The University Department of French started its life at University College. This was a logical choice, inasmuch as the Graduate Department had always operated out of these offices. Moreover, the expertise of the University College secretaries, especially Maureen Cowley and Sylvia Hvidsten, promised to be invaluable during the transition period. In the winter of 1974-75, a decanal search committee had chosen David Smith of Victoria the chairman designate of the new centralized department. Smith immediately swung into action, striking an ad hoc By-Laws Committee under the chairmanship of veteran parliamentarian David Hayne to map out a constitution for the new department. Such was the success of this document (which was approved in the fall of 1975) that it has served, with only minor modifications, as the blueprint for the administration of the new department

grants to attend learned conferences, for instance, must henceforth be addressed to the chairman’s office left little doubt as to where the money was stored. But the equalization of salaries among colleagues from the federated colleges gladdened many a heart, even though some may have been less than overjoyed by the new rigour brought to questions of promotion and tenure. “Collegiality,” for instance, diminished in importance as a factor in such cases, as publications were read with ever-closer scrutiny under the new university guidelines applicable to all candidates. Equalization of teaching and committee duties was assured by a duty roster that listed the now “uniform” activities of each colleague.

Recommendations for staffing and promotions, along with advice on other matters, were to be made by the Senior Committee. The five officers stipulated by

the by-laws were the chairman; two associate chairmen, one each for graduate and undergraduate issues; and two academic secretaries, graduate and undergraduate. Eventually, the titles of these officers would be altered. From the 1990s, the terms associate chair, graduate, and associate chair, undergraduate, recognized the merits of gender-neutral terminology. The academic secretary for graduate studies became the graduate adviser before becoming the chair of the Admissions Committee. The academic secretary for undergraduate studies became the undergraduate adviser. The by-laws also provided for voting rights for representatives of the part-time teaching staff and from the student body in the general meetings and on appropriate committees of the department.

It was in the area of graduate studies that the nouveau régime had the least

impact. The Graduate Department had always functioned from a centralized perspective. In order to further emphasize the continuity of the graduate operation, Professor Smith wisely asked Henry Schogt and John Flinn to continue in their functions as, respectively, associate chairman, graduate, and graduate secretary. The by-laws also called for the retention of the elected Graduate Academic Advisory Committee (gaac). The Graduate Admissions Committee completed the graduate administrative infrastructure.

The restructuring of the administration for undergraduate studies was more challenging. But here the model of the earlier combined departments proved useful. The new associate chair for undergraduate studies inherited the responsibilities of the former chairman of the combined department in the area of

curriculum planning. Again wisely, Smith chose Lawrence Kerslake, with whom he had worked closely in the combined department, to fill the position. But in addition to the old duties, the new associate chairman inherited the responsibility of the four college chairmen for the distribution of teaching assignments across the whole department. Russ Wooldridge, secretary of the combined department the previous year, continued as undergraduate secretary of the new department. The undergraduate secretary’s responsibilities included student petitions, transfer credits, and editing the annual department brochure, in addition to counselling.

Kerslake followed his term as associate chairman, undergraduate, with a term as acting chair during David Smith’s research leave in the first half of 1978. His successor in the undergraduate administrative position was John Fleming

(University College). Brian Fitch (Trinity) succeeded Henry Schogt in the corresponding graduate chair. Also during Smith’s term of office, Edward Heinemann (New) and Peter Grillo (St Michael’s) succeeded John Flinn as graduate secretary, while Mariel O’Neill-Karch (St Michael’s) and Robert Taylor (Victoria) followed Russ Wooldridge as undergraduate secretary. The appointment of these capable officers reflected a concern that each of the old college departments should be represented in the new department’s administration.

