Using extensive archival research, Gendron rebuts the argument of Quebec nationalists and scholars that the Canadian government's neglect of French Africa forced Quebec to develop its own international identity. Towards a Francophone Community shows that there had been active federal interest in French African affairs since the late 1940s, within the context of developments in NATO and the Cold War, the vagaries of Canada's relations with France, and the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.
The Francophone World: Cultural Issues and Perspectives introduces readers to French-speaking communities across the globe and offers a perspective on the cultures that have developed in the wake of French exploration and colonization. This book explores the French influence in West Africa, the diversity of cultures within the Caribbean, the Francophone communities of North America, and the plight of North African immigrants living in France. Through these interdisciplinary essays and the discussion questions that follow them, readers can examine such wide-ranging topics as the media in Francophone West Africa, the special status of women writers in Senegal, and the mix of cultures in Martinique and French Guiana. This book also highlights the transition into modernity in Burkina Faso, the theater of Aimé Césaire, literature and culture in Québec, and the French presence in the northeastern United States.
"Many of North America's francophones live and work in large anglophone cities, immersed in overwhelmingly English-speaking environments, yet they manage to keep their language and culture alive. In this study Robert A. Stebbins finds that francophone culture in Calgary flourishes primarily through leisure activities." "Stebbins was a participant and an observer in Calgary's French community between 1987 and 1992. In 1992 he conducted unstructured interviews in French with eighty-five adult respondents, focusing on their patterns of everyday personal and collective life. His book reveals that in large cities such as Calgary, francophone populations form communities through social and cultural organization rather than geographical association. In these circumstances, family, household, school, and leisure activities are key to maintaining French language and culture and promoting individual and community development." "This is the first ethnographic study of the francophone community of a major anglophone urban centre in Canada. Stebbins presents an objective but sympathetic analysis in a fluid and engaging style. His work provides a prototype for the analysis of francophone communities in anglophone cities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Images of Canadianness offers backgrounds and explanations for a series of relevant--if relatively new--features of Canada, from political, cultural, and economic angles. Each of its four sections contains articles written by Canadian and European experts that offer original perspectives on a variety of issues: voting patterns in English-speaking Canada and Quebec; the vitality of French-language communities outside Quebec; the Belgian and Dutch immigration waves to Canada and the resulting Dutch-language immigrant press; major transitions taking place in Nunavut; the media as a tool for self-government for Canada's First Peoples; attempts by Canadian Indians to negotiate their position in society; the Canada-US relationship; Canada's trade with the EU; and Canada's cultural policy in the light of the information highway.
150 years after Confederation, Canada is known around the world for its social diversity and its commitment to principles of multiculturalism. But the road to contemporary Canada is a winding one, a story of division and conflict as well as union and accommodation. In Canada’s Odyssey, renowned scholar Peter H. Russell provides an expansive, accessible account of Canadian history from the pre-Confederation period to the present day. By focusing on what he calls the "three pillars" of English Canada, French Canada, and Aboriginal Canada, Russell advances an important view of our country as one founded on and informed by "incomplete conquests". It is the very incompleteness of these conquests that have made Canada what it is today, not just a multicultural society but a multinational one. Featuring the scope and vivid characterizations of an epic novel, Canada’s Odyssey is a magisterial work by an astute observer of Canadian politics and history, a perfect book to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
It is imperative that we train leaders who are able to intervene efficiently with service users and to support a better organization of the workplace. It is especially important to look at the many issues related to postsecondary training and human resources, such as recruiting and keeping these leading professionals. Accessibility and Active Offer thus combines theory and empirical data to help future professionals understand the workplace issues of accessibility and active offer of minority-language services. This English-language adaptation of Accessibilité et offre active features an additional chapter by Richard Bourhis on issues specific to Anglophone communities in Québec. This multidisciplinary collective work is the first to unite researchers in health, social work, sociology, political science, public administration, law and education, in order to gain more thorough knowledge of linguistic issues in health and social services, as well as of active offer of French-language services. Published in English.
This document explores the concepts of assimilation and community vitality in Francophone communities outside Quebec. The 1st chapter focusses on the theory and concepts of community vitality in Canada and internationally, while the 2nd gives a broad description of the policy context at the federal level. The 3rd chapter explores the use of the concepts of assimilation and vitality within the public debate in Canada. The 4th chapter focusses on the demographic data regarding the present health of the Francophone communities outside Quebec. The 5th chapter deals with issues of youth, education and economic attainment of Francophones from the point of view of the importance and consequences of access to education in one's first language.
This is the first comparative volume available on multinational federations, bringing together an international range of experts on federalism. Multinational federations are federal states intended to provide a framework that can accommodate, manage and resolve some of the most intractable political conflicts of our time that emerge from identity politics: those that stem from competing national visions, whether within or between established states. Featuring key experts in the field such as Michael Burgess, Alain Gagnon and Ronald Watts, this unique book draws on a wide geographical range of country studies including Belgium, Canada, India, Malaysia, Spain, Russia, Cyprus, India, Switzerland and the EU in order to illustrate the pivotal relationship between federalism and nationalism. In so doing, it addresses the practical relevance of federalism to the new political recognition of difference and diversity in the specific form of national minoritarianism. Multinational Federations will be of strong interest to students and researchers of federalism, democracy and nationalism.
By the late 1950s Canada's Francophone and Acadian minority communities were in rapid decline. Demographic, economic, socio-cultural, institutional, and political factors that had sustained both the concept and the reality of French Canada for well over a century were being eliminated or transformed at an unprecedented rate. To survive, these beleaguered minority communities set out to conquer the challenges of rebuilding their provincial and national organizations, training a new generation of leaders, redefining their respective provincial and national identities, elaborating new political and constitutional policies and strategies for survival and expansion, and then defending and securing full implementation of these policies and strategies. growth of their communities, revitalized Francophone organizations and leaders lobbied for constitutional entrenchment of official bilingualism and of a mandated Charter right to education in their own language, including the right to governance over their own schools and school boards. Having achieved their objectives in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Francophone provincial and national leaders learned the techniques of micro-constitutional politics to convince the Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba provincial governments to implement full and unfettered school governance by and for Francophone minority communities. a collectivist and remedial interpretation to the Charter's official language minority education rights section 23. The Canadian government assisted the Francophone minority in two ways: it made funds available to Francophone organizations and parents via the Court Challenges program and it signed lucrative financial agreements with the provinces to help defray the additional costs of establishing French-language schools and school boards. While the Francophone minority communities were pursuing implementation of their section 23 Charter rights, they found themselves drawn into the mega-constitutional negotiations and ratification procedures surrounding the controversial Meech Lake Constitutional Accord, 1987-90, and the omnibus Charlottetown Consensus Report, 1990-92. During the Quebec/Provincial Round, their Charter rights remained intact when the Meech Lake Accord failed to obtain ratification. conception of a pan-Canadian cultural and linguistic duality which helped minimize the constitutional and political impact of the Quebec government's insistence upon a territorial conception of duality, that is, an asymmetrical Canada/Quebec federation. When Canadians rejected the Charlottetown deal, neither conception achieved formal constitutional recognition. Nevertheless, Canada's Francophone minority communities were regenerated by the intertwined developments of constitutional renewal and their winning of school governance. A new, vigorous Francophone pan-Canadian national community emerged, one capable of ensuring the survival of its constituents communities well into the 21st century.
