilingual model should be extended to Canada as a whole, so that the limited rights defined in the British North America Act would be extended and the language rights that had been extinguished in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta would be restored.
It took Scott some time to accept Laurendeau’s view of the need for two unilingualisms. This view had been adopted and presented to the Commissioners by William MacKay, who was one of the leading researchers. Laurendeau eloquently expressed his view in the “blue pages” of the first volume of the Royal Commission report, stating that the survival of French in Canada and North America depended on a strong French-speaking society in Québec and, as he wrote in his journal, on two unilingual groups. Both men were struck by and incensed over the ignorance and prejudice they encountered towards the French language in Canada during the Commission’s visits to Western Canada. They were taken aback by the degree to which separatists (a word that Laurendeau used in his journal) dominated public discussion in Québec.
What emerged as the essential debate, and the source of critical tension within the Royal Commission, was the conceptual model that should be developed for Canada. Laurendeau thought that the central problem was Québec’s fragility as a French-speaking society, and that this should be the primary consideration. Scott felt that Québec was, legally, officially and practically, a bilingual province – and that bilingual status should be extended to the rest of Canada. Both agreed that the status quo that Pearson had described in his December 1962 speech, i.e., “an English-speaking Canada with a bilingual Québec,” was unacceptable. But their ultimate visions of what the future should be were quite different.
Was the Commission a failure?
Paradoxically, at the end, both men felt that they had lost when the first report was published. When the first volume came out, Laurendeau said bleakly to a colleague: “It does nothing for Québec.” Scott felt, on the contrary, that Laurendeau had been pushing for a constitutional change to give more powers to Québec. Scott would ultimately dissent from the Commission’s recommendation that the language of work in Québec be French. He argued that this was inconsistent with the earlier recommandation of territorial bilingualism.
Looking back on this today, it is easy to forget just how much controversy and criticism were generated by the Commission: first, for its Preliminary Report, which stated that Canada was passing through the greatest crisis in its history – a crisis that few English-speaking Canadians recognized or acknowledged; then, for the expense and length of time the Commission took; and finally, for the amount of time the Commissioners spent before arriving at a difficult consensus.
The observations were clear-sighted. I quote: “Anyone who speaks French still runs the risk of this kind of insult: ‘Speak white’; ‘Why don’t you speak a white man’s language?’; ‘If you want to speak French, go back to your province’; ‘Why don’t you speak English?’” This discourse of discrimination and insult has virtually disappeared in Canada, in large part because it was so clearly flushed out into the open by the Royal Commission. The description of Canada going through a crisis was refuted in 1965. In 1967, however, after the defeat of the Liberals in Québec and General de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre,” there was a general recognition that the commissioners had a point. Fraser then reminded the audience that the characterization of Québec as a “distinct society” originated in Laurendeau’s famous “blue pages.”
What about today?
And the recommendations? According to the Commissioner of Official Languages, some of the recommendations are now taken for granted: that English and French be formally declared the official languages of Canada, that there be official language legislation, and a commissioner of official languages. Others have proven less durable: the designation of bilingual districts, and that New Brunswick, Québec and Ontario become officially bilingual.
There are less obvious but even more important legacies that the Royal Commission has left us. An official languages policy as well as a multiculturalism policy flowed from its recommendations, as it laid the framework not only for linguistic duality but also for cultural diversity as Canadian values. This, in turn, led to the creation of French-language schools and school boards across Canada – and the right to a trial in the official language of choice of the accused.
This means that we now have French-language radio and television in Toronto; a provincial French-language educational television network; 24 elementary and secondary schools; health services in French; bilingual driver’s licences and health cards; the French Language Services Act; an Office of Francophone Affairs; a Minister, a French-Language Services Commissioner; and, as has been the case for a number of years now, a bilingual Premier. For years, Québec sovereigntists were saying they wanted Québec to be as French as Ontario is English. It’s no surprise that they have now ceased this mantra.
For Canada, the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission resulted in a compromise of the goals, beliefs and convictions of Laurendeau and Scott. Both accepted what Taylor also calls the politics of difference. On the one hand, French is clearly recognized as the dominant language of Québec; and, at the same time, the federal government recognizes language rights as human rights guaranteed by the Charter and observed throughout the country.
Fraser ended with this statement: “André Laurendeau and Frank Scott did not fail – they succeeded. Theirs is a legacy that we should all be very proud of.”
By Michel Héroux
