Guy Rex Rodgers is the producer, writer, director and narrator of a series of documentary films that explores the impact that non-Francophone immigration has had on the province of Québec in general and the city of Montreal in particular. He recently spoke with Accenti Publisher Domenic Cusmano about a new project researching immigrant children being turned away from French Catholic schools in Quebec in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, prior to the passage of Bill 101 in 1977 that made French the official language of Quebec.
Accenti readers will remember our conversation about your documentary film What We Choose To Remember. Is this research project connected?
GRR: Absolutely. Stories about immigrant children being rejected by Quebec’s French Catholic schools were an important part of the film. When I was investigating immigration as a series of waves, many of the immigrants who arrived between 1945 and 1977 talked about a shared experience. They attempted to register at their local French Catholic school but were turned away and sent to an English school. Catholics went to Catholic schools. Non-Catholics and non-Christians went to Protestant schools. I was surprised, and people in the interview room were surprised, to learn that immigrants from many countries, and with different religious backgrounds, were denied admission to French Catholic schools. Reasons varied, but the result was the same. After I launched What We Choose To Remember in May 2022, I toured the film for three years and presented it in 55 communities all around Quebec. After each screening, we had a conversation with the audience and many more people told me they had also been turned away from French Catholic schools. During the tour, I met Ralph Mastromonaco, a Montreal lawyer who was preparing a petition for the National Assembly to ask the government of Quebec to recognize its responsibility for refusing to admit innumerable Italian students into French Catholic schools. Many of those students have been “accused” of choosing English schools and rejecting Quebec, although it was the French schools that rejected them. The Italian community is a very important part of the rejection story, but Italians were not the only immigrants rejected. Catholics from many other countries were turned away, as well as non-Catholics and non-Christians, even if French was the only language they could speak. Incredibly, most francophones have never heard about this important episode in Quebec history and some refuse to believe it ever happened.
You have released an interim report on your research. What have you found so far?
GRR: The research is being funded by the Quebec government’s Secretariat on Relations with English-Speaking Quebecers. This is a complex history. Until 1977, parents in Quebec had four public education options: French Catholic, English Protestant, English Catholic and French Protestant. All students were free to choose among these four options. During the period under examination, non-Catholics (e.g. Protestant and Orthodox students) were less likely than Catholics to seek enrollment in Catholic schools, and they had a much higher probability of being denied admission. Non-Christians (e.g. Jewish or Muslim students) were the least likely to seek enrollment in Catholic schools. The few who did were almost certain to be denied admission. The immigrants most likely to prefer French Catholic schools were Catholics who spoke French or a closely related language like Italian. The first wave of Italians who immigrated before the Second World War integrated quite well with Quebec’s francophones. After the war, increasing numbers of Italians enrolled in English schools. Something changed. Did Italians “switch allegiances,” or did French schools increasingly reject immigrant children? No one claims that all immigrants were denied admission to French Catholic schools. And no one denies that many immigrants preferred English schools. Families chose schools for different reasons, involving religion and language, as well as pragmatic factors such as proximity of the school to the family home and quality of education. However, many immigrants would have preferred French Catholic schools but were turned away.
If these stories of rejection are common, why are they dismissed as a myth?
GRR: In 1997, historian Robert Gagnon wrote an influential paper entitled: “Pour en finir avec un mythe : le refus des écoles catholiques d’accepter les immigrants” [Busting a Myth: That Catholic Schools Refused to Accept Immigrants]. Gagnon presented 23 pages of evidence to “prove” that allegations of French Catholic schools refusing to accept immigrants were an outrageous “myth.” Gagnon was indignant that immigrants had been making these claims ad nauseam for 20 years. In the previous decades successive Quebec governments passed increasingly coercive language laws – Bill 63 (1969), Bill 22 (1974) and Bill 101 (1977) – to limit admissions to English-language schools. All three of these were responses to the heated controversy in Quebec over the language of education and immigrants. Bill 101 in particular – which became law 20 years before Gagnon wrote his paper – was based on the belief that immigrants had rejected Quebec’s French language and culture en masse. It is not surprising that immigrants falsely accused of rejecting French schools would want it known that Quebec’s French schools had rejected them. If ex-students were still repeating this claim ad nauseam in 1997, it was because their story was dismissed as a myth. And it still is in 2025!
