Forty years after the creation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow examines the responses of Canada's federal and provincial governments to the Commission's recommendations on education. In contrast to the many critics of official bilingualism, Matthew Hayday argues that the educational programs funded by the government's Official Languages in Education Program, launched in 1970, had a significant impact on how Canadians view their national identity, encouraging increasing acceptance of official bilingualism and linguistic duality.

Franco-Ontarians feel that they are both part of and rejected by Canada's two founding peoples. Although proud of their heritage, many hide the French side of their lives from the surrounding English majority. Some are pessimistic about their future; but for many in the region commonly known as Nouvel-Ontario, French roots run deep.

At Confederation, most French Canadians felt their homeland was Quebec; they supported the new arrangement because it separated Quebec from Ontario, creating an autonomous French-Canadian province loosely associated with the others. Unaware of other French-Canadian groups in British North America, Quebeckers were not concerned with minority rights, but only with the French character and autonomy of their own province. However, political and economic circumstances necessitated the granting of wide linguistic and educational rights to Quebec's Anglo-Protestant minority. Growing bitterness over the prominence of this minority in what was expected to be a French province was amplified by the discovery that French-Catholic minorities were losing their rights in other parts of Canada. Resentment at the fact that Quebec had to grant minority rights, while other provinces did not, intensified French-Quebec nationalism. At the same time, French Quebeckers felt sympathy for their co-religionists and co-nationalists in other provinces and tried to defend them against assimilating pressures. Fighting for the rights of Acadians, Franco-Ontarians, or western Métis eventually led Quebeckers to a new concern for the French fact in other provinces. Professor Silver concludes that by 1900 Quebeckers had become thoroughly committed to French-Canadian rights not just in Quebec but throughout Canada, and had become convinced that the very existence of Confederation was based on such rights. Originally published in 1982, this new edition includes a new preface and conclusion that reflect upon Quebec's continuing struggle to define its place within Canada and the world.

Since the 1960s, bilingualism has become a defining aspect of Canadian identity. And yet, today, relatively few English Canadians speak or choose to speak French. Why has personal bilingualism failed to increase as much as attitudes about bilingualism as a Canadian value? In So They Want Us to Learn French, Matthew Hayday explores the various ways in which bilingualism was promoted to English-speaking Canadians from the 1960s to the late 1990s. He analyzes the strategies and tactics employed by organizations on both sides of the bilingualism debate. Against a dramatic background of constitutional change and controvery, economic turmoil, demographic shifts, and the on-again, off-again possibility of Quebec separatism, English-speaking Canadians had to decide whether they and their children should learn French. Highlighting the personal experiences of proponents and advocates, Hayday provides a vivid narrative of a complex, controversial, and fundamentally Canadian question.

The book contains a comprehensive selection of outstanding and influential articles on bilingual education in the USA and the rest of the world. It is designed for instructors and students, with questions and activities based on each of the 19 readings for students to engage in active learning.