Keith Spicer, Canada's quirky envoy for reconciliation, dies at 89

As the country's first Commissioner of Official Languages, he oversaw a bilingual mandate. He then led a task force to listen to complaints from Canadians.

Keith Spicer, who as a fiery government official pushed his fellow Canadians to define their national identity and reconcile their bilingualism more than two centuries after the British defeated the French to take Quebec, died August 24 in Ottawa. He was 89 years old.

His death, which occurred in a hospital, was confirmed to The Canadian Press by Nick Spicer, one of his three children.

Raised by anti-Catholic and anti-French Protestant parents, Mr. Spicer began his professional career as a professor of political science before being enlisted by two prime ministers in ombudsman positions, something more risk averse Canadians might do. rejected.

One ​​of the tasks was to get all Canadians to accept that their country was officially bilingual; the other was to listen to them if they complained about language obligations and other irritants.

Mr. Spicer was just 35 in 1970 when Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed him Canada's first Commissioner of Official Languages, responsible for enforcing the Official Languages ​​Act, which granted English and French official status in organizations and institutions under federal jurisdiction.

The law was drafted in the 1960s by a government commission created to respond to demands for linguistic equality from one in four Canadians whose mother tongue was French, and to fend off a volatile trend. secessionist movement in Quebec.

Getting all Canadians to bilingualism, however, was easier said than done. The requirement to conduct domestic air traffic in French as well as English prompted, among other protests, a threat from English-speaking Canadian pilots to disrupt the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Explaining that bilingualism is required of the government and not of individual Canadians, Spicer said the policy provides that "every citizen is served in the language in which he is taxed." But he also promoted the teaching of "French immersion" in English-language schools across Canada.

Known for his vehemence and irreverence, Mr. Spicer favored safari suits and Panama hats, while working as an editor in Ottawa (where the average temperature ranges from 6 degrees Fahrenheit in January to 60 in July). He preferred to drink beer in a glass of wine because, he said, that was what Parisians did.

He cheerfully reminded English speakers that his own affection for French had blossomed in the 10th grade, when he began corresponding with a French girl as a pen pal. He was so fascinated by a photo she had sent him, he says, that he became a confirmed Francophile.

“Bilingualism and biculturalism work better thanks to biology,” he later said: adding shamelessly: “The best place to learn French is in bed. »

In 1990, after the failure of a constitutional compromise that would have given more power to the provinces of Canada and declared Quebec a "distinct society", the first Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Mr. Spicer to take on another difficult task: to lead the Citizens' Forum on Canada's Future, during which he would hear complaints from his fellow citizens about the government and the character of the country. , a federation of provinces and territories, all part of the British Commonwealth, which did not adopt a national flag until 1965 or a national anthem until 1980.

M. Spicer was more or less an official gadfly. Through town halls, polls, videoconferences and other interactive surveys, its Citizen Forum reportedly interacted with up to 700,000 Canadians.

"I thought I was singing 'This land is my land,' Mr Spicer recalled of the ridicule the task force had initially generated, but 'the media and the public heard the 'Looney Tunes' theme'. If I wanted a job without...