F.R. Scott and His Fight for the English Minority in Quebec

In the 1960s, Montrealer Frank R. Scott (1899-1985), Dean of Law at McGill, one of the founders of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a poet, translator, constitutionalist, and human rights activist, was appointed to the federal Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-1969). During his tenure on this body, Scott was an advocate for bilingualism across Canada and for the protection of the French language in Quebec. But in 1974, when the Quebec Government introduced Bill 22, a language law that made French the official language in the province, Scott became an ardent defender of Quebec’s English minority rights. But he was discouraged by the complacency of English Quebecers. In a 1977 letter to a friend, Scott wrote: “A dumber and more frightened crowd than the English minority in Quebec it would be hard to find. Business won’t lift a finger; it will conform, or move out leaving a skeleton staff behind fed instructions by computer from Toronto. McGill is frozen with fright; its money, even the large amount coming from Ottawa, is channelled through Quebec. The only active fighters are the tiny little Protestant school boards and the Italians. We don’t deserve to survive as we have no collective will to live.” The author edited the diary Scott kept during the years of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

Canadian Diversity/Diversité canadienne

Vol. 17

no. 1

2020

12-14

en