Vers une Amélioration de la Prestation de Services de Santé pour les Franco-Ontariens

Despite Canada’s linguistic duality status, the francophone community continues to be neglected by the country's authorities. More specifically, the limited scope and access to health services offered to francophones in Ontario pose a serious threat to this population. Facilities providing health services continue to ignore existing health care policies. This situation imposes several actions at the federal, legislative and community levels necessary to ensure the bilingual guarantee promised to the Canadian population. Among these, we must increase the Francophone presence in decision-making groups to ensure the design and establishment of health programs and services focused on the unique and distinct needs of Franco-Ontarians. Moreover, federal financial commitment to Francophone community organizations is essential in order to provide more health services in French, especially in northern and rural communities in the province. Finally, government funding for future research on the health of Francophones is necessary since this will serve as a solid basis for determining how to better serve this population. To achieve this, we would have to consider lobbying, encouraging institutions that provide health services to obtain their bilingual designation, and updating the French Language Services Act. However, by continuing inaction, Franco-Ontarians risk becoming assimilated into the rest of the population, wasting away and seeing their health deteriorating. This article seeks in particular to point out the need to improve the delivery of health services in French in Ontario.

Donald Creighton and the French Fact, 1920s-1970s

Donald Creighton is remembered as an anti-French bigot. Looking at his career in its entirety, this paper argues that such a caricature obscures a more complex story. As a historian, Creighton relied on a series of stereotypes - some negative, others positive - to describe and explain French Canada. In the 1960s and 1970s, his outdated stereotypes left him unable to understand Quebec nationalism. Although capable of intemperate remarks, Creighton's position was more thoughtful: for example, he distrusted devolution of powers to the provinces and he argued that French secondary schools in Ontario would render Franco-Ontarians second-class citizens, unable to compete in a labour market dominated by English.

Acculturation ou assimilation: technique d'analyse et tentative de mesure chez les Franco-ontariens

In describing the nature of an ethnic minority, the author distinguishes between two concepts: assimilation and acculturation. The former is the end result of a minority's contacts with the society in which it exists and through which it has lost its cultural heritage; the latter can be conceived of as a dynamic process, through which the individual is constantly absorbing, in various degrees, the norms, values and customs of the majority.On the basis of this notion of acculturation the author has devised a simple instrument permitting the measuring of the degree to which various minorities have adhered to the total (majoritarian) society. Two criteria, a person's educational background and his use of language, are utilized to place an individual on a graph, showing the degree to which he is part of the majoritarian or minoritarian community.The data required were collected through a questionnaire administered to two samples of Franco-Ontario school children, one in grade eight, the other in grade twelve. There were 2,900 respondents drawn from five different regions of Ontario.The principal findings are that there are marked differences in the degree of acculturation of Franco-Ontarians in the different regions (the score usually ranged from 20 per cent to 80 per cent), and that over 43 per cent of the school children were in fact undergoing the process of acculturation.