Guy Rex Rodgers is the writer and director of a series of documentary films that explore the impact of non-Francophone immigration on the province of Quebec. He recently spoke with Accenti publisher Domenic Cusmano about his ongoing project to research immigrant children turned away from French Catholic schools in Quebec prior to the passage of Bill 101 in 1977.
Accenti readers will remember our conversation in September 2025 when you released your first interim report about students turned away from Quebec French Catholic schools – and most of the students were Italian. Now you have released a second interim report. What new discoveries have you made?
GRR: More than 300 former students responded to our survey about their education experience in the years prior to Bill 101, back when Quebec had four public education options based on religion and language. It was rare for non-Christians, for example Jewish students, or non-Catholics, such as Protestants or Greek Orthodox, to enrol in French Catholic schools. It usually only happened if they had emigrated from a French-speaking country. Catholic immigrants who spoke French or a related language like Italian were most likely to try to enrol in a French Catholic school. They were also the most likely to be refused admission and sent to an English Catholic school. Since last September, I have greatly expanded the first report to present a detailed portrait of what was happening prior to Bill 101.
The second reports starts to look at why so many immigrant students were turned away from French Catholic schools. A couple of things are clear. The first is that the percentage of Italian students enrolled in French Catholic schools decreased from 63 percent in 1931 to just eight percent in 1975. The second is that a large number of immigrant students did not choose English schools; they were denied admission to French Catholic schools. These stories of rejection have been dismissed as a myth, and the official history of Quebec makes no mention that French Catholic schools turned away Catholic as well as non-Catholic students. My research project presents a large body of evidence that rejection was widespread. We have also found some convincing explanations for why this happened. Interestingly, in a Radio Canada interview last November, ex-Premier of Quebec and Minister of Education Pauline Marois acknowledged that French Catholic schools “refused to admit non-Catholic students.”
What explanations have you found?
GRR: For years, people have been looking for a “smoking gun” to identify who gave the order to reject immigrant students. Some people thought the order came from the Quebec government. Others thought the Catholic Church was responsible. All the evidence suggests that both the government and the Catholic school commission wanted immigrants to attend French Catholic schools. That is why historian Robert Gagnon in 1997 in an article in the Bulletin d’histoire politique concluded it was a myth that French Catholic schools rejected immigrant students. This version of history is still widely believed, which is why former minister Pauline Marois will acknowledge that only non-Catholics were turned away from French Catholic schools. If administrators and educators were pursuing a completely different approach than the school board policy, they would not be quick to report their refusal to comply with the school board.
Businessman Sabino Grassi reached this same conclusion in the mid-2000s when he conducted his own investigation at the offices of the CÉCM. His findings were published in an article that appeared in the Montreal Gazette in 2014. When Grassi eventually located minutes of school board meetings dealing with Italian students, he found a smoking gun, but not what he expected. “The board chairman asked the board members: ‘Why are all these Italians choosing to go to English school? We should get to the bottom of this.’ And nobody around the table had an answer for him.” It was shocking for Grassi that the people running the school commission did not know what was going on. Somebody had to be giving orders, because Grassi’s family and so many others had experienced segregation, but the school commissioners were clueless to that fact. Grassi could only conclude that “the orders were given at the local level by the school directors. That was the only explanation that fit.” This explanation had already been suggested in the 1980s by historian Robert Rudin (The Forgotten Quebecers) and political scientists Henry Milner (The Long Road to Reform).
If politicians, historians and social scientists have known about the rejection of immigrant students for decades, why are we still debating it?
GRR: Part of the answer is that only some politicians, historians and social scientists have known about it. Others didn’t know or have not been willing to admit it. The reasons for this denial are complex and everything I am about to say is mostly speculation at this point.
The first factor is economic. The post-war baby boom was over by the 1970s and school enrolment was declining. French Catholic schools were hardest hit because immigrants were not enrolling with them, and part of the reason was that they had been told for decades that they were not welcome. Suddenly, Quebec wanted immigrants to enrol in French Catholic schools to protect Quebec’s French language and culture. Administrators and educators, who until recently had been rejecting immigrants, suddenly needed immigrants to enrol in their schools to protect their jobs. This theory is based on correlation without any direct evidence of causation. But there is no mystery why Franco-Catholic administrators and educators who rejected immigrant students and caused the language crisis would not want to talk about it or take responsibility.
The second factor is political. From the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s until the Second Referendum in 1995, Quebec promoted civic nationalism that was, at least theoretically, inclusive for everyone living and working in Quebec. After the 1995 referendum, many nationalists abandoned civic nationalism – along with the ethnic vote – and reverted to a much older form of ethnic nationalism. Gagnon wrote his infamous “myth” paper a couple of years after the 1995 referendum. His assertion, that not a single immigrant was turned away from a French school, is so disconnected from reality that it cannot be described as history. The paper was clearly written as propaganda. I plan to invite professor Gagnon to discuss why he wrote that paper, and why historians have not changed the “official history.”
Do you expect him to answer those questions?
GRR: I am an optimist. Truth is important. And Gagnon’s reasoning might make a lot more sense than it appears on the surface.
Where can Accenti readers see the reports?
GRR: They are available on a new website www.whatwechoose.ca/education. The reports are available in English and French. They can be read on the site or downloaded.
What’s next for this research project?
GRR: I will release a third interim report in July about language acquisition. There is a belief in some Quebec nationalist circles that anyone who attends an English school has rejected Quebec’s French language and culture. I’ve spoken to hundreds of former students who think French is important and who went to great lengths to acquire a good level of French for professional purposes after graduating from high school with minimal – or non-existent – French skills. In addition, most of them ensured that their children received better French instruction than they did.
I also want to examine theories of bilingualism and the curious phenomenon in Quebec that it is no problem for the elite to be fully bilingual and attend prestige English universities, but bilingualism for the non-elite would be a disaster. We are living in a time when young people can learn other languages – particularly English – despite what they are taught, or not taught, at school. It is no longer possible to restrict bilingualism.
In November, I will compile all the research and the three interim reports into a final report. If Accenti readers have experiences or information they want to share, they can reach me at guyrexrodgers@gmail.com
I hear you are publishing a book. What is it about and when can we expect to see it?
GRR: Yes. I have written a book about touring my film What We Choose To Remember for three years as the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government implemented Bill 96. The film looked back at the previous half-century as a success story. The CAQ looked back at the same period as a political and linguistic disaster. I talked to hundreds of people all around Quebec and what they had to say was fascinating; about language, education, immigration, culture and politics. The book is called What We Choose To Forget and it will be available in April. The website is www.whatwechoose.ca