Other major participants in the new department were the elected individuals, one from each college, who constituted the Executive Committee chaired by the associate chairman, undergraduate. Following the practice established at

the satellite colleges, Scarborough and Erindale, these colleagues were designated discipline representatives (i.e, representatives for the French academic discipline – not, as one might imagine, representatives on tribunals for the adjudication and punishment of misdemeanours), popularly shortened to “disc. reps.” Their duty was to oversee daily operations in their home base, such as the assignment of classrooms, the supervising of teaching assistants, and the allotment of offices. They acted as a liaison with, on the one hand, their local college administration and, on the other hand, the centralized department. But with next to no local budget to handle and with constitutionally limited two-year terms (once renewable), they could in no way be mistaken for their predecessors, those powerful heads of the old college departments. In fact, it took a little time to iron out exactly what their responsibilities were.

With such a far-flung organization, the rapid dissemination of news about policy and procedures was challenging but essential. The Department News, issued frequently during the first years of centralization, served to keep members abreast of committee decisions and such department activities as guest lectures, theatrical presentations, Cercle Français events, local French film screenings, and colloquia, as well as job opportunities, calls for papers, and even petites annonces. It could be argued that without the regular publication of the News at the department headquarters, centralization might not have met with the trust and co-operation it enjoyed.

In the centralized department, it was seen initially that the Language Programme Committee (lpc) would be of prime importance in curriculum matters. Indeed,

each of the language-practice courses was so complexly administered that it had not only a central convenor on the lpc but also a phalanx of course representatives, one from each college. There was also a corresponding Literature and Linguistics Programme Committee (llpc), which later evolved into separate committees on literature, linguistics, and finally, translation. But in the initial period, no committee attracted more attention than the lpc. Indeed, it was only under centralization that it was at last possible to bring – through the lpc – a truly coherent, controlled sequence to the curriculum of the multi-sectioned language-practice courses.

The beginning of David Smith’s chairmanship coincided with the global regulation of the Faculty of Arts and Science that each 100-level course must have a final

examination in the examination timetable. For a variety of reasons, colleagues resisted this reversion to old practices, but to no avail. Soon the associate chairman, undergraduate, was striking examining committees not only for the 100-level courses but also, in the following years, for the upper-level multi-section language-practice courses. Ultimately, it was agreed that the administering of final examinations in a course such as third-year Language Practice was no more cumbersome than mounting separate, late-winter “specialist written and oral examinations,” which had been the practice at the time of centralization. Furthermore, without the controlling influence of impartially marked examinations, the grades in French courses had been inflating annually – in a Faculty whose dean was imploring more stringent grading practices. It would appear that final examinations returned not a moment too soon, if marks in French were to retain

any credibility at all.

During Smith’s term as chair of the department (1975-80), an annual feature of the academic year was a semaine française, usually held in February. These weeks were well-publicized socio-intellectual events that attempted to illustrate a variety of cultural aspects of French or Québécois culture and thought. From Monday to Friday, noon-hour tables rondes, afternoon lectures and workshops, and evening films, plays, café-théâtres, culinary demonstrations, or dégustations de vin usually attracted good turnouts of staff and students alike. The visit of the colourful Spanish-born playwright Fernando Arrabal in February 1977 launched a lively encounter between the Department of French and the Ontario Film Censorship Board when a few shots in an Arrabal film were “mercilessly”

subjected to the censors’ scissors. The following year, the department invited (without incident) the equally interesting Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay, and in 1979 the week boasted a whole panoply of Quebec authors. Paul Bouissac expanded his highly successful Surrealist Day, which he regularly mounted in connection with his course on French surrealism, into a whole Semaine Surréaliste in 1980. During the first two years of centralization, various colleagues sponsored and encouraged the continuing series of French films shown at University College called Ciné Cent-Six; budgetary restraints eventually cancelled the series. Café-théâtres began to proliferate in a number of the colleges, often competing with more traditional French clubs.

