From May 1983 to the end of February 1984 Manitoba was racked by one of the most intense, divisive debates in its history, a debate that left no segment of the population untouched and that in its final stages virtually paralyzed the government of the province. In its last weeks, an eerie air of anarchy hung over the province, as day after day the legislature lay deserted, its visitors and staff assailed by raucous buzzers calling the MLAs to sit. One journalist even wrote that there had been an attempted coup d’état by the minority party in the legislature towards...

The history of French-language rights in Manitoba is complex, turbulent, and tragic; only recently has significant progress been made in righting historic wrongs. Initially part of the francophone Métis heritage, French-language rights were soon appropriated by Francophones from Quebec and Europe as the Métis nation disintegrated progressively through the nineteenth century. The network of religious and language safeguards painstakingly erected and fought for by Louis Riel and Fathers Jean-Noёl Ritchot and Alexandre Taché in 1869 and 1870 was systematically dismantled within a single generation by federal and provincial interpretation of the Manitoba Act. The judicial system was unwilling to halt...

Though the right to instruction in French had been restored by the Roblin and Schreyer governments in 1967 and 1970 and though administrative measures had been taken to ensure the establishment of French-language schools in Manitoba through the 1970s, none of these initiatives had involved the Manitoba Act. Indeed, one could argue that these new “rights” were really not constitutionally grounded at all at the time, since they did not involve recognition of denominational schools, the only educational “right” stipulated in section 22 of the Manitoba Act.¹ At another level, one could also argue – and several court decisions in...

The one-term Lyon government was swept away by a rejuvenated NDP led by Howard Pawley on 17 November 1981. With a majority of thirty-four seats out of fifty-seven, the Pawley government, including Roland Penner as attorney general and government house leader, was sworn in on 1 December 1981. The new government, and Penner in particular, were soon confronted with theBilodeaucase and its implications. For the Lyon government, the problem had been open and shut: let the case proceed to the Supreme Court and take the consequences, which were perceived as minimal in any event. For the Pawley government,...

The public debate on the tripartite constitutional amendment to section 23 began inauspiciously with Trudeau’s premature announcement of the federal-provincial agreement, and the Pawley government struggled frantically to regain control of the agenda. It never did. The debate began in the Manitoba legislature in late May and continued in that forum throughout the summer, while Manitoba’s rural municipalities began a sustained attack on the proposed amendment. The first legislative debates set the tone, and the Opposition, including renegade NDP MLA Russell Doern, along with the rural municipal leadership, incited other segments of the population to rise up and force the...

During the summer of 1983, new actors emerged in the language debate, not least of which was the Manitoba Government Employees Association, a natural ally of the NDP , which voiced the concerns of its membership with a reasonableness that contrasted sharply with the vituperative denunciations of the rural municipalities. The language debate was also attracting attention outside the province; in particular, anglophones in Quebec voiced their support for Manitoba’s francophone minority. However, it was the debate in the legislature that dominated the headlines in Manitoba and galvanized public opinion through the hot summer months of 1983.

On 12 July,...

Several developments marked the following stage of the crisis, which began in late August 1983 and ended in December. First, the Pawley government drafted a number of changes to its original draft constitutional amendment. Second, the legislative hearings extended the debate to all regions of the province and to all segments of the population.¹ Third, the federal Parliament was seized with the issue, avoiding divisive debate through an all-party agreement on a resolution. Fourth, public opinion in Manitoba, by now thoroughly whipped up by the interminable legislative debates, demanded plebiscites everywhere in the province, and more than twenty cities and...

The last stage of Manitoba’s language crisis unfolded during the months of January and February 1984; it is highlighted by a second series of legislative debates on the Pawley government’s proposed constitutional amendment begining in early January 1984 and ending on 27 February with the prorogation of the House without the amendment being adopted. During this period, public opposition to the amendment, which was fanned by the leaders of the Opposition, reached a fever pitch, culminating in demonstrations around the province and in the legislature and in an extraordinary four-day series of legislative hearings insisted upon by the Conservative opposition...

The demise of the constitutional amendment on 27 February 1984 meant, inevitably, that the Manitoba French-language issue would once again end up in the Supreme Court of Canada. However, the form the submission would take was by no means preordained. Sterling Lyon and his cohorts had assumed it was theBilodeaucase that would go to court; the French community’s leadership, and its lawyers in particular, had other ideas. Indeed the dynamics within the Franco-Manitoban community and its relations with the federal government were much more complex than was apparent publicly.

TheForestandBilodeaucases had always generated tension...

One of the most disquieting facets of the language crisis was the symbiosis that developed between extreme right-wing elements and the Conservative Opposition. During the first months of the crisis, the Tories took care to distinguish between their views and those of the extremists; however, in January and February 1984, extremists and Tories increasingly sought each other out, both socially (in demonstrations and so on) and ideologically. This phenomenon became increasingly evident during the legislative hearings, where the most extreme positions were echoed in the legislative building itself.

When the House resumed sitting in early January 1984, most of the...

Manitoba’s French-language crisis can be viewed through many analytical perspectives. The sheer volume and complexity of the events comprising the Manitoba French-language crisis, the intermingling of passion and rational debate over a prolonged period, the conflicting ideologies and principles at play, and the numerous and varying motivations of the actors involved render analysis of the crisis exceedingly difficult. We shall focus here on two approaches that, we believe, have perhaps the greatest explanatory power.

One of the most powerful theoretical explanations of the crisis can be found in the status/symbolism model first proposed in the Canadian context by sociologist Raymond...