In 1965, Olga Melikoff, Murielle Parkes and Valerie Neale were leaders of the parent group behind the creation of Canada’s first bilingual education program, at Margaret Pendlebury Elementary School in the Montreal suburb of Saint-Lambert, Quebec. Their education activism laid the groundwork for the French immersion system in Canada. As a result of their efforts, Melikoff, Parkes and Neale are often referred to as Canada’s “founding mothers” of French immersion.
How did it begin?
In the 1950s and 1960s, Melikoff, Parkes and Neale were stay-at-home-mothers and neighbours in Saint-Lambert. They were frustrated by the limited opportunities that existed for their English-speaking children to learn fluent French. They were curious about the opportunities that immersive education, in which teachers address students exclusively in a second language, could offer their children.
“Our goal was to help the children get a start in French by using our ‘controversial’ method – one French teacher speaking only in French to a group of anglophone children. While they were actively involved in play, the children were absorbing a new language,” said Melikoff.
The Breakthrough
After nearly two years of public pressure on the Chambly County School Board from hundreds of involved parents—and in particular from Olga Melikoff, who was elected as a member of the St. Lambert Protestant School Board along the way—the Board agreed to administer one experimental bilingual kindergarten class beginning in the fall of 1965.
The results of immersion education were promising. Students showed early and impressive proficiency in French. Interest among parents continued to grow. A second kindergarten class was added the following year as well as a grade-one class to allow the first experimental group to continue with their immersion program as they ascended grades. The immersion program was implemented across the South Shore within several years and, eventually, elsewhere in the Greater Montreal area. By 1970, bilingual education programs were rapidly spreading due to demand from parents across Canada.
Their Legacy
The year 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the first graduating kindergarten class at Margaret Pendlebury—and, by extension, of French immersion education in Canada. In 2018, Murielle Parkes and Olga Melikoff were awarded a Sheila and Victor Goldbloom Community Service Award by the Quebec Community Groups Network. There are currently over 450 000 students registered in French Immersion programs, across Canada.
Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia