Features
From the Bottom Up
From a Communist town council to French-immersion supporters, new book explores grassroots social efforts in Canada over past 80 years
BY TERESA PITMAN
It's the 1930s. The Great Depression is in full swing, times are tough, and the Communist Party is officially illegal in Canada. But it's during this time that a Communist municipal government is elected in the most unlikely of places — a small town in southwestern Alberta called Blairmore. Of course, the town councillors don't call themselves Communists — thus getting around the pesky legal issues — but once elected, they change the town's tax system, make the anniversary of the Russian Revolution an official holiday and refuse to celebrate Remembrance Day.
“They found the chink in the armour that let them achieve their goals,” says Prof. Matthew Hayday, History, co-editor of the newly published Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements, where Blairmore's story is told. The book is a collection of articles and essays about various grassroots attempts to effect change in Canada over the past 80 years.
“The Blairmore history, told by Kyle Franz, a PhD student in history at Queen's University, is a fascinating story, especially because Alberta is known today to be so conservative,” says Hayday.
But the Communist revolution in Blairmore enjoyed only temporary success, he adds. Although the councillors were re-elected once by acclamation, their successors in the next election reversed most of the changes.
A similar reversal is being seen in the case of French-immersion classes for New Brunswick students — the topic of Hayday's chapter in the book, titled “Mad at Hatfield's Tea Party.” The historian's interest in the issues surrounding bilingualism in Canada led him to explore the experiences of an organization called Canadian Parents for French. This group of New Brunswick parents became politically active when their local school board began turning away children whose parents wanted them in French-immersion classes because only a limited number of spots had been allotted.
“My article is a case study on how this group ultimately took its fight to get the local school board to open up more spaces for French-immersion students to the provincial and federal governments,” says Hayday. “Their protests became the basis for new French-immersion policies set by the Ministry of Education. It shows how a small local group can actually change policy for an entire province.”
The title “Mad at Hatfield's Tea Party” refers to an incident when the protesting parents showed up at the provincial legislature and were invited in by then-premier Richard Hatfield and served tea using the elegant legislative china.
“I think it says something about how differently people in social movements are treated depending on how they are perceived,” says Hayday. “Most protesters don't get invited in for tea with the premier.”
Today, however, members of Canadian Parents for French are seeing their hard-won victories being eroded, he says.
“Around the same time the book came out, the New Brunswick government announced that it was planning to drop French immersion in grades 1 to 4 starting in September, despite the research showing how important it is to start early. I did a lot of interviews with the New Brunswick media that week. And now Canadian Parents for French is remobilizing to fight these changes and not let the organization's past achievements slip away.”
Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements is based on a March 2007 conference Hayday helped organize while he was doing a post-doctoral stint at Mount Allison University. The book is interdisciplinary, including contributions from researchers in sociology, political science, history, women's studies and education.
If there's a lesson to be distilled from this book, he thinks it might be in a quote from Laurie Arron, an activist who worked for EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere): “Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” In other words, says Hayday, if you're seeking social change, you'll achieve more when you “do the best you can, work quickly, don't get bogged down in the process and don't hold out for ideal solutions and therefore end up with nothing. Be pragmatic.”