Sault Ste. Marie language resolution

The Sault Ste. Marie language resolution was a government motion passed on January 29, 1990 by Sault Ste. Marie City Council, the governing body of the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, which resolved that English was the sole working language of city government. The resolution ignited a national controversy which made the city a flashpoint in the Meech Lake Accord debate.

The Sault Ste. Marie resolution was not the first of its kind in Ontario, but Sault Ste. Marie was the largest municipality to pass such a resolution and bore the brunt of the controversy.

The resolution was struck down by a court ruling in 1994, and ceased to have legal effect.

In 2010, John Rowswell, a subsequent mayor of Sault Ste. Marie, apologized to French Canadians across the country for the resolution.

Sault Ste. Marie was founded by French-speaking missionaries in 1623 but had become overwhelmingly English-speaking by the twentieth century.

In response to a French-language education controversy which began in 1987 when a group of Franco-Ontarian families lobbied to have a new French school opened in the city, the Sault Alliance for the Preservation of English Language Rights (SAPELR) was formed and began circulating petitions to have this resolution passed by council. The group worked in concert with the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada (APEC), a lobby group which was concurrently campaigning against the provincial government's French Language Services Act. Although that law dealt only with provincial government services, APEC's strategy was to convince municipalities that they would be required to provide services in French, regardless of cost or benefit, in an attempt to convince the municipalities to pass this type of resolution. As a result of the schooling controversy, the SAPELR petition quickly garnered over 25,000 signatures.

The resolution was widely seen as retaliation for Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa's move to override the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that declared parts of Bill 101 unconstitutional. Bill 101 had declared French as the only official language of Quebec.

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