The faculty of education of the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface will be 25 years old in 1997. It was founded during the rush of events that followed the report of the Laurendeau-Dunton Royal Commission, which recommended ways of promoting official bilingualism in all regions of Canada and led to the Official Languages Act in 1969. Official language minority groups needed this sort of institution if they were to flourish. Franco-Manitobans had long been calling for their own normal school, to train new teachers for the schools where French, and later social studies, were to be taught. French was in the process of being reinstated as a language of instruction in the public schools, under Bill 113 of the Manitoba Legislature, and so it was fitting that student teachers be taught in French.
At the same time as the Manitoba government's announcement of its proposal to establish a teacher's college in Saint-Boniface, the federal government was recommending that a single, centrally located facility be established for all of Western Canada. Finally, in 1971, representatives from the provinces and Ottawa agreed to establish the Institut pédagogique de Saint-Boniface, and to assign it the task of supplying highly qualified teachers for the growing numbers of schools using French as the language of instruction. In September 1972, the newly founded Institut welcomed 63 students who enrolled to study in French. Through its affiliation with the University of Manitoba, the Institut offers students the same university degrees as those granted by the University's Faculty of Education, and the Manitoba Department of Education grants the same teaching certificate to graduates of both institutions. In 1992, the faculty began to offer graduate-level programs.
The history of the faculty, its present-day activities and its plans for the future are all quintessentially Canadian. Like other institutions that were established in those heady times, it continues to sustain the national vision we have kept before us for over a hundred years now.