One of the biggest events in this period was the launching of new department

headquarters on the second floor at 7 King’s College Circle. Among Smith’s first duties as chairman had been to negotiate a suitable permanent space for his department. It was felt that the department should not be geographically attached to any of the colleges. Its new location beside the Department of English on the renovated site of various underused discipline-designated reading rooms in the Sigmund Samuel-Science and Medicine Library building was at first regarded by some as almost luxurious. The whitewashed walls and prominent plants made the quarters look somewhat like a restaurant of the time. Others joked that the feeling of enclosed corridors of power that the building evoked made it resemble the Kremlin. Indeed, “The Kremlin” is the way that some colleagues still ironically refer to this small administrative fortress, now more dispassionately dismissed as “7 kcc.” The offices and two seminar rooms were ready for the move from

University College in the fall of 1976. The indispensable Maureen Cowley accompanied – or led – the department, remaining as its administrative assistant in charge of budgetary matters. (Sylvia Hvidsten stayed at University College.) The much-anticipated Common Room at 7 King’s College Circle was not yet ready, but when this final “jewel in the crown” was fully furnished, faculty members were granted inspection visits, discipline group by discipline group. The space could not accommodate at the same time all those interested, such were the numbers and the interest in the new headquarters. David Smith’s private project was to establish a collection of books by members of the department in the Common Room. A year after announcing his scheme, he was happy to proclaim, in August 1979, that the collection consisted of seventy-five titles.

In his first year in office, Smith had already deplored the reduced staff size that everyone could foresee. Professors Eugène Joliat, Pauline Joliat, Jeannette Jeanes, John Wood, Alan Ross, and Sister Corinne Meraw all retired during the Smith years, beginning a trend towards little or no replacement that would characterize most of the University of Toronto during the last quarter of the twentieth century. While the dollars lasted, though, Smith hired an impressive group of visiting professors in the memorable academic year 1976-77. Thus the quartet of Jean-Claude Anscombre, Roger Cardinal, Richard Coe, and Lise Gauvin joined the biennial visiting professor Henri Mitterand to create a more-enviable-than-ever masthead of French scholars in Toronto for one brief year. A few visiting professors followed, but never again more than one at a time.

Smith admitted that one of his proudest accomplishments during his chairmanship was the instigation of the Aix-en-Provence Third Year Elsewhere programme. Of immense help to him in this endeavour was Daniel Jourlait of New College, who eventually left Toronto to teach in Aix permanently. The Smith years also saw the dawning of the Cercle Méthodologique, a series of presentations by faculty members interested in research methodologies. Under the initial leadership of Paul Bouissac, this enterprising group printed each of the presentations in a pre-publication format in sufficient quantity to reach interested members of the University of Toronto community and beyond. In addition, a parade of guest lecturers from France and elsewhere regularly passed through the department.

Smith’s term of office concluded with the sad news of the death of Pierre Robert

in the spring of 1980 while on research leave in France. But the final summer was brightened by the first International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies, which would over the years continue to draw international students to study under such distinguished scholars as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and Fredric Jameson. Paul Bouissac of Victoria College (home of the Summer Institute) provided the imagination and the energy to make the institute, with its many attendant colloquia, the amazing success it has been. During the same period, he was a founder of the Toronto Semiotic Circle and launched Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry and eventually its spin-off, the Semiotic Review of Books.

On a different register was Smith’s disappointment in the department’s response

to the report of the Committee to Review the Undergraduate Programme (crup), a report that had been prepared through weekly meetings all year long in response to the Kelly Report of the Faculty of Arts and Science, which had demanded a structured system of specialist and major programmes in each department. In opposition to the cafeteria-style curriculum of the 1970s, each student entering the university in the academic year 1981-82 and after would be required to complete a programme of specialization or majors before graduation. The crup group under the chairmanship of Victor Graham had seriously considered all the interests of the current generation of students, as well as the new trends in literary theory that were dominating the scholarship of many of the younger members of the department. But nobody seemed any more satisfied with the new suggestions than with the status quo. Eventually, in the fall of 1980, under the eyes of the equally

disappointed new chairman, Brian Merrilees, and with William Rogers replacing Graham (who was on an exchange at the University of Victoria) as chair of crup, the department chose to reject the report and instead, make minor alterations to the existing undergraduate programme in order to meet the demands of the Kelly Report for majors and specialization.

