The French Language in Québec : 400 Years of History and Life
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The French Language in Québec: 400 Years of History and Life Part Three - French: A Compromised Status Chapter 7 – Defending the Language 26. Nationalist Discourse (1850-1920) HÉLÈNE PELLETIER-BAILLARGEON We will not give up the fight, we will pursue it to the end, up to its final conclusion because, in the end, we want to know if Confederation was a pact of honour for all or an infamous trap for us. Senator Philippe Landry (Le Droit , December 2, 1915, protesting against Ontario’s Regulation 17) A Growing Awareness (1850-1899) When Louis-Joseph Papineau spoke out in the debates preceding Confederation, it was less to defend French-language rights in the future constitution than to denounce a political regime which would condemn his fellows to the perpetual status of a minority in a country that they had been the first to build. The debate on the language bears the mark of these shortcomings and confusions. As for Papineau’s former followers, Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine and George-Étienne Cartier, the Crown was to associate them with the honours linked to the status of leaders of French Canada in order to ensure their collaboration in carrying out the great Confederation project. Once again, there was hardly any discussion on the guarantees to be granted to the French language and culture in the future constitution. Besides, the vagueness of these guarantees would not become apparent until afterwards, particularly as a result of the struggles over schooling. 1 The French Language in Québec: 400 Years of History and Life Part Three - French: A Compromised Status Chapter 7 – Defending the Language Triggered by Louis Riel’s hanging in Manitoba in 1885, the first nationalist discourse was expressed under the leadership of Honoré Mercier who until 1892 succeeded in uniting the dynamic forces within the party and taking power in Québec City. Honoré Mercier, fearing Ottawa’s interference in provincial areas of competence and the weakening of French Canadians in Confederation, and determined firmly to oppose their assimilation, reaffirmed his compatriots’ will to resist: This province of Québec is Catholic and French, he declared, and it will remain Catholic and French […]. We will never relinquish our rights which are guaranteed by treaties, the law and the Constitution. (Saint-Jean-Baptiste speech in 1889.) 17 Henri Bourassa, Nationalist Leader (1899-1911) 18 At the time of the second Boer War, Henri Bourassa, a Liberal MP and renowned orator, broke away from Laurier and rapidly surrounded himself with followers: it was the beginning of the nationalist movement whose aim was to fight imperialism. In 1903, journalist Olivar Asselin founded the Ligue nationaliste to support the actions of its leader and, in 1904, the Le Nationaliste newspaper to spread his autonomist views. The Schools Question From 1905 onwards, though, the imperial issue would be superseded by a succession of school crises in English-speaking provinces. The chain reaction had begun as early as 1871. In provinces with an Anglophone majority, the right of the French-Canadian minority to receive instruction in 2 The French Language in Québec: 400 Years of History and Life Part Three - French: A Compromised Status Chapter 7 – Defending the Language French in public schools was challenged and even abolished by legislation. The election of Wilfrid Laurier in 1896 – the first French Canadian to become Prime Minister of Canada – did not moderate the trend. French Canadians began to become aware of the real position in which Confederation had placed them. And in the hope they might finally obtain justice, they naturally turned to Bourassa. The highest point was reached in 1912 when Regulation 17 decreed the progressive elimination of French classes in separate schools (Francophone) in Ontario. This time, however, the financing of English-language Catholic schools was maintained. French Canadians finally understood that it was not as “Catholics” that they had been subjected to a whole series of restrictions on their educational rights since 1871 but indeed as “Francophones.” Article 93 of the Constitution was respected in Québec for the Anglo-Protestant minority, while it was flouted in the English provinces for Franco-Catholics. Following Regulation 17, then, the discourse of resistance changed. Henri Bourassa, a fervent Catholic for whom the defence of French was one and the same as defending the Catholic faith of the minorities affected, completed the unification of the discourse of resistance by rallying around him Liberal and ultramontane bishops. In the meantime, in 1910, wanting to give himself a newspaper that was more in keeping with his values and convictions, Bourassa, with the support of the Conservatives, had founded Le Devoir. In this way, he distanced himself from Le Nationaliste of Asselin and his friends, for 3 The French Language in Québec: 400 Years of History and Life Part Three - French: A Compromised Status Chapter 7 – Defending the Language whom the French language deserved to be defended for itself, regardless of the religion of those who spoke it, and who advocated that schools be divided along lines of language. The Notre-Dame Speech In the eyes of the authorities in Rome, Canada had become a British colony and its language of usage was destined to be English. Moreover, since French Canadians constituted a minority of Catholics in North America, it was in the interests of their faith that they adopt the language of the majority so as to serve as more effective propagandists for their religion. This was the message that Mgr Francis Bourne, Papal representative at the 1910 Eucharistic Convention, brought to French-Canadian nationalists gathered at the Church of Notre-Dame in Montréal. On the spot, Bourassa improvised a fiery riposte which crystallized national sentiment and, following it, he was carried in triumph by 10,000 people. His speech emphasized the right of all Catholics, irrespective of their nationality, to express their faith in their own language. However, in doing so, Bourassa based his argument less on the political right of French Canadians to speak their language in Confederation than on that of French-speaking Catholics to express their faith in their language within their own institutions. The nuance was a major one and history would prove the limits of an argument that was subject to the duty of allegiance to a Pope who was suspicious of all nationalisms. In Le Devoir in 1924, following a visit to Rome, Bourassa would scathingly disavow Franco-Americans’ resistance to Anglophone nominations of English speakers in Franco-Canadian parishes in their dioceses imposed by Irish bishops who were in favour of assimilation. 4 The French Language in Québec: 400 Years of History and Life Part Three - French: A Compromised Status Chapter 7 – Defending the Language Nevertheless, for half a century, the “Notre-Dame speech,” long examined and memorised, would represent a major reference on language for French-Canadian nationalism. And Le Devoir , found in all the bishoprics, presbyteries and educational institutions of French Canada, would become the usual organ for the resistance of minorities in their unremitting struggles for the survival of their language. The Illusion of a “Compact of Honour” (1914-1920) The First World War was all that was needed to fully reveal the true ethnic and cultural nature of the balance of power between English Canada and French Canada since the advent of Confederation. English Canadians, loyal to the imperial Crown, were to demand that, as British subjects, French Canadians enlist in the armed forces. French Canadians retorted that the restoration of their language rights in education had to come before their voluntary enlistment. Henri Bourassa and Le Devoir , who opposed conscription, would be accused of complicity with the enemy. Ontario French-language schools waited in vain for the restoration of their rights. The draft was voted in 1917. The leaders of French-Canadian resistance came to the bitter conclusion that Confederation was a pact based on their powerful illusion, that of a “compact of honour” supposedly reached in 1867 between the “two founding nations” of Canada. Experience had just demonstrated that this was a deception and that, in the eyes of the English-Canadian signatories, French-language rights, the least important issue, had been left instead to the discretion of the provinces, of which only one, Québec, had the majority needed to defend them effectively. 5 .