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Canada: Two Nations or One?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Eugene A. Forsey
Eugene A. Forsey*
Affiliation:
Ottawa
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Extract

You will perhaps think that, with that introduction, I have already answered the question in the title. Don't jump to conclusions! Attendez un peu!

When I was elected president of this Association last year, I could scarcely have been more astonished. Obviously, there were dozens of people far better qualified. I asked myself why I had been chosen, and there was only one possible reason that seemed to me to make any sense. The Association was to become bilingual, and I was one of the few senior English-speaking members who could make a respectable noise in French. I hasten to agree that this is a most inadequate reason for my election, but it is still the only one I can think of.

Be that as it may, the twin facts that the Association is now to be officially bilingual, and that I can make a respectable noise in French, seem to me to impose upon me a double duty: first, to say something about our bicultural state (you observe how carefully I avoid, so far, the controversial word “nation”), and second, to say at least part of it in French.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , November 1962 , pp. 485 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1962

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References

1 XIIIe année, no. 46, avril, 1962, 3–16.

2 Le Devoir, le 20 février, 1962, 1–2.

3 Perusse, Noël, in Canadian Labour, VI, no. 9, 09 1961, 42.Google Scholar

4 Sept. 30, 1961, p. 1238.

5 Le Canada, expérience ratée … ou réussie? / The Canadian Experiment, Success or Failure? (Québec, 1962), 71.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 72.

7 Ibid.

8 Confederation Debates (Quebec, 1865), 27, 31, 42–3, 45.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 125–6, 128. See also 139.

10 Débats sur la Confédération (Quebec, 1865), 54–5, 59.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 369, 375, 379, 390–1.

12 Ibid., 6.

13 Ibid., 349.

14 Ibid., 184.

15 Federal Government (3rd ed., London, 1956), 20.Google Scholar

16 Le Canada, expérience ratée … ou réussie? 72.

17 To the history section of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, Toronto, April 24, 1962.

18 This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from my encaenial address at the University of New Brunswick, May 17, 1962.

19 The Canadian Identity (Toronto, 1961), 89.Google Scholar

20 Le Canada, expérience ratée … ou réussie? 82.

21 Le Devoir, le 14 mai, 1959, 6.

22 This passage also is taken almost verbatim from my encaenial address at the University of New Brunswick.