Mgr Fallon et la crise du règlement XVII : le bilinguisme en question dans les écoles catholiques séparées

Abstract

The British North America Act had settled the language question in Canada, or so English Canadians thought at the turn of the century. The rapid changes undergone by Canadian society in the 1890s and 1900s : massive immigration, industrialisation and urbanisation, put an end to a fragile societal and constitutional compromise. The border separating an English Canada from a French Canada, two distinct entities, was crossed by an increasing number of French Canadians. For some Ontarians, the loyalist province was faced with a French invasion that would endanger the principles on which the English-speaking community was founded. Once again the language question came to the forefront. French Canadians had to be linguistically assimilated, and the sooner the better. Regulation XVII was to be the most efficient weapon in this fight for linguistic domination. It struck at the heart of French Canadian identity and triggered a ten-year long battle for the recognition of the rights of French Canadians to preserve their language outside Quebec. Quite unexpectedly, no sympathy was expressed by English-speaking Catholics. On the contrary they sided with the English-speaking majority. The Canadian Catholic Church was divided on the language issue and the debates remained fierce in the Catholic community before a new compromise could be reached.