What is lost, misunderstood or ignored is that Canada belongs to a rather select fraternity of countries that is officially bilingual. Far from a liability, as it is often portrayed, if valued, properly understood and embraced, bilingualism might give Canada a distinct commercial edge. Like it or not, bilingualism already shapes Canadian life on many levels.
It takes more than the mere existence of a large linguistic minority to qualify as a bilingual country. In Canada, French and English have been used for over 400 years, but only in 1867 were the two officially recognized.
In 1867, the passage of the British North American Act permitted the use of either language in federal or provincial parliamentary debates. The Act also decreed that "both those Languages shall be used in the respective Records and Journals of those Houses" and that "either of those Languages may be used by any Person or in any Pleading or Process in or issuing from any Court of Canada established under this Act, and in or from all or any of the Courts of Quebec." Section 133 of what is now known as the Constitution Act, also provided for the printing of the "Acts of the Parliament of Canada and of the Legislature of Quebec" in both languages.
One can well imagine the volume of translation required by such legislation. In 1934, The Translation Bureau was established to accommodate official demand.
Many changes can be attributed to Québec's Quiet Revolution, not the least of which was the Official Languages Act (1977) This legislation went much farther than that of 1867, and was further defined and refined in 1982 by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and again in 1988 by the new Official Languages Act. The Charter of the French Language (1977) established French as the official language of Québec.
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