David Fraser gives an insight into the production of his UTP title: Honorary Protestants: The Jewish School Question in Montreal, 1867-1997
How did you become involved in your area of research?
I am interested in the ways in which law and legal institutions deal with the “Other”, in this case Jews within a Roman Catholic and Protestant Quebec, and in the ways in which the apparently disempowered Other deals with legal norms and institutional arrangements. While the formal legal mechanisms protected Roman Catholic and Protestant educational rights, Jewish children and their parents fell into a legal gap where they apparently had no formal rights to schooling. Of course, the practical reality was that no one would really be content with a system in which 10,000 students who wanted to, could not go to school. The real story, and the one that caught my interest, was how all the participants, Roman Catholics, Protestants and various parts of the Jewish community in Montreal dealt with this conflict between law and social and political reality. For a lawyer, the stories offer object lessons about the ultimate insignificance of formal legal rules when the Jewish parents who wanted to have their children become citizens through education voiced concrete claims for justice and equality as Canadians.
What inspired you to write this book?
The germ of the idea for this book emerged when I was a law student, far too many years ago, and wrote a paper on a related subject. The area and the issues stayed in the back of mind while I pursued other topics in my research and eventually I reached the “now or never” stage. I spend much of my research energies focusing on the role of law and lawyers in the implementation of the Holocaust, so the idea of studying the Jewish School Question in Montreal, for all its complexities and occasionally dark moments, actually offered some relief from my main areas of interest. .
How did you become interested in the subject?
I have always researched and written in the broad areas of minorities, particularly Roma and Jews, and the ways in which legal rules are invoked to justify oppression, persecution, and even death. The story of Montreal Jewry’s struggles to gain formal educational equality fits into that broad framework, and the idea that the Constitution guaranteed formal equality only for Protestants and Roman Catholics, when faced with the reality of mass Jewish immigration, and Jewish demands for the education of their children, struck me as a typically Canadian story of compromise and conflict, followed by more compromise and conflict.
How long did it take you to write your latest book?
5 years from the start of actual research to publication- much longer if we count from the original idea.
What do you find most interesting about your area of research?
The most interesting aspect is discovering particular instances of the power of law and legal categories and the sometimes equal power of those who push back against the institutional arrangements when they are inspired by a quest for what they identify as justice. Montreal Jews consistently presented their demands for equality in school rights in terms of their identity as British subjects and then as Canadian citizens. For over a hundred years, complex debates and political battles over what it meant to be “Canadian” directly effected thousands of Jewish children who simply wanted to go to school.
What do you wish other people knew about your area of research?
The history of law is much more than a dry recitation of rules, or the professional practices and lives of lawyers and judges. The struggle for justice often exceeds the power and capacity for justice, but the legal history that interests me is the legal history that identifies the ways in which deeply held ideals of equality and justice inform political and social struggles beyond the law. The Jewish School Question in Montreal and its various iterations embodies the story of the ways in which law was circumvented by the ingenious practical solutions created by Protestants, Jews and Roman Catholics in Montreal, always with an aim of achieving equality and justice.
What was the hardest part of writing your book?
The hardest part is the answer to the previous question. Living and working in the UK and writing an archivally based book about Montreal poses obvious time and physical constraints on one’s capacity to do the research. On the upside, there was a dramatic increase in my frequent flyer miles.
What did you learn from writing your book?
I learned a lot about the actual struggles that people engaged in to protect their identity, good and bad, and again about the power of the ideas of belonging, equality and justice can have in bringing communities together and in pulling them apart. The stories of the Jewish School Question in Montreal embody many of the broader issues of identity and belonging, demands for recognition and equality on all sides, what we now call “accommodation” . Plus ça change
What are your current/future projects?
I am working on a couple of shorter projects, one on Canadian Jewish legal history and the other on my primary area of interest, law and the Holocaust. Another major project looms, but is dependent on ever elusive funding.
What do you like to read for pleasure? What are you currently reading?
I read fiction, both literary and detective (although I recognize that the categories are not mutually exclusive). I am currently reading Zachary Lazar’s , I Pity the Poor Immigrant, a clever literary mystery story about my favorite themes of identity and belonging, and with the additional benefit of a title taken from a Bob Dylan song.
What is your favourite book?
Joseph Heller, Catch 22- life in a nutshell
If you weren’t working in academia, what would you be doing instead?
I don’t know what I would be doing, but I would have liked to have been an extremely successful author of crime fiction. Unfortunately, I lack talent and imagination, so I’m a legal academic..
