H-Announce French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969 Announcement published by Ged Martin on Monday, June 3, 2019 Type: Online Digital Resources Location: Ireland {Republic} Subject Fields: Canadian History / Studies French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969 What were the obstacles to the use of French in a society dominated by Anglophones? To mark 50 years of Canada's Official Languages Act, British historian Ged Martin has e-published a 34,000-word overview, which asks: Who spoke French in English Canada? John A. Macdonald and Mackenzie King were both prime ministers who emphasised national unity and depended on votes from Quebec. Neither could speak French. Macdonald understood French, and once uttered half a bilingual sentence in the House of Commons, taunting Laurier after the 1891 election (and six weeks before his death) with the words: "J'y suis, j'y reste." Until the 1960s, Ottawa -- both bureaucracy and parliament -- largely functioned in English. When a senior civil servant from Quebec in External Affairs insisted on his right to receive documents in hs own language, King treated the demand as a sign of a nervous breakdown, while some cabinet colleagues pressed for disciplinary action. Yet there were bilingual Anglophones, such as 22 year-old John Meehan, who addressed the crowd in English and French from the scaffold in Quebec City at his execution for murder in 1864. The Laurentian separatist Jules-Paul Tardivel and the first Acadian cabinet minister, Peter John Veniot, were both born into Anglophone families but switched into the world of French. Taking the dominance of their mother tongue for granted, most English Canadian historians and biographers have failed to emphasise the vital role of bilingual Francophones in running the country. As examples, Ged Martin looks at the language skills of George-Étienne Cartier, Antoine-Aimé Dorion, Wilfrid Laurier and Louis St Laurent. By the 1960s, English Canadian academics and politicians accepted the need to understand French. Constitutional theorist Eugene Forsey said of Quebec intellectuals: "even when they talk nonsense, they talk it beautifully". As Lester Pearson, Canada's last monoglot prime minister, ruefully observed on announcing his retirement, "C'est la vie." https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/307-french-in-the-canadi... Ged Martin Contact Info: Ged Martin Shanacoole Youghal Co Cork Ireland P36 XP82 Contact Email: Citation: Ged Martin. French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969. H-Announce. 06-03-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/4179439/french-canadian-public-sphere-1763-1969 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Announce [email protected] URL: https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/307-french-in-the-canadian-public-sphere-1763-19 69 Citation: Ged Martin. French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969. H-Announce. 06-03-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/4179439/french-canadian-public-sphere-1763-1969 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2.