The 1971–1972 school year was a pivotal moment in the history of French-language education in Ontario. The largely French-speaking northern community of Sturgeon Falls was divided. Their overcrowded high school building was effectively home to two schools, one for the French-speaking students and the other for the English-speaking.
While this was happening, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto with hopes of soon becoming a high-school English teacher. Combining two of my interests, I had enrolled in a fourth-year course on the politics of education. I followed the events in Sturgeon Falls closely from afar and, by the end of 1971, had decided to make it the subject of my major paper for that course.
Over the next fifty-four years, that paper survived more than twenty moves, involving seven countries. I’ve decided to clean it up and make it public now, in the hope that it might add to our historical perspective on a topic of importance in this country of ours.
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