Suchergebnisse

During a three-year period beginning in 1889, Canada struggled through a bitter identity crisis as militant English-Canadian nationalists rallied support for their vision of a homogeneous English-speaking country. In the eye of this storm was a NorthWest Legislative Assembly determined to abolish official bilingualism and assimilate its French-speaking minority. This article examines the origins of the North-West's ''dual language question'' and critically evaluates justifications given for the suppression of the French language. In their debates, the North-West legislators grappled with enduring issues of national unity, economic efficiency, majoritarian democracy and political legitimacy.

AbstractIn 1877, the North-West constitution was amended to provide for the publication of all statutes, or ordinances, in both English and French. In 1905, this provision was carried over into the newly-created provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan; it was not repealed until 1988, shortly after the Supreme Court's ruling in the Mercure case. At the present time, however, there remains only scant evidence that this constitutional guarantee was ever respected: very few French language ordinances are extant. Were the great majority of the ordinances never printed in French? Or, were they printed in French but then destroyed?This article examines the Canadian North-West's experience with legislative bilingualism from 1870 until 1895, and the circumstances surrounding its rise and subsequent demise. During the early years of territorial government, when responsibility for the publication of the ordinances was vested in a lieutenant-governor appointed by the Canadian government, perfunctory attention was paid to the language guarantees: the French language ordinances were printed, but with a considerable delay, and then they often went undistributed. After 1894, when authority was transferred to an executive committee directly responsible to the legislative assembly, the language guarantees were completely ignored: the French language printings ceased altogether. Minority rights succumbed to majority rule. The North-West experience provides an abject lesson in the failure of a constitution to protect minority language rights, when faced with determined opposition from an unsympathetic majority-controlled government.

Examines Canada's recent experience in granting segmental autonomy to its dispersed French-speaking minority. The adoption of this new policy was unexpected; its implementation was achieved with great difficulty. The province of Alberta, where French-language boards were established in 1994, serves as an instructive case study. 3 Tables, 2 Figures. Adapted from the source document.

The author constructs economic profiles of Protestants and Catholics based upon an examination of occupational and, to a lesser extent, industrial characteristics. In this task the Hall-Jones scale is used as a guide to classify more than two hundred occupational groupings. The religious composition of certain significant occupations are also examined in more detail in order to illustrate salient differences between the two groups. In particular, major variances between Protestants and Catholics, both at the manual and non-manual level, are highlighted and compared. Previous studies of Northern Ireland have frequently attributed the disunity of the working class to the prevalence of politico-religious antagonisms, giving minimal attention to possible occupational differences. This article provides evidence which might support an additional explanation for the failure of class organisations to bridge the religious divide: prominent occupational differences reinforced the religious cleavage thereby providing an added barrier to reconciliation.