The students who had the greatest concentration of French courses were those in the programmes of Modern Languages and Literatures (mll) and Latin and French (l&f). A somewhat diminished load formed part of the Modern History and Modern Languages programme (mhml), and a core Honour course in literature was available in each year of such programmes as English Language and Literature (ell), Modern History, and Music. The basic principle was to provide, over the four years, “coverage” of French literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with additional instruction in oral and written French incorporated into the more intensive programs (mll, l&f, mhml). The fullest scope was provided in mll, with obligatory Old French and sixteenth-century literature and a small number of options in fourth year. The General Course programme reflected, on a considerably reduced scale, the same attempt at coverage.

The department’s offerings, like the programmes in which they were available, provided little or no choice for students or for instructors. A student in second-year ell, for example, either took the course on seventeenth-century literature or did not take French at all. An instructor teaching a given literature course was presented with a previously determined list of texts, though in some cases provision was made for the assignment of supplementary readings. Uniformity of content and of standards was ensured by common examinations at the end of each academic year. Indeed, final examinations were an essential part of the system. For example, of the thirty-one French courses of every sort listed in the 1960-61 calendar, only the four in oral French, the first-year course in phonetics, and the second-year course (one hour per week for one term) in bibliography did not have a three-hour examination in April-May. (The oral courses did, however, have their own end-of-year test.) In

each of the second, third, and fourth years, the major Honour course (2e, 3d, 4a) involved two separate written examinations. A student in third- or fourth-year mll had to write five three-hour papers in French alone, in addition to whatever was required for the other language and the pass option(s).

Each of the four colleges in existence at the beginning of the 1960s undertook to offer as nearly complete a slate of courses as possible. Some of the less heavily subscribed courses were given in only one or two colleges, but even Trinity, with the smallest staff complement, managed to mount a very broad spectrum. (It did not feel any need to present the rko courses, since all Trinity students were obliged to take Religious Knowledge.) The assignment of staff to teach specific courses was determined by each college head, while course content was decided jointly among the college departments. The combined departments did not, however,

have autonomy to prescribe the number of French courses that would be required in any one year of a given programme or even the number of hours involved. Since there was no separate programme in French language and literature, French was always a component of some other programme and thus subject to the authority of the committee of the Faculty of Arts and Science that had jurisdiction over that programme. Of these committees, the one which exercised the most far-reaching influence was that responsible for mll.

In terms of pedagogy, the approach to literature at the beginning of the 1960s continued to be largely historical. Works were situated in a cultural and biographical milieu, and their characteristics as representative of a literary movement, a social setting, or an author’s thought were identified. Consideration of “internal” elements tended to concentrate on themes. The teaching of written

French stressed a thorough grasp of grammar and relied heavily on the practice of thème (translation to French) and version (translation to English). Although francophone colleagues regularly taught in French, a substantial number of literature and composition classes at all levels were conducted in English, and in the 1960 final examinations, apart from the use of French in translation and free composition on language papers, only the fourth-year stylistics course required that candidates write an answer in French (for one question out of three), and it was the only paper in which the questions were formulated in French.

The students who took the department’s offerings had all completed Ontario grade 13 French (or equivalent, for the relatively small number from outside the province) and had therefore all written the same examinations in each of authors and composition at the end of high school. Despite the inevitable differences in

the abilities of individual students, the department could assume a large measure of uniformity in their preparation in French. All students in mhml had grade 13 standing in at least two languages, as did those in mll, who were also required to have grade 13 Latin. Since a substantial number of the students taking an Honours programme involving a major component of French were intending to become teachers, chiefly at the secondary level, the department kept closely in touch with developments in the requirements for Ontario College of Education certification. As early as 1957, for example, the department had felt concern about the new requirements for type a certificate credits, fearing they were too “quantitative”; and in 1959 the department noted with interest the creation of a new type a certificate in French language and literature (francophone stream).

