Italian-Quebecers call for apology
When Italians came to Montreal in the last century, despite being Catholics many of them were told to bring their kids to English schools. Now some of them, at least, want an apology from Quebec.
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Kate
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Meezly 12:22 on 2025-03-15 Permalink
Curious to find out how the CAQ will react to this petition, but also kinda know how they’re going to react.
Kate 13:41 on 2025-03-15 Permalink
There may already be a myth in place, via which the French-language schools were brainwashed to feel that any child not from a natively francophone family needed to be educated in English. I haven’t encountered the idea yet, but if this Italian petition has legs, I expect to see it crop up.
Ephraim 22:18 on 2025-03-15 Permalink
@Kate – The Irish and the Italians were kept out of the French system in Montreal… oddly enough, not outside of Montreal, where the Irish orphans were absorbed.
Ian 22:22 on 2025-03-15 Permalink
Perhaps without the metropolis and its tendency toward ghettoization integration was less problematic
Kate 09:16 on 2025-03-16 Permalink
You been watching Heritage Minutes again, Ephraim?
dhomas 10:08 on 2025-03-16 Permalink
My parents arrived here from Italy in the early 60s. They wanted to go to school in French, but were refused and sent to the English schools, instead. I don’t think they care for an apology. It allowed for their kids (and my kids) to have somewhat of a privilege: the right to be instructed in the English system.
Ephraim 10:25 on 2025-03-16 Permalink
@Kate – Discrimination was quite the thing in previous centuries. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Slavic and Greek immigrants weren’t considered to be white.
Ian 13:19 on 2025-03-16 Permalink
And that’s the distinction right there. Even being Roman Catholic wasn’t going to whitewash them enough to ever be considered Québécois. That their descendants are now faulted for not assimilating is the real insult worthy of an apology.
Ephraim 17:12 on 2025-03-16 Permalink
@Ian Adrien Arcand and the Parti national social chrétien still had meetings until 1965 and wasn’t officially dissolved until 2016.
Ian 11:11 on 2025-03-17 Permalink
And yet there are people of my age who mistakenly think the Jewish General was built “for” Jews on the taxpayer dime. But that’s the ethnonationalist “secular” narrative for you.