Directed cultural change and imagined communities: the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism encounters the language question in Ontario, 1964-1967
Year:
1994
Author :
Publishing Company:
, Queen’s University
Abstract
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism--considered one of the most important inquiries ever instituted by a Canadian government--sought to redefine Confederation according to an ideal of linguistic equality. This study of the Commission's activities in and interpretations of, Ontario from 1964 to 1967 seeks to go beyond the existing somewhat partisan historiography on "B & B" by exploring the ways in which the Commission both reflected certain elements in local opinion in the key Francophone areas, while it constructed at the same time a new definition of Confederation furthering its own political agenda. The diversity of conditions encountered in Ontario thus gave rise, through a politics of cultural selection, to a uniform and cohesive vision, which in turn ultimately influenced the state policy of official bilingualism. The B & B's core concept of "equal partnership" did respond to distinctive Franco-Ontarian concerns, especially in such areas as Sudbury and Windsor: in this sense the Commission faithfully "reflected" local conditions (although it placed its own interpretive spin on the evidence). At the same time, the Commission virtually ignored the concerns of other ethnic groups and sought to modify and even suppress the vision of many Anglophone "liberal majoritarians" in Ontario, and in this sense it "imposed" an authoritative new reading of a thorny social and political problem. Whatever one thinks of the underlying values which prompted this state politics of cultural selection, the Ontario evidence suggests a gap between the "Canada" imagined by the B & B Commission and the ideals of a substantial segment of the population. This gap would have important implications in the long term.
Theme :
BilingualismIdentityLinguisticsOntario
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