Virtually every element of the preceding sketch would be substantially changed by

1975 and in many cases by the end of the 1960s. The first noteworthy initiative was the undertaking to create a programme in French Language and Literature (fll), analogous to the program in English. Motivated in part by the establishment of the new type a certificate just mentioned, the department discussed, in a meeting of 18 November 1960, the feasibility of a “graduating department in fll.” The necessary procedures of committee work, reports, and acceptance by the Faculty of Arts and Science were followed, and as of 1964-65 students could be admitted by petition from the second year of mll, mhml, or l&f into the third year of the new fll programme. Although the department now enjoyed the autonomy of being able to specify the course-load for its “own” specialists (subject to approval by Arts and Science), its offerings were still largely controlled by its participation in mll: there were no courses specific to fll that did not also appear among the options for mll students. fll required more courses but not different ones. It was intended that the

first two years of a fll programme should be subsequently be implemented, and a committee chaired by John Walker worked long and hard formulating the necessary proposals and presenting them to the department. However, this enterprise was overtaken by the advent of the New Programme in 1969, and for its short existence among the Honour courses, fll never developed beyond a third- and fourth-year programme.

Apart from a renumbering of courses in 1964-65 and some minor adjustments in content, the department’s curriculum remained stable during the first half of the 1960s, with the modest addition of an rko course for third year in 1960 and for fourth year in 1961 – a move towards more “service” courses that would expand considerably after 1969. The 1965-66 session, however, saw a number of changes that were indicative of developing trends. The first-year Honour literature course

ceased to be devoted to a specific historical period (Romanticism) and became a first attempt at offering an initiation to methods of analysis for works representing the three main literary genres. Instead of being a one-term, one-hour-per-week course paired with drama, French-Canadian literature was offered as a course in its own right, now available in third year. The increasing awareness of the importance of linguistic studies was recognized by the creation of courses in Semantics and in Structure of the French Language (each one hour per week). Perhaps most significantly, French literature no longer seemed to stop around the Second World War: for the first time a course was offered on contemporary authors (although the course on literary criticism still had a terminus ad quem of 1940). And finally, a Senior Essay course was created, allowing selected students to pursue, for the first time, an interest not represented by the department’s regular offerings.

Also as of 1965-66, a greater degree of choice was offered to students in the third and fourth years of mll, mhml, l&f, and ell. In particular, Old French and sixteenth-century literature became optional for mll students (though the calendar now advised that Old French was required for graduate studies). The principle of complete coverage had been shifted to the fll programme, but the “core” courses in continental literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth century remained obligatory in the second through fourth years of the main Honours programmes.

These modest, though significant, changes in the curriculum were accompanied by developments in the examination system and in pedagogy during the period of the 1960s. The practice of a common final examination in every course (sometimes with two exams for a single course) gradually gave way to the idea of reducing the number of examinations and of designating a number of courses in which individual

instructors would be allowed to assume complete responsibility for the evaluation of their students. The 1963-64 session saw the first major revision in this respect. As of that year, the rko courses ceased to have a final examination, the Honour seventeenth- and eighteenth-century courses had one each rather than two, the Old French and sixteenth-century courses were combined into a single examination, and each of the second- and third-year (non-concentration) General courses tested both authors and composition in one. The second major revision occurred in 1965-66, when the number of final university examinations was further reduced, so that in each year of the Honours programmes only the “core” literature course and the composition course were examined with a common paper. All other Honour courses were now tested within the individual colleges.

This development in the approach to examinations was paralleled by a changing

attitude towards the relative importance of term marks. When the final common examination was seen as the culmination of a course and the surest test of a student’s ability, term marks were of little importance. But gradually the evaluation of a student’s performance over the year on a variety of assignments was given increasing weight, although even in a given year that weight might vary from course to course. In 1966-67, for example, the term mark in the first-year Honour literature course was worth 33.3 per cent, and in the corresponding second-year course, it was 62.5 per cent. Two years later, the term mark in the first-year course had risen to 50 per cent, while in the second-year course it had declined slightly to 60 per cent (no doubt for easier calculation).

The same period of the 1960s saw important pedagogical changes, the first of which was a gradual increase in the use of French as the language of instruction.

