Belgians and School Questions in Western Canada--a Comment (Historical Notes) (Essay‪)‬

Belgians were not a major immigrant group in Western Canada that attracted extensive ethno-cultural investigation. Nevertheless, as a national group composed of two distinct ethnic communities united by a common religion, they stood apart from other immigrant communities. They quickly became implicated in "school questions" that involved both religious and linguistic controversies. The institutional frameworks in Manitoba and the North-West Territories evolved from dual confessional schools to a separate schools arrangement in Saskatchewan and Alberta and to a public nonconfessional system in Manitoba. There was also an intermediate bilingual school experiment, designed to hasten the process of the assimilation of diverse ethno-cultural communities. It tended instead to promote integration into an evolving multicultural society. In other words, the educational situation that Flemings and Walloons encountered in their adopted land was in transition. This transition was in good measure an outgrowth of the demographic changes that challenged the prevailing linguistic conventions. French and English were the original European languages implanted in the West. English was the dominant language of administration and business and French remained the dominant language of Catholic institutions in the region when Belgians began to arrive. This was the cultural context of the region of reception. In order to understand the experiences of Belgian immigrants settled in Western Canada, one must consider also the educational and linguistic situations in the country of emigration. Belgians are a national group consisting of two principal ethnic communities--Flemings in the north and francophone Walloons in the south. In the period of initial emigration (1880 to 1914 and the 1920s), French was the official language, the cultural language of the upper classes, the language of secondary education and of upward mobility. With the rise of Flemish ethnic consciousness in the late nineteenth century, there were demands for the use of the Flemish dialect of Dutch in the schools, administration and courts, culminating in the recognition of Flemish as an official language in 1898. Until 1932, Wallonia followed the jus soli principle, so that all public schooling was in French, but Flanders followed the jus personae principle, so the language of instruction depended on the language of the head of the family. There was also a struggle between state-sponsored non-sectarian schools and Catholic schools that many Flemings preferred. In 1970, Belgium adopted the concept of linguistic communities, each with its official language and no provision for minority language protection. Since 1980, the Flemish Community has officially designated its language as Dutch. Only the capital region of Brussels remains officially bilingual. Belgian immigrants arriving in Canada were not strangers to school controversies involving religion and language.