Prayers, Petitions, and Protests: The Catholic Church and the Ontario Schools Crisis in the Windsor Border Region, 1910–1928 by Jack D. Cecillon (review)

In Prayers, Petitions, and Protests Jack D. Cecillon aims to examine the failure of French Catholics in the Windsor border region to resist Regulation 17, the Ontario government’s attempt in the early-twentieth century to limit French-language instruction in the province’s public schools. More than that, however, this book offers a deep understanding of the larger debates surrounding French-English relations and the rise of French Canadian nationalism in the early-twentieth century.

Cecillon’s book has three major historiographical strengths. First, his study reminds us of the extent to which the “old French Empire” extended beyond the borders of Quebec and select parts of New Brunswick and Manitoba (p. 12). In the writing of Canadian history, the more familiar disputes in those provinces, which led to an 1871 law prohibiting local school boards from raising tax revenues in support of Catholic schools in New Brunswick and 1890 legislation eliminating public funding for French Catholic schools in Manitoba, have received considerable attention. As Cecillon demonstrates, however, protests in the Windsor border region of Ontario from 1910 to 1928 were no less dramatic.

Second, this book broadens our understanding of francophone history in Ontario significantly. Typical studies on francophone resistance to Regulation 17 tend to focus on eastern Ontario, where recent French-Catholic arrivals from Quebec were still struggling to make sense of their new provincial home. Cecillon, however, takes us to the other end of the province, where francophone families had a long history of settlement and socioeconomic activity. There, Cecillon finds a French Canadian population that was itself divided: urban versus rural, industrial versus agricultural, and old-stock Fort Detroit descendants versus recent arrivals. Such divisions created a complicated dynamic that produced varieties of resistance to Regulation 17 not seen in other parts of the province.

Third, a major strength of this book is the author’s insistence that a micro-history of Catholic Windsor’s response to, and internal struggle with, Regulation 17 be situated within larger North American and international contexts of church efforts to integrate cultural and linguistic minorities. Parallels to what was happening in late-nineteenth-century New England, for example, are clear to Cecillon. The Church’s response to growing hostility from Americans in that region toward an influx of French-speaking settlers from Quebec helps us better understand what was happening in Ontario. Moreover, Cecillon beautifully explores the extent to which appeals to Rome, and the responses from the Vatican itself, were central to the debate surrounding Regulation 17 in Ontario. In other words, understanding the context of French-Catholic resistance to Regulation 17 requires the reader to understand the broader Catholic world of which the people were a part. Whereas typical histories tend to focus on the linguistic identity of French Canadians, this study rightly considers their Catholic identity as well.

In the end, the author succeeds in his effort to unveil the existence of a multidimensional French-speaking population—one with often conflicting priorities. Such divisions were too profound to overcome in the Windsor border region, and francophone resistance to Regulation 17 ultimately failed there. Cecillon’s book will be essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the history of French Canadians in Ontario. Moreover, it will be of great interest to anyone wishing to more closely examine and make sense of the ways in which the French-English divide in Canada has shaped the many cultures and subcultures of Canadian and Catholic identities.