The Principal’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Research will also be presented at the event.

“Glendon College is renowned for offering a bilingual education across a wide range of liberal arts disciplines, with a focus on public and international affairs and the study of languages and cultures,” said Robert HachĂ©, 91ŃÇɫ’s vice-president research & Innovation.  “This festival of research provides an opportunity for members of the 91ŃÇÉ« community to learn more about the diversity and broad range of research initiatives taking place at Glendon College.”

“I am delighted to welcome the 91ŃÇÉ« community to this first Glendon Research Festival. Our campus has more than 85 researchers conducting a wide array of projects in fields ranging from mathematics to drama studies, from neuroscience to political science," said Glendon Principal Kenneth McRoberts. The events held this year will feature exciting research on Quebec, education, Aboriginal linguistics and French-English translation. We will also recognize the recent achievements of our colleagues and honour the recipient of the Principal Research Award during an afternoon celebration. We hope that members of the 91ŃÇÉ« community can join us for the Glendon Research Festival and take this opportunity to visit Glendon's beautiful new facilities.”

The festival offers four research events: 

A bilingual conference on the student mobilization in Quebec will be held from 9:45am to 1pm in the BMO Conference Centre at Glendon College.  The conference is organized by Glendon political science Professor Francis Garon and the . Five panellists will explain the social and political origins of the “carré rouge” movement and explore its implications for student tuitions fees and for post-secondary education policies in both Quebec and Ontario.  for more details.

The education is presenting  a special lecture on linguistic and Aboriginal literacy by expert Barbara Burnaby from Memorial University in Newfoundland. The lecture will be an opportunity to learn about how public policy and educational initiatives can help to teach, develop and stabilize the Innu language in Labrador and elsewhere in Canada. The lecture is at the Glendon Auditorium, 91ŃÇÉ« Hall A100, from 6 to 7pm.

Professor AurĂ©lia Klimkiewicz and the Glendon Translation Department are organizing a lecture (in French) on translation theory. Guest speaker Annick Chapdelaine, a translation theorist, translator and literary specialist at McGill University in Montreal, will discuss the challenges of dualist taxonomies in translation. She will draw examples from her work on celebrated American writer William Faulkner. The lecture will take place in the Senior Common Room, third floor, 91ŃÇɫ Hall, from 6 to 6:40pm.

The principal’s office and the Glendon Research Services will host their annual celebration of Faculty research achievements by honouring the recipients of the Awards for Excellence in Teaching and in Research. This celebration provides an opportunity to recognize the success of those colleagues who have received research funding and those who have published books and articles since November 2011. Members of the 91ŃÇÉ« community are invited to attend the celebration in the Senior Common Room, third floor, 91ŃÇÉ« Hall, from 4 to 5:30pm .

For more information please contact Michael Ah Choon, acting research officer, Glendon College at ext. 66829 or mahchoon@glendon.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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The $2.5-million project is led by Francine Martineau of the university's French department, but includes 13 fellow researchers and 59 "partners" from Canada, the United States, France and Japan.

The seven-year plan is to study 400 years of family histories to examine how language has shaped communities and cultures.

"We are looking at three fields of expansion from France that are all basically located across the St. Lawrence, which is New France, Louisiana and Acadia," explained co-investigator of 91ŃÇÉ« [Glendon and the ].

"If we just focused on Canada, then we would miss some important components of North American francophonie, mainly Louisiana – and probably one of the most interesting colonial settings as well, because it involved not only colonization from France, but also secondary migration from Acadia – basically the French language continued to live, but in a completely different setting from the original."

According to Mougeon, the project team plans to reach beyond linguistics and also focus on history and sociology. The team includes experts in linguistics, anthropology, history, geography and computer science. "We believe that you can only understand the evolution of language if you can actually place it in its broader socio-historical setting," said Mougeon.

. . .

The research team received the grant from the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives Program of the (SSHRC).

The project’s focus includes four centuries of history of French on the North American continent in three main colonial settings: Louisiana, New France, which is now Quebec, and Acadia.

Mougeon was also interviewed by the (video clip attached) and spoke about the study with CBC Radio Moncton, NB, March 17.

You can also read the project's .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“My intention is to focus on the history, appointment, as well as the tensions or problems emanating from the vice-regal role in Quebec, particularly in recent times,” says Persaud. “This topic has to do in large measure with Quebec's identity, but it also has a strong federal-provincial interface, as the lieutenant-governor is appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister, a central feature of Canada's constitutional monarchical system.”

Right: Radha Persaud

Since the lieutenant-governor of Quebec underscores the British monarchical nature of that province, a significant question to look at is whether this institutional feature of Quebec's governmental system creates tensions or problems that impede the province's full domestic legitimacy and capacity in the Canadian federation, says Persaud.

