The Debate on School Governance and its Religious Dimension in French Ontario: a Divided Community (1980-1998)
This article studies the debate on the religious stakes of school management within the Franco-Ontarian community. This debate shows the persistence, at least in certain circles, of the structuring role of the religious referent in the institutionalization of the Franco-Ontarian community after the public disengagement of the Church and the ideological upheaval of the Quiet Revolution. This phenomenon has been largely neglected by historiography. In the 1980s, the public space of the Franco-Ontarian community was increasingly characterized by an ideological, cultural and religious pluralism that did not, however, lead to the elimination of Catholicism from the identity consciousness of a substantial part of the province’s francophone population. In its demands to gain control of its educational institutions, the network of civil society organizations thus called for a dual network of French-language school boards, both Catholic and public, throughout the province, which it finally obtained in 1998.