In 1977, Keith Spicer was serving as Canada’s first-ever Commissioner of Official Languages. Interested in the bilingualism of Canada’s youth, he met with groups of parents across Canada who wanted their children to learn French as a second language (FSL) but who ran into roadblocks at the local school boards.

To get the ball rolling, Mr. Spicer offered to find some seed money—enough to organize a national conference of like-minded parents. The result was an event called “Parents’ Conference on French Language and Exchange Opportunities,” which took place in Ottawa in March of 1977. It was during this weekend-long conference that Canadian Parents for French was officially founded as a volunteer-based advocacy group, a collective of parents who wanted to ensure that children would have the opportunity to become bilingual in the Canadian school system.