REFLECTION #3

Watching both videos “Saskatchewan Schools and the New Canadians (1916/1922?)” and “The Education of the New Canadian” - Saskatchewan Departmental of Education (1919) assuredly felt like racial assimilation, in that they weren’t just showing various Canadian activities or education practices but they were displaying to newcomers how to acclimate into Canadian culture. They weren’t celebrating where the newcomers came from, their culture or their language, the authorities within and those who controlled the implementation of language policies, were putting Canadian practices on display as to override what any of the newcomers arrived with.

It is devastating how Canadian history is filled with so many instances of assimilation: putting on a parade of Canadianization to show newcomers how they were to behave; the heinous treatment of Indigenous peoples to convert them to Christian European ways. Attempts at cultural genocide, perhaps with more subtlety around the 1920’s, but the intent appears the same: adhere to our ways or suffer the consequences.

Just like in the Mackey article, because Louis Riel “committed treason” by helping Métis peoples and so was hanged but resulted in French being removed as an official language in Manitoba. Additionally, the third amendment from the Official Language Act outlines the Freedom of language choice, that an individual is “served by the federal government in the official language of one’s choice” (Mackey, 2010, p. 50). Given Canada’s new reputation (I’ll say new as we are only recently beginning to implement celebration of newcomers’ languages in the education systems and slowly expanding to outside of the classroom) of multilingualism, then why aren’t we offering every individual or family the option of being contacted in the language of their choice? Or at least bilingually? And since this land wasn’t owned by English or French speaking people to begin with, shouldn’t multicultural and multilingual practices become more integrated? Imagine how linguistic diversity would be celebrated if the cultural linguistic genocide of Indigenous peoples never occurred. Principle 4 of the Truth and Reconciliation Act states, “Reconciliation requires constructive action on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism that have had destructive impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ education, cultures and languages” (http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Principles%20of%20Truth%20and%20Reconciliation.pdf). We are just now being taught this, yes it’s a start, but we need to take it further - all teachers need to be part of the solution, all teachers need to recognize that bilingualism and multilingualism is an asset and not a liability, that revival and reconciliation takes action. We need to expand language policies to include the multicultural foundations of Canada.