“To put it another way, whether the institution of the lieutenant governor is a heritage that enriches or impedes Quebec's ability for self-determination within the federal system, particularly in the areas where it is supposed to have a relatively large measure of provincial autonomy in a federal system that, arguably, was intended to be asymmetrical in spirit, if not in form.”

His research will contribute to a public discourse on the significance and legitimacy of the head of state for Quebec, a province that was central to the compromises reached by the founding partners in the Canadian system of governance. Persaud argues that this discourse is particularly significant for the governments and societies of Quebec, because the current federal constitutional arrangements deviate in some important respects from the general tenets of federalism, and in effect, the conceptions of Canada, as they were represented in 1867.

Persaud has demonstrated a continued professional interest in the role of lieutenant-governors in his previous research and in his teaching at Glendon. In January , lieutenant-governor of Ontario was an invited guest and speaker in Persaud’s class on Canadian government. In his address, Onley talked about his vice-regal role and responsibilities, and fielded questions from the students.

Persaud sees his current project as the commencement of a process of formalizing the head of state’s political-legal standing and power in Quebec and, by implication, the rest of Canada – both legitimating the head of state's power, and formalizing it as a kind of republican move to deal with problems of federalism and the role of the head of state in the parliamentary system.

“Thus, a central question to this study is whether there ought to be a Quebec-based process for selecting a lieutenant governor, or another head of state with residual powers that will give the office more legitimacy for the people of Quebec, rather than the current system of appointment, notwithstanding any process of consultation that may have taken place between the prime minister and the premier before such appointments are made,” he says.

Submitted by Marika Kemeny, Glendon communications officer.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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“It raises some serious questions,” says Martel, who holds the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History. “What did they do with the information?”

Martel, along with co-author , a history professor at Laval University, cover 400 years of language issues in Canada – since the arrival of the first non-native – in their recently released book, . About half of it deals with the last 100 years, including the Quiet Revolution and the Official Language Act. Martel and Pâquet received a two-year Language Policy & Minority Rights grant from the Official Languages Issues in Canada Strategic Grants Program to research material for the book, which, at the moment, is only available in French.

“One of the reasons we wrote the book was to give a sense of where we’re coming from when we talk about language in Canada. It has characterized the way the country has developed since the arrival of the first non-native. This is not only about Quebec, the whole country has had to deal with this issue and it’s a very divisive issue,” says Martel. It’s reassuring to know that language issues have been with us for a long time, he says. They have not just appeared in the last 50 or so years.

But what surprised him was that the federal government felt it necessary for the RCMP to keep files on anyone involved in either side of the bilingualism debate during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal was to assess whether any one person or group constituted a national threat, to prevent social chaos and to ascertain if there were foreign spies behind the scenes, Martel says. But it was also part of a larger stalling tactic by the government to keep the status quo, as were the use of royal commissions and committees to study the issue.

Even today, the RCMP won’t release many of the documents from that time period saying they could constitute a security risk or jeopardize the conduct of international affairs or the defence of Canada, says Martel. When a document is released, most of it is usually blacked out.

Left: Marcel Martel

What the authors found, despite the government’s wish that the language issue would disappear, is that change was instigated not by MPs and other government officials, but by individuals. “It is people that forced government to deal with the issue,” says Martel. “The citizen, through demonstrations and petitions, has played a large role in the development of language policy in Canada.” The extent of that role surprised Martel.

He gives the example of Georges Forest, a Manitoba man in the mid-1970s who received a parking ticket or something similar, in English only. He was so mad he decided to challenge not the ticket itself, but the fact that it was not also in French. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which .

Martel also outlines how French-speaking parents won the right to send their kids to French-speaking schools outside of Quebec, run by French-speaking administrators. In 1982, Section 23 of the Constitution came into existence, which guaranteed this right to parents no matter where in Canada they live.

The language rights issue, however, is still far from over, he says. This is clear by the latest struggle in Moncton, New Brunswick, over calls for store signs to be posted in both official languages. It will be an issue that continues to shape Canada well into the future.

In addition, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has recently asked the federal court to intervene in the ongoing census debate, arguing that the long-term census form should remain because governments need the data on languages spoken at home.

Martel has already begun researching his next project, which will deal with the RCMP’s surveillance activities and operations regarding French-speaking groups, natives and African Canadians from about 1945 to 1984 when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created and took over the surveillance and security intelligence job. He has already published a paper in the Canadian Historical Review in June 2009 that looks at the RCMP and hippies, titled '', which he says “will in part contribute to the growing literature on state repression.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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