It is only fair to say that the chairmanship of each of David Smith’s successors was made easier thanks to the strong leadership that he had brought to the original organization of the university department. Merrilees inherited, aside from the crup report, a house that was in very good shape indeed. During his term of office, he brought a somewhat lighter touch to the administration, a touch that is reflected in the less polemical tone of the Department News of the period. Humorous poems,

cartoons, invitations for recipes, and news of the department’s baseball team, “The French Connection,” began to dot its pages. (Smith, Merrilees, and Kerslake were among the baseball “stars.”)

For his officers, Merrilees chose Catherine Grisé to succeed John Fleming as associate chair, undergraduate. Grisé was twice called on to serve as acting chair, first during Merrilees’s half-year research leave and later, during the full year 1984-85, when he resigned from the chairmanship to take up the position of vice-provost of the university. Her successor as associate chair was Nicole Boursier, who had followed Robert Taylor as undergraduate secretary. David Trott in turn replaced her as secretary. After the usual consultation, Merrilees’s choice to succeed Brian Fitch as associate chair, graduate, was Paul Perron, who

soon found himself catapulted into the position of associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies. He was succeeded as associate chair by Frederick Case, who had previously been the graduate secretary. Peter Fitting replaced Case as graduate adviser.

undergraduate course offerings. For instance, the literature committee persuaded the general assembly of the department that a survey course in French literature would be more suitable at the first-year (100) level than the course in methodologies for literary analysis, which in turn would be better placed at the second-year (200) level. Experiments were made in teaching certain undergraduate courses in two-hour blocks as opposed to the traditional one-hour-twice-a-week time slots.

But the most highly visible activity was the increasingly popular annual theatre

production mounted by Paulette Collet and her student actors. During these years, students performed in these plays as an extra-curricular activity. Eventually, Staging Molière was introduced into the curriculum as a half-course for which students received the usual credit. The installation of the St Michael’s College Theatre in the renovated Alumni Hall provided a suitable permanent home for this course and for the Molière production, which the dynamic Professor Collet continued to direct even after her official retirement.

The early 1980s, of course, saw the introduction of computer technology into the university community. The News cautiously announced that two computers had been delivered to 7 kcc in December 1981 on a trial basis. Some colleagues at first avoided these “monsters,” whereas others embraced their new “toys” with

delight. Among those whose expertise was instantly respected were Pierre Ducretet, Ed Heinemann, and Russ Wooldridge. Wooldridge launched a major research project on sixteenth-century French dictionaries that was immensely aided by computers. Soon most colleagues were proud owners of a personal computer, and by 1985 the secretaries’ job descriptions had changed considerably. In fact, two of the secretaries found themselves typing less and were promoted to important advisory positions before the end of the 1980s. For graduate studies, Monique Lecerf and, for undergraduate studies, Maria Babiak gained an unprecedented expertise in department and Faculty regulations and procedures. The retirees during the period were professors Clarence Parsons, Robert Harden, William Rogers, Victor Graham, David Hayne, Richard Jeanes, and Joseph Sablé. New appointments included Pierre Hébert (at St Michael’s),

Parth Bhatt (at New College), and Janet Paterson, Charles Elkabas, and Peter Leslie (all at Erindale). The early death of Pierre Ducretet in the summer of 1980 shocked the department, and the loss of Paul Mathews in April 1982, while still very much in active service, was particularly grievous.

undergraduate, followed in the final year of Case’s term by David Clandfield. Clandfield had succeeded Barbara Kwant as undergraduate adviser and was himself followed by Mariel O’Neill-Karch, returning to a position she remembered from over a decade earlier. Two specialists in Québécois literature, Ben-Zion Shek and Pierre Hébert, served successively as graduate advisers.