Why are you releasing an inter report now rather than wait until next autumn to publish the final report?
GRR: There are two reasons. The first is that we need to collect additional data in order to understand education strategies and make sense of enrollment patterns. We want to document six different types of experience: 1) Students who wished to attend French Catholic schools but were denied admission; 2) Students who wished to attend French Catholic schools and were successful; 3) Students who preferred to be educated at English Catholic schools; 4) Students who shifted from the English system to the French system and vice versa. Did these shifts reflect dissatisfaction, or were they a pragmatic strategy to become bilingual in the absence of quality second-language instruction? The final two groups are smaller; some Italians were Protestants who enrolled in 5) English Protestant schools or 6) French Protestant schools.
The second reason for releasing an interim report now is to give naysayers a chance to respond. Many people, mostly native French-speaking Quebecers, continue to believe historian Robert Gagnon’s claim that no immigrants were turned away from French Catholic schools. Not one. Ever. In order to make this bold claim, they must surely have abundant evidence of immigrants accepted in French Catholic schools. I would like them to share names and contact information so that I can speak to these ex-students and document their experiences.
The so-called Saint-Leonard Crisis of 1969 was right in the middle of that period. Does it figure in your research?
GRR: Very much. I don’t think it is possible to understand language laws in Quebec without understanding the Saint-Leonard Crisis. Francophone nationalists and immigrants have different memories of it, and different interpretations. The Francophone majority remembers Saint-Léonard as a battle between French and English. Félix Rose’s 2024 film La Bataille de Saint-Léonard perpetuated the narrative that immigrants rejected Quebec’s French language and culture, and therefore, to avert disaster, the Quebec Government was compelled to impose strong language laws on immigrants. The Italian perspective is quite different. Italian immigrants sought education in French, English and Italian. The conflict in Saint-Leonard was about bilingual education, which at the time was both legal and popular, verses unilingual French education, which was unpopular among all Quebecers, and has never been Quebec’s chosen education model.
Ralph Mastromonaco and Guy Rex Rodgers at Casa D’Italia (Photo: GRR)
That pre-Bill 101 drama is ancient history now. Why is this research still relevant?
GRR: Quebec is once again struggling with immigration in record numbers, and with the challenge of integrating foreign students. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government has imposed strong new language legislation with Bill 96, which presumes that immigrants must be “forced” to integrate within Quebec society. The immigrant version of this story is quite different. Immigrants are more than willing to learn French, but they also want to learn English. They want to live in a Québec français, but not in a Québec unilingue. The battle now is the same as it was in the 1960s: not French versus English, but bilingualism (and multilingualism) versus unilingualism.
Where can people see your report?
GRR: They can read the report online by clicking here. If they want a pdf copy they can contact me directly by email guyrexrodgers@gmail.com. They can also click on the survey link here to fill out a short questionnaire. One of the questions asks if they are interested in taking part in a personal interview. The Italian experience is a very important part of this story and I invite your readers to share their stories.
Can we expect to see a film about this story?
GRR: The important thing right now is to collect as many stories as possible from ex-students. If rejections involved thousands or tens of thousands, then the story definitely merits a documentary. The ex-students I have spoken to are articulate and passionate. I would love to interview them for a documentary film. I invite Accenti readers to share their stories because this is the best opportunity we are going to get to establish the facts. I have heard people say they were concerned about stirring up trouble. This is not an anti-Quebec story. It is exactly the opposite. This is a story about immigrants who wanted to be educated in French, who wanted to be part of Quebec. All the people I have interviewed learned French, despite their education, and it was important for them that their kids acquire even better French skills. This is a very positive story for Quebec and that’s why it needs to be told!