Several factors converged to encourage this development: the new focus on bilingualism and biculturalism in Canada; the movement in the secondary school system towards teaching French as a living language, with greater stress on oral expression; the hiring boom, which both increased the complement of francophone staff and added a number of anglophones whose own graduate programmes had been conducted in French.

No concrete evidence is available to measure the extent to which French was used in the classroom at any given point, but it is safe to say that by 1969, or even before, it was the norm to teach in French and to expect students to respond in that language. The final examinations over this period provide some indication of the trend. Curiously, apart from the upper-level stylistics course already mentioned, it was in the first-year Honour literature course that, in 1962, it first became

obligatory to answer one question in French. The requirement was extended to one of the two second-year Honour literature examinations in 1963 (this move was temporarily reversed in 1965). Increasingly, students were given the option of writing in either language, and more and more examinations were formulated in French, but it was only in 1968 that the principle of requiring at least one answer in French was implemented at all levels for both General and Honour courses. The sole exceptions were the third-year General non-concentration course (which was brought into conformity in 1969) and third- and fourth-year Honour students who were not taking a French composition course (e.g., ell, Modern History, Music). Toward the latter part of this period, the first-year Honour course again led the way, with the proportion of answers in French raised to 50 per cent as of 1967.

In the teaching of written French, the reliance on thème and version, both as

The 1960s saw a large number of new appointments, in the majority of cases young academics at or near the beginning of their careers. Trained in or receptive to (some might have said “obsessed with”) newer critical theories and methods, particularly in literary studies, many of these men and women tended to push for greater flexibility in curriculum and more freedom in methods of evaluation. Concurrently, the province of Ontario established the Hall-Dennis Commission, in the wake of whose report, Living and Learning, the common grade 13 examinations were abolished, the concept of letting students progress at their own pace became widespread in the secondary system, and individual high schools

determined the marks on the basis of which applicants were admitted to the university. And in the university itself, the Faculty of Arts and Science set up the Macpherson Committee with a mandate to propose sweeping changes in the undergraduate programme. The Macpherson Report led to the institution of the New Programme in 1969-70. (The programme was phased in, with 100/200-series courses available in 1969-70 and 300/400-series courses in 1970-71.) Under the new system, the distinction between General and Honours disappeared, failure in a course no longer meant failure in the whole year, and the principle of freedom of choice became paramount: although various courses had departmentally established prerequisites (relatively minimal in French during the first years of the New Programme), the situation had many of the characteristics of a cafeteria menu. The preface to the Arts and Science New Programme calendar for 1969-70 set the tone: “Since the choice of courses and combinations of courses is

largely left to the student, each in effect may follow an individual academic program from year to year.”

The Department of French responded to the impending implementation of the New Programme by setting up a committee chaired by Pierre Robert to develop a series of courses that would replace those in existence. Not the least noteworthy aspect of the Robert Committee was the presence and active participation of student members. The curriculum in French that the department presented to students under the New Programme constituted a considerable revamping of its offerings. The presence of a single language course at each of the 100-, 200-, and 300-series levels, combining instruction in written and oral French, rested on two suppositions, one of which would soon be undermined by the simultaneous changes in the secondary system: that all students could be considered to have received similar

preparation in French at high school. The other assumption was that the department’s responsibility did not extend to providing instruction in French for students who had not taken the language at the grade 13 level.

It was soon recognized, however, that there was indeed a clientele for pre-grade 13 French, and in 1973, in order to tap the potential pool of enrolments, the department introduced such a course. The following year a further refinement was made by splitting the single course into two, one for beginners and the other for students who had some background in high school French but had not studied the language in grade 13. The question of different levels of preparation among those who did have grade 13 French would be partially addressed in 1978-79 with the creation of a “non-specialist” stream of language courses, though in theory the difference between this and the specialist stream corresponded to a difference

between students who studied French as an essential component in a literary and linguistic programme and those who saw French as a useful adjunct to some other discipline.

