VOLUNTEER MEMORIES
CPF volunteers past and present have worked tirelessly to introduce and reinforce French language education in hundreds of schools in British Columbia and Yukon, ever since the West Coast’s first immersion program was introduced in 1968 in Coquitlam, B.C.
All of these passionate parents and educators who have been advocating for French second language learning for nearly 40 years have granted students some amazing opportunities, as we learned in Summer 2015 through our project, titled Where Are They Now?
As we grow, we continue to collect stories of those of who have contributed to the success of French programs in B.C. and Yukon.
Founding Stories
B.C.’s first class of French immersion students, from Coquitlam, were already in high school by the time other districts began to pick up on the popularity and value of the program. In the mid-1970s, districts around the Lower Mainland began opening classrooms to French. However, not all school boards were eager to trial the idea.
“When we began to promote the French immersion program in Mission, we were confronted with much opposition from the school district,” said Jack Ethier, a former teacher and CPF member who was instrumental in bringing French immersion to the Fraser Valley in the 1970s. But Ethier and others in Mission found a work-around. First, they petitioned for a Francophone school – something that was largely supported by anglophone parents as well, even though their children would not be able to enrol. Seeing the level of support for second-language education, though, the district had no choice but to open a French immersion option as well.
Jeanne Fryer, another Fraser Valley francophone, helped rally that parental support in Mission and Abbotsford as well. “We were pressing reluctant School Boards in both districts for over a year and a half,” Fryer said.
Fryer, who taught French lessons at her local library at the time, recalled storming the Abbotsford School Board office with around 50 other parents to present the case for French immersion.
Ultimately, the board voted 4-3 to launch the program, which welcomed Abbotsford students for the first time in September 1979.
“Canadian Parents for French was instrumental in kick-starting the French immersion programs in both the school districts of Abbotsford and Mission. I was, and continue to be to this very day, truly proud and honoured to have been able to assist in this meaningful and successful process.”
Around the same time in Burnaby, Deanna Cazes’ children were toddlers, and she wanted to make sure they and their friends could have the opportunity to learn both of Canada’s Official Languages. Cazes rallied support for a Burnaby French Language Playschool by roping in friends and parents from church and preschool, setting up information booths in the mall and driving the discussion in her city. They raised money to hire a teacher for the playschool and created what would later become the Burnaby Chapter of Canadian Parents for French.
In 2015, CPF BC & Yukon met with Cazes and other founding members of CPF Burnaby to learn about the early days of French immersion in their city. Cazes was also invited to CPF BC & Yukon’s 2018 AGM to celebrate 40 years of CPF BC & Yukon. She shared more of her reflections with the crowd that weekend.
Even as French immersion programs cropped up around the West, some neighbourhoods were being left out, like the Hastings-Sunrise area in Vancouver. Recognizing the richness that an appreciation for multiculturalism can offer to a student’s life, Elaine Barbour of Vancouver set out, much like Cazes and the Burnaby parents, to establish a French immersion preschool in her own neighbourhood.
CPF BC & Yukon sat down with Elaine in 2015 to talk about how she got the preschool off the ground.
Building Resources to Share
It wasn’t just enough for people like Cazes, Fryer, Ethier and Barbour to get French immersion programs up and running in their districts. It’s one thing to have a classroom dedicated to French; it’s quite another to have its shelves lined with French-language books, games and resources. So, as we’ve seen our volunteers do time and time again, parents and teachers around B.C. and Yukon improvised.
Linda Shulman, an early-days volunteer in Vancouver, put together a booklet called Quoi faire en Vancouver, which offered out-of-school activities for students and families to do in French on their own time.
Brenda Dewonck was among the first French immersion teachers in Richmond. She found herself working her colleagues outside of class hours so that her students would have resources to read the next day.
CPF BC & Yukon caught up with Brenda and her husband Bernard – both of whom also volunteered for the organization – in 2015.
Ensuring French is Here to Stay
School boards change with each municipal election, funding ebbs and flows with who’s in charge in Victoria and Ottawa, and demands on school space evolve, and often, programs like French immersion get put under the microscope.
It’s what CPF Saanich President Margaret Yandel found herself up against in the 1990s. “
“Not more than a few months into my term I was faced with the challenge of advocating for the FSL K-4 program in order to keep it off the chopping block due to budget pressures,” Yandel told CPF BC & Yukon. “I was at a loss as to where to start but magically the stars aligned to bring the necessary parents and resources together to save the program. This was accomplished within less than a week’s notice of the impending School Board meeting. Miracles do happen; the program was saved and exists to this day.”
Challenges to French-language education are not disappearing in B.C., though more than 20 years have passed since Yandel and her volunteer colleagues succeeded in ensuring that young students in Saanich have a chance to learn a second language in elementary school.
Programs in rural areas of B.C. are hampered by a lack of qualified teachers, which in turn threatens enrolment. As numbers fall, so does funding and, potentially, a district’s interest in continuing the program.
CPF South Cariboo Chapter has taken it upon themselves to attend teacher recruitment conferences as far away as Edmonton, to talk up the benefits of living and working in B.C.’s central Interior. Their efforts today, in 2020, are nothing new either. For decades, CPF volunteers from rural B.C. have played big roles in expanding the popularity of second-language learning in the province.
CPF BC & Yukon met with CPF Williams Lake founder Val Biffert in 2015 to learn about how she worked to promote French immersion in rural B.C.