Development of Community

I looked forward to going to school. It was a place where I could make paintings and read books all day, every day—until they stopped speaking English to me. It was 1978, and our Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, decreed that Canada should be a bilingual nation—that East and West, English and French, should be united, and Canadians should speak both official languages. At age 7, my parents decided that I could benefit from learning to speak French, and they put me into one of the first bilingual programs available in Calgary. There were only 30 of us in the group, and we stayed together through grade 12.