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Mouvement pour une école moderne et ouverte


The Mouvement pour une école moderne et ouverte (MÉMO) is a political party in the educational system of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It has governed the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM) since the commission's founding in 1998.

MÉMO was founded in August 1987 to contest that year's elections for the Montreal Catholic School Commission (MCSC). The party was secular and progressive in its orientation, and its primary goal was replacing Quebec's denominational school boards with boards based on language. MÉMO's first president was Marie-France Cloutier, who argued that the MCSC's promotion of Roman Catholic education and values had created an exclusionary climate.

MÉMO was supported in the 1987 elections by the Montreal branch of the Parti Québécois (PQ). The party won four out of nineteen seats. This was regarded by many as a moral victory, in that it marked the first time in several years that an organized opposition movement had won any credible representation on the commission.

MÉMO served as the official opposition to Michel Pallascio's conservative board executive from 1987 to 1990.

In April 1990, one MÉMO commissioner criticized Pallascio's board for passing a resolution mandating that school principals be required to uphold "Christian values." In the same period, the party reiterated its belief that only linguistic school boards could bring about improved cultural relations.

In the 1990 school board elections, new MÉMO leader Kenneth George called for the MCSC to be restructured as a francophone board and for its English-speaking students to be transferred to a new Montreal-wide anglophone board. In this campaign, the party was endorsed by diverse persons and groups such as Montreal mayor Jean Doré, the Parti Québécois, and the English-language Montreal Gazette newspaper. The party won nine seats on the expanded twenty-one member board, against eleven for Pallascio's governing Regroupement scolaire confessionnel (RSC) and one for a MÉMO-aligned independent. Pallascio was personally defeated by a MÉMO candidate. George resigned as leader after the elections and was replaced on a temporary basis by Yves Poulin; Diane De Courcy became the party's full-time leader the following year.


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