History
French has been a language of government in the part of Canada that is today Quebec, with limited interruptions, since the arrival of the first French settlers in 1608, and has been entrenched in the Constitution of Canada since 1867. English has been a language of government in each of the provinces since their inception as British colonies.
Institutional bilingualism in various forms therefore predates the Canadian Confederation in 1867. However, for many years English occupied a de facto privileged position, and French was not fully equal. The two languages have gradually achieved a greater level of equality in most of the provinces, and full equality at the federal level. However in Quebec, the trend has been away from equality. In the 1970s English lost its status of full legal equality with French in Quebec, and today French is, both in practice and in law, the province's sole official language.
Read more about this topic: Bilingualism In Canada
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)