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

Since the later nineteenth century, proponents of mass schooling in countries such as Canada have struggled with the question of the language of instruction. Ranging from government and religious leaders to school trustees and parents, these proponents have addressed the language question from multiple perspectives. Some have focused on language as being indicative of personal and collective identity, while others have emphasized how language enables or hinders communication and, thus, affects the possible futures of the students both within and beyond the classroom. Some have linked language to religion, while others have connected language to social and economic activities. Such considerations have been especially important in Canada where a significant commitment to both French and English emerged as being acceptable in the eighteenth-century St Lawrence River Valley. The subsequent uneven history of this commitment in the case of public schools reflects the difficulty of reconciling competing perspectives on language in diverse communities with multiple educational ambitions.

Jack D. Cecillon adds to our understanding of the complex ways in which the language of instruction has intersected with other priorities by focusing on the southwest corner of early twentieth-century Ontario. This region, along with easternmost and northern Ontario, included a significant French-language population, which, in turn, played a significant role in the Catholic diocese administered from nearby London as well as within the larger Franco-Ontarian community. Few scholars have paid much attention to this border region, but Cecillon shows that, at the time, even the Pope felt the need to intervene for the sake of cohesion and order based on religion in the face of controversy about the language of instruction in local schools.

The point of departure for Cecillon’s research concerns the extent to which francophones in the Windsor border region joined their counterparts elsewhere in the province in opposing Regulation 17, the well-known effort to curtail French-language schooling. While anglophone provincial leaders fixated on the continuing migration of French-language Québeckers to the easternmost and northern counties, their actions also directly affected the teachers, children, and parents in the quite distinct communities of southwest Ontario. Cecillon emphasizes that, not only did the Windsor border region differ significantly from other parts of the province but that the French-speaking population was also spread among diverse rural and urban areas with specific histories and multiple socio-cultural divisions. For this reason, province-wide interpretations of the French-language controversy do not do justice to the experience of those in the Windsor border region.

The author’s research strategy successfully combines the reinterpretation of familiar documents with an analysis of new sources, including those that enable insights into the thinking of local residents. Cecillon first emphasizes that the well-known Bishop of London, Michael Francis Fallon, was not only bilingual but also highly knowledgeable about the language-of-instruction issue. Viewing the issue as one of “great practical importance,” Bishop Fallon separated the question of religion from that of language. He argued that it was essential for all children in an “English speaking province on an English speaking continent” to learn English first and foremost “in order to be able to fight the battle of life” (50). Bishop Fallon felt convinced that such learning was not occurring in schools that used both French and English. He feared that the French-speaking population was falling behind their English-language Catholic counterparts and thereby undermining the separate school system as well as the efforts of the larger Catholic Church to thrive in the growing urban, industrial world.

While documenting how Bishop Fallon relentlessly promoted the importance of English, Cecillon shows the significant extent to which both parishioners and priests were not convinced by the argument that their socio-economic future hinged on French becoming a secondary priority. Indeed, some priests...