The department’s earlier modest offerings of literature courses for students whose main interest lay elsewhere were continued in the New Programme with three “mode” courses (Tragic Literature, Comic Literature, and Realism and Idealism), which did not count towards specialization. (These were dropped in 1974.) The main body of literature courses above the 100-series level were grouped either into currents (e.g., classical, philosophical, realistic) or into genres, themselves delimited chronologically (e.g., Drama 1600-1800). French-Canadian literature was still under-represented, with a single full course devoted to it (and a 50 per cent component of one first-year course). The number of linguistic offerings enjoyed a

considerable increase in importance, with six full courses on such subjects as Structure of Modern French, History of the French Language, Semantics, and Advanced Stylistics. The possibility of independent study, an outgrowth of the previously mentioned Senior Essay, was expanded to each of the 200-, 300-, and 400-series levels.

Students were not the only ones who wanted at times to pursue specialized interests not represented by the department’s regular offerings. Many of the new staff appointments of the mid-1960s were not yet members of the School of Graduate Studies but were eager to teach a course on a topic related to their own area of research. An accommodation appeared in 1969-70 as part of the about-to-disappear fll programme in the form of six inter-college options (icos), specialized seminars on a subject proposed by the instructor and approved by the

Executive Committe of the department. With the full implementation of the New Programme the following year, the series of icos became a regular part of the course offerings; their number rose to an all-time high of eleven in 1971-72 and declined slightly to eight in 1974-75.

The concept of interdisciplinarity was reflected in the New Programme not only by the many combinations of courses now possible but also by the creation of a number of courses that did not fall within the traditional purview of a given department. At first directly under the aegis of the Faculty of Arts and Science (with changing collective rubrics), such courses gradually became subsumed by the increasing development of college-based programmes. From the beginning, members of the Department of French were actively involved in the teaching of these courses; in 1971-72, for example, of the twenty-two interdisciplinary courses

sponsored by the Faculty, five were taught by staff of the department, on topics such as Communications: Theory and Practice, The Science Fiction Novel, and Understanding Quebec. Soon the development of Cinema Studies programmes would provide an opportunity for colleagues to teach in that field as well. Some of the courses that first appeared under the interdisciplinary rubric would find long life as part of such college programmes as African Studies, Jewish Studies, and Canadian Studies. Similarly, some courses that were first offered as ICOs would be transformed into elements of the department’s regular programme. For instance, Pierre Ducretet’s 1973-74 ico Introduction to the Art of Translation was the forerunner of the translation courses that form an important component of the curriculum in the 1990s.

The New Programme provided the Department of French with a degree of

autonomy that it had not enjoyed while under the constraints of the mll and mhml programmes. Henceforth (subject to Faculty approval), the department determined the constitution of specialist and double specialist programmes (and later, of major and minor programmes) in French. From the beginning, the specialist programme maintained the principle of distribution: of a minimum of ten courses, at least one from the linguistic category; at least three in literature, of which one before 1800 and one after 1800; language proficiency in both oral and written expression. Requirements for the double specialist programme were the same, except that a total of only seven courses was needed.

The greater freedom of choice which the New Programme presented to students meant that it was essential to provide them with adequate academic counselling so that their choices would be well informed. Beginning in 1972-73, the department

listed in the calendar the names of academic advisers in French in each of the colleges, and the same year saw the first appearance of the departmental brochure, designed to supplement the laconic entries in the calendar. The brochure has been produced annually ever since.

In the nearly twenty years since the terminal date of this account, there have, of course, been many further developments in the department’s curriculum and teaching. As in the Faculty of Arts and Science as a whole, there has been a move in the Department of French away from the initial extremes of free choice and lack of structure that the New Programme brought in its wake. With regard to the more specific changes that have occurred since 1975, it is impossible to deal with these in any detail here. Beyond those already alluded to, the most significant can simply be enumerated: (1) a substantial increase in the Quebec component of the curriculum;

(2) the availability of several specialist designations (with various combinations of literature, language, linguistics, and translation); (3) a marked and highly regrettable watering-down of the content and expectations in language courses, particularly at the first-year (post-secondary) level; and (4) a radical revision of the curriculum, implemented in 1992-93, with a substantial increase in the number of half-courses offered. The full effects of this last, most recent development have yet to be evaluated.