School for Unity

The dissension between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians is Canada's central problem. Like many another good citizen, William Sherwood Fox, president of the University of Western Ontario, has long been disturbed by it. In 1933 he went to the small Quebec village of Trois Pistoles on the St. Lawrence, asked the villagers to take in English-speaking students as summer boarders. At first the French were wary, suspecting a conspiracy to change their way of life. But Dr. Fox finally persuaded them.

Each summer since then, students have come to live as their hosts live, learn to like them and be liked. They hold informal language classes, hear French spoken daily, enjoy a vacation while learning. The Quebec and Ontario departments of education now send their language teachers to Trois Pistoles. The townspeople offer prizes and scholarships. The Carnegie Corporation of New York underwrites some students' expenses. Next step planned is an English-speaking counterpart of Trois Pistoles somewhere in Ontario.

The first year there were only 26 students, mostly from Ontario. This year there were 171 students from all nine of Canada's provinces (and a few from the U.S.).

The students learned something besides a language. Said Coed Tillie Jensen: "What [the French] want is to be Canadians. [We] were surprised to see how much alike we are." Said Helen Gilmour: "From what we had read and heard we believed the French-Canadians were ignorant, backward, distrustful, obstinately teaching their big families to nurse a resentful feeling that they were treated by the English as a conquered people. We found they are neither ignorant nor backward, but they cling to their traditions as we revere our own. ... I felt among friends. . . . We found we are all human beings, with much in common."

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