Citizens united are strong to defend their rights

The school at Messines

Messines is a small parish in the county of Gatineau in the province of Quebec. Three of the five teachers who teach at the local school are immigrants. At any rate, this was the situation when the school year terminated at the end of June.

One of these immigrants who went under the name of Marc Robert and passed himself off as a Belgian, made life particularly difficult for individuals not only in the school but in the village in general. He went so far as to tell the parish priest that he had no business whatsoever in the local school. Messines, it goes without saying, is a Catholic town.

This Mr. Robert did not favour meetings between parents and teachers. Parent-teacher associations, as they are known, went completely against his grain. According to him, the parents, like the parish priest, had no business sticking their noses into the affairs of the school. The good professor even went so far as to close his classes for a couple of weeks in order that he might make a trip to Europe. (Some of the people of the parish were unkind enough to wonder if the trip would not take him as far as Moscow.)

This Mr. Robert was also in favor of the laicisation of schools:

Now, one of the staunch and very strong Crediters of this locality is Mrs. Romeo Clement. Mrs. Clement, like any good Crediter, is not in the least backward about telling public authority what she wants. One day she went to visit this Mr. Robert to object to certain decisions which he had imposed upon her children, as he had, on the other pupils. It seems that the children had been forbidden to drink fresh water with their sandwiches, at dinner time. Water being denied them, the children were obliged to buy soft drinks from the vending machines, which were at the entrance to the school. Mrs. Clement protested very vigorously against this situation.

The teacher replied brusquely that scholl matters were not regulated by the parents of the pupils but by the Minister at Quebec, Mr. Gérin-Lajoie.

However, this little dictator was to learn that Canada has not as yet passed under a Communist regime; that public officials could not violate the will of parents in respect to the education of their children. For parents, along with the Church, have received directly from God the authority to supervise the education of their children. It is parents, also, who pay the teachers, the school commissions, and the government. And they pay to be served, not to be ignored, rebuffed and counted as nothing by these officials. 

The initiative of a citizen

Mrs. Clement then set about denouncing the dictatorial activities of this classroom Caesar. She visited the other citizens of Messines parish. The people wasted little time, studying the best methods to rid themselves of this tyrannical bureaucrat. They were seething with indignation.

It was finally decided that a petition would be drawn up and signed, a petition asking that this Mr. Robert be not hired as a teacher for the coming term in September. Ninety eight percent of the population signed the petition.

Two members of the school commission were on the side of the parents. The president of the commission and two others were for protecting Robert. However the president and the two were unable to resist the insistent demands of the people. They resigned from the commission and did not show up at the meeting at which a decision was to be reached concerning Robert.

The two members of the commission who remained did not form a quorum. Consequently they could not legally form a sitting of the school commission. However, there was a very large number of citizens present, and at the suggestion of a former mayor of the parish, the citizens proceeded to elect members to replace those who had resigned. One of the newly elected commissioners was Romeo Clement, the husband of the valorous woman who had taken the initiative in asserting the sovereignty of the citizens in their own community.

The motion demanding the removal of the teacher, Robert, was proposed and adopted unanimously. It is quite likely that his wife, who teachęs also at the same school, will also be let go. The parents of Messines have decided once and for all that they will not confide their children to the care of teachers who deny the right of parents to supervise the education of their children and the activities at school. There are also certain principles which our parents will not see compromised by any so called advanced theorists, even if they come from European schools and presume that they have all the authority of the bureaucracy of government behind them.

An enlightened and united people

When a people are enlightened, when they are determined to take their affairs in hand and to unite to demand the results they want there is nothing that can stand against them. They have the greatest strength in the world. This woman of Messines, Mrs. Romeo Clement, has done more for our democratic way of life in the manner in which she stimulated the citizens to act, than have all the election candidates during the two months preceeding the elections of. June 18. These politicians treat the people like so many herds of sheep. And according to them, these sheeps have no other right that of putting an X at the end of a name on a piece of paper once in four years.

From whence comes the citizen, the true citizen, the man who is master in his own country? Does he come from behind the curtains of a polling booth where he hides himself in order to choose one of a number of candidates to fame and fortune? Or does he not rather come from that activity which sees citizens uniting in concert with other citizens, without any consideration for parties, to affirm their rights, make them respected and punish those who insist on violating them.

The answer is quite clear and shows the vast difference between what comes from ballot-box democracy and the type of result obtained from the application of the formula laid down by the school of Vers Demain and The Union of Electors.

Therese Tardif