The View from Rome: Archbishop Stagni's 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question ed. by John Zucchi (review)

humanities 279 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 preservation and as necessary to maintaining what work ethic they might possess. Mostly unaware of these views and the manipulations that followed from them, the Inuit behaved as impoverished people have always behaved . By harvesting and trapping fox, they tried to keep themselves alive. If land resources proved insufficient where they were, they tried other locations. And if that failed, they would see what was available at the trading post or mission. Yet, while they may have been welcomed by the missionary who needed a flock, the trader and the government did not want them there, and, by one means or another, persuaded them to move back to the land. The Inuit operated out of the mistaken belief that they might find sustenance in the settlements and the bureaucrats out of the equally mistaken belief that the Inuit would find it on the land. What permanently changed this two-way delusional pattern were instances of starvation and their widespread publication. In the mid-1950s, people starved to death. While their numbers were not high, they received national attention when their story, properly embellished, was told by Farley Mowat and the media. At the same time, the national perception of the North was changing. Increasingly, it was seen as having enormous mineral and hydrocarbon potentials. The question of what to do with the Inuit shifted from how to preserve their way of life to how to include them in northern development. A rescue effort, which the author entitles >The Welfare State Policy,= was implemented. Steps were taken to provide services via northern service officers, area administrators and >welfare teachers.= Area economic surveys were undertaken to determine what the Arctic might produce. Inuit were put to work in mines at Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife, and Lynn Lake, though not very successfully. Construction of the DEW line provided work for wages. All of this, plus the provision of local services, led to a concentration of people in the present Arctic communities. What I like about the book is its detail B almost extreme at times. The author has patiently combed through aging files to develop a sense of what happened where and what decisions were made. At the same time, the detail tends to obscure the larger picture. The Inuit of the 1950s and 1960s were caught in an oscillating web consisting of changing land resources and fur prices, the introduction of more comfortable modes of living, a nascent wage economy, and government decisions about who they were and how they should live. Perceptions of the North were undergoing substantive change, as was the place of Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian fabric. Subsequently, with the recognition of land and other Aboriginal rights, the Inuit acquired the power to negotiate their own future. How all of these factors may have interacted is not always apparent in the book. (ED WEICK) John Zucchi, translator and editor. The View from Rome: 280 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 Archbishop Stagni=s 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question McGill-Queen=s University Press. xlx, 131. $65.00 There is a surprisingly contemporary tone to the events chronicled in this volume, despite the fact that they occurred almost a century ago. John Zucchi presents two reports that the Apostolic Delegate of the Holy See to Canada, Archbishop Pellegrino Stagni, sent to Rome in 1915 on the problems confronting French-English bilingual schools in the province of Ontario. Zucchi=s Introduction places the dispute in historical context and elucidates the roots of the animosity that pitted francophone and anglophone Catholics against each other in a bitter fight for control of the separate school system. This dispute was of concern to the Vatican because it potentially threatened the existence of the separate school system in a province dominated by a strong Protestant majority. The appendices include letters to Archbishop Stagni from prominent advocates of each position. All together, the collection provides an insightful and fascinating case study of the identity politics that have characterized (and continue to characterize) Canada since confederation. The immediate catalyst for the dispute...