Overview: This page examines the westward movement to British Columbia of Francophone culture and the French language. It is intended to introduce the broader range of historical context before examining the French Immersion program in Mission.
Since the earliest days of Canada’s discovery there has always been a strong French presence, beginning with early European explorers such as Jacques Cartier in 1534 and the colonization of New France. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the francophone presence in Canada made its way to the West coast. The fur trade brought many French Canadians, Iroquois, Métis and other French-speaking Aboriginal groups to British Columbia. They were followed out West by the Roman Catholic missionaries, who were sent to convert British Columbia’s Indigenous population to Christianity. This would make French the most widely spoken European language in the Fraser Valley up until the late 1850s and the arrival of the Fraser River gold rush.
The gold rush ultimately led to a significant decline in the prominence of the French language in British Columbia, but many French speakers would continue to inhabit the region. At the beginning of the 20th century, Francophone railroad workers began to establish small farming communities in the Fraser Valley, namely Deroche and Durieu. However, the largest concentration of francophones were located in Maillardville, located within the city of Coquitlam.
In 1945, the Fédération canadienne-française de la Colombie-Britannique was formed to give a collective voice to British Columbia’s francophone community. In the 1960s, this same organization helped to advocate for the rights to obtain public francophone schools across the province. By the mid to late 1960s the French Immersion program had already begun to make its appearances in schools across the province, however this program was targeted to anglophone students wanting to learn the language and become bilingual, not students whose primary language was already French. These second-language programs were not designed to broaden Francophone students’ language abilities and cultural identities.
In the 1970s, the Programme Cadre de Français was created, which would offer classes designed to meet the learning needs of Francophone students in English public schools. This program would begin in Mission, British Columbia in the fall of 1982 at Windebank Elementary School. Further efforts to preserve the minority identity of British Columbia’s Francophone community would not be made until 1995, when the Conseil Scolaire Francophone de la Colombia-Britannique was founded to promote the success of all learners in a Francophone environment. As its own school district the CSF would open 45 schools across the province.
References:
“Conseil Scolaire Francophone de la Colombia-Britannique.” Conseil Scolaire Francophone de la Colombia-Britannique. Accessed March 24, 2021. https://www.csf.bc.ca/en/
Geddes, Duane. “School cuts ordered, but Cadre ‘immune’.” The Record (Mission, BC), August 11, 1982.
Kenny, Nicholas. “Constitutional Rights at the KitchenTable: British Columbia Francophones and the Making of a Minority-Language Educational System.” Historical Studies in Education / Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 32, no. 2 (2020): 148-171. https://doi.org/ 10.32316/hse-rhe.v32i2.4841.
Kenny, Nicholas. “Francophones of British Columbia.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. 2016. Accessed March 24, 2021. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ francophones-of-british-columbia
Von Baeyer, Cornelius, and Eliza Von Baeyer. “Three Decades of French Immersion in Canada: Its Beginnings, Enduring Popularity and Expected Future.” Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, 62/63 (2002): 105-115. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/42930608