The Case years (1985-90) could be characterized by an increased, formalized interest in the quality of undergraduate teaching and learning. Case visited typical classes of each new teaching assistant and organized the discipline representatives to evaluate the more experienced teaching assistants. A French Writing Laboratory-Workshop was established to assist students with problems in grammar and composition. A Groupe d’Études et de Recherches sur

l’Enseignement de la Langue Française (gerself) was encouraged. The language-practice courses came to be referred to as fsl (French as a second language) courses for the first time, acknowledging a parallel with the booming business in English as a second language throughout the city. The threat of teaching burn-out was diminished by a reduction in teaching loads from a nine-hour-a-week assignment (often four full courses) to a three-full-course load for everyone regardless of the number of hours per week. This assignment was more in line with the practices of the other language and literature departments on campus. Naturally, the aging faculty members were grateful. Case also departed from the universal obligation of each staff member, no matter how senior, to include a language-practice course in each year’s teaching schedule. He even experimented with reduced loads for some staff who were “consistently active in

publishing.” This last experiment coincided with the discontinuation of the duty roster.

The most hotly debated undergraduate curriculum issue of the period was undoubtedly the suitability of providing beginners’ and intermediate French (i.e., pre-grade 13 French) for university-level students. Such a programme would have been unthinkable in the 1960s, when university admission requirements automatically included a second language, which for most students was French. But in the early 1970s the department had begun to answer a demand for pre-grade 13 courses in first year in what became Introductory and Intermediate French. Now, in the 1980s, with the department required to make budget cuts, the abolition of these “service courses” seemed a logical place to start. Moreover,

the provincial Ministry of Education was suddenly requiring at least one year of secondary school French from all its oac (Ontario Academic Course) graduates. Beginners’ French seemed to some to have become obsolete at the university level. After considerable debate, however, the courses were retained in the curriculum, though subjected to such money-saving expediencies as sixty-student sections for one and a cours magistral for the other. Coincidentally, the department’s global enrolment figures began to drop steadily from the all-time high of 3,460 students in 1986-87, and the number of sections of these courses (heavily populated by overseas “visa” students) could even be discreetly expanded. Furthermore, courses in Business French, Computer Application in French, and The Language of Law attracted a whole new community of students.

For many years the department had been hosting the annual French Competition of the Ontario Modern Languages Teachers’ Association in an implicit effort to attract its talented competitors to the University of Toronto. Each of the St George campus discipline groups took turns hosting the competition. In some ways, the presence of this competition on campus seemed more important than ever. In the graduate division, some enterprising students began organizing their own colloquia and publishing the papers presented. Case encouraged the preparation of a booklet listing the publications of all the graduate faculty members to publicize the graduate programme, which long before the undergraduate, had suffered a drop in enrolment.

During the Case years, Yves Roberge was hired to fill an important prospective vacancy in French linguistics. Eva M. Kushner was appointed to the department on becoming president of Victoria College in 1987, and Sada Niang joined the

which seemed to have reached its zenith with the chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and the Ordre du Canada. But not so: in 1993 she had a francophone school named after her, L’École Élémentaire Laure-Rièse in Scarborough.

large committee away to a “think-tank” retreat, where the bulk of the major issues involved in a renewed curriculum were thrashed out in the most congenial atmosphere possible. The result was a good-natured working relationship and an unprecedented tolerance in the correction of flaws in the Curriculum Renewal Programme when it was finally implemented in 1992-93. Chief features of this programme were an emphasis on half-courses across the curriculum and in particular a selection of clearly defined new first-year courses, each one with its special thrust.

Other highlights of this period were the recognition of the position of discipline representative at Erindale College as deserving the title of associate chair. The increasingly under-subscribed Third Year Elsewhere programme at

Aix-en-Provence was replaced by more economically viable links with other French universities. Negotiations began with the Université de Montréal for a research-oriented exchange based primarily on nineteenth-century literature and Zola. In addition, Perron signed an ambitious agreement with the Ontario Management Board Secretariat involving the employment of graduate students as part of a co-operative arrangement that promised, in turn, to enhance the secretariat’s teaching, research, and assessment methods. Computer technology has continued to interest many. A French computer-assisted language learning (frecall) report has addressed the application of computers to practical pedagogical questions. The earliest enthusiastic manifestation of such interest appeared some years earlier under the acronym recall at Erindale.