Franco-Ontarian
There are more than 600,000 francophones residing in Ontario. According to the 2016 Canadian census, there were 550,600 people living in Ontario who declared French their first official language spoken, 490,715 people who declared French their mother tongue, and 277,045 Ontarians who declared French as the language they speak most often at home. Over 1.4 million Ontarians reported themselves as bilingual, and 1.3 million Ontarians reported partial or full French ethnic origins. French-speaking Ontarians constitute the largest French-speaking community in Canada outside Quebec, as well as the largest minority language group within Ontario, and French is the fourth most common ethnic background in the province after English, Scottish and Irish.
Francophone Assembly of Ontario
The organization was created in 1910 as the "Association canadienne-française d'Éducation de l'Ontario" ("ACFÉO") to lobby for French language education rights in the province. The organization and the Franco-Ontarian community at large faced a serious early crisis when the provincial government adopted Regulation 17 in 1912, effectively banning the teaching of French in schools. The regulation was never fully implemented because of ACFÉO's litigation, and it was eventually repealed in 1927.