My name is Aimee Milliard and I am a fourth year student at the University of the Fraser Valley, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in French and a minor in History. As an aspiring teacher, I used this website research project as a passion project. I decided to focus on the history of French education in Mission, British Columbia because I was a student of the Immersion program. I completed the French Immersion program from kindergarten through t0 Grade 12 and graduated high school with my double dogwood diploma (which recognizes my completion of the program and my bilingualism in French in the province of British Columbia). I then went on to pursue my Bachelor’s degree, where I continued my French language studies at the university level in the hopes of becoming an elementary school French immersion teacher and took my DALF C1 certification exam (which recognizes my fluency in French internationally).
As a second-language learner myself, I have an appreciation for bilingualism and believe that the definition of that goes beyond simply being fluent in two languages. I believe that being bilingual involves a feeling of belonging to and an appreciation of two distinct cultures.
This research project surrounded the theme of education, and with my education background rooted in the French Immersion program, the decision to research the history of it in a community local to my own was an obvious choice. I went in to my research at the Mission Community Archives with this idea, unsure of how much information I would find. As I started digging through countless boxes and binders, I discovered a plethora of information that I honestly was not expecting to find.
There was a common theme throughout the information that I found, certainly there was a struggle to keep this program afloat, however, there was ample community support for this program in Mission, which ultimately allowed it to survive the countless controversies and low enrolment numbers. This passion for French education in Mission was something I did not expect to uncover, but I was pleasantly surprised that I did and I am proud to be able to share this story with all of you.