Brodie, Janine

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPIES RENDUS-BOOK REVIEWS 165 post World War II era and Panitch in his work on the Canadian state. A closer attention to wider political economy literature would have improved what is already a very fine, empirically based, analysis. * * * Peter A. Baskerville University of Victoria Chad Gaffield -Language, Schooling and Cultural Conflict: The Origins of the French-Language Controversy in Ontario. Montreal: MeGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. Pp. xviii, 249. This book is another welcome contribution to McGill-Queen' s growing collection of volumes examining the history of Canadian education. It offers both less and more than its title suggests. It offers less because its focus is not province-wide but rather limited to Prescott County in the period from the mid-1800s until the turn of the century. It also offers more because it successfully dem-onstrates the rich historical detail and subtle nuances that can be gleaned from local histories -histories which both inform and contradict the aggregate historical context. Gaffield defends his micro approach to the history of the french-language controversy in Ontario by arguing, justifiably I believe, that previous political studies of minority-language education too often simply ''narrate the major electoral campaigns in which the school question has been a focus of debate" (130). In the process, they inappropriately convey the impression that the language question was an episodic dimension of Ontario's educational history rather than, as this study shows, an ongoing and dynamic issue in both the local and provincial arenas. Sirnilary, previous studies have tended to be elite-centered, emphasizing party platforms and leaders, instead of examining how the debate was experienced at the community level or how local social and economic conditions influ-enced both demands for minority-languaged education and the outcomes of electoral campaigns. This study explores the development of the language controversy from the perspective of Prescott County which, in the later half of the nineteenth century, was the "buckle of the bilingual belt" (xiv) in Ontario. This unique lens enables the author to reinterpret the origins of the language controversy in three ways. First, he suggests that the coercive language policies implemented by the provincial government at the end of the century were informed by the experience of Prescott County. Second, he argues that demands for minority-language education in Prescott County arose directly out of its changing and complex material contexts and third, he traces the origins of a distinct Franco-Ontarian identity to the 1880s rather than, as other studies contend, the 1960s. The book is straight-forward in its format. It begins with a survey of nineteenth-century provincial educational policy which had as its expressed goal the "voluntary assimilation" of the growing numbers of French Canadians in Ontario. The next two chapters make excellent use of census data to recreate the social and economic texture of the period. Here, students of Ontario social history will find a revealing acccount of how the rise and decline of the "systeme agro-forestier" affected both the family and demands on the educational system. In the beginning, this system of seasonal lumbering and subsistence farming required the full participation of all family members as economic producers. Since only a few families could afford to lose the productive contribution of their offspring, local schools were not well-attended while the family became the major medium for the preservation of language and culture. In the meantime, the nascent public school system in Prescott County remained underfunded, ill-equipped and dominated by women teachers because they could be hired inexpensively, at rates below labourers and servants and for ''about half to two-thirds of what men received" (113). With the decline of the forest frontier and land availability in the 1870s, "demand for child labour within the family setting declined,'' thus making school attendance more possible (121). 166 IDSTOIRE SOCIALE- SOCIAL HISTORY The last four chapters of the book will especially interest students of Ontario's education system. Here, the author shows how changing demographic, political and economic patterns put increasing pressure on the local public school system to provide french language instruction and how, ultimately, in the face of hostile provincial regulations, francophones in Prescott County turned to the leadership of the Catholic Church to preserve french language instruction. The author draws a direct link between restrictive provincial language legislation and the growth of the separate school system. Until the mid-1880s, the separate school question was "not of great importance in Prescott County" (161) because the Catholic Church was not a strong institution there, schooling held a low priority for most residents and french instruction was accommodated within the public system. After 1885, and the official requirement to have some English taught in public schools, however, "the potential insulation offered by the separate system'' became a powerful attraction for francophones and the separate system flourished (175). Overall, this book is successful in its goals of linking provincial legislation to developments in Prescott County and demonstrating the interrelationship between changes in the local material environment and demands on the education system. The book would have been considerably strengthened, however, if the author had drawn on comparative examples from other counties with large francophone populations. Less well developed is the author's argument that the roots of the Franco-Ontarian identity can be traced back to the Prescott County of the 1880s. The disintegration of Prescott County in the late nineteenth century into ''anglophone and francophone fragments'' ( 186) may have been a necessary development for the emergence of the Franco-Ontarian identity, but does not, in and of itself, substantiate the existence of such an identity. * * * Janine Brodie York University Jacques Gelis- L' arbre et le fruit. La naissance dans l' Occident moderne (XV/0 -X/X0 siecle ), Paris, Fayard, 1984, 611 p. En France, Ia naissance et Ia mort ont fait I' objet d'etudes historiques impressionnantes. Cette approche particuliere des moments d'introduction dans I' existence et de sa conclusion y est autant privilegiee que I' approche psychologique I' est dans les pays anglo-saxons. L'ouvrage de Jacques Gelis est un exemple remarquable de Ia tradition que les historiens franc;ais ont etablie dans ce domaine. Representant un eventail unique d' informations, surtout sur Ia France, L' arbre et le fruit evoque a travers tout ce qui concerne Ia naissance, un monde rural dont les traces sont devenues rares en Occident. Le livre se compose de trois parties. La premiere est organisee selon Ia chronologie des eve-nements et des etats autres que Ia naissance : fertilite, conceptions, grossesse, accouchement. .. La deuxieme traite des<< dereglernents de Ia nature et des homrnes >>,par exemple, Ia mort de I' enfant, Ia contraception, l'avortement, etc. La derniere, plus breve (489-546), presente d'une fac;on fort interessante l'integration metaphysique et sociale de I' enfant par le bapteme et par !'attribution d'unnom. ' · Pour faire comprendre les rites, les croyances et les usages, I' auteur evoque sa conception de Ia metaphysique populaire. Basee sur les principes de Ia feoondire universelle, de Ia nature globale et mysrerieuse du destin humain, de Ia qualire revelatrice de significations de tout ce qui se manifeste, cette metaphysique anirne avec force chaque situation quotidienne, comme tout ce qui a trait a Ia venue au monde. La continuite, particulierement, qui constitue I' esprit des choix de I 'homme rural et sa fac;on d'etre Ia plus profonde, assure le sensa Ia presence et au developpement de I' enfant. Elle s'exprime notamment dans Ia coutume d'inaugurer Ia marche sur Ia terre des ancetres : << La terre 

Chad Gaffield — Language, Schooling and Cultural Conflict: The Origins of the French-Language Controversy in Ontario.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/37192/33773

Chad Gaffield — Language, Schooling and Cultural Conflict: The Origins of the French-Language Controversy in Ontario.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)