Push or Pull? The Exclusion of Ethnocultural Minorities in Montreal’s French School System Before Bill 101 — A Literature Review

This literature review examines whether Montreal’s French Catholic schools excluded ethnocultural minorities before Bill 101. Drawing on historical scholarship, it argues that no single factor can fully explain school enrolment patterns, whether exclusionary practices or the appeal of English-language education. Instead, a combination of ideological, structural, administrative, and socioeconomic factors shaped these patterns. The social and economic prestige of the English language led many families from ethnocultural minorities to choose English-language schooling. At the same time, archival records, oral histories, and contemporary testimonies show that some French Catholic schools and administrators redirected students to English schools. While exclusion was not an official policy, it did take place in everyday practice. There is little evidence of exclusion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It became more significant during the 1930s and the immediate postwar period. During the Quiet Revolution, exclusion declined as concerns about the long-term survival of French grew. Overall, the evidence points to a complex historical reality in which inclusion and exclusion coexisted in different forms and to varying degrees over time.

Parallel title: QUESCREN Working Paper no. 16