WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.660 So I was looking at the title of the book we're 00:00:02.660 --> 00:00:04.700 covering today for this deep dive, and I actually 00:00:04.700 --> 00:00:07.160 had to do a double take. Yeah, it's quite a phrase, 00:00:07.259 --> 00:00:09.820 isn't it? It really is. The book is called Honorary 00:00:09.820 --> 00:00:13.060 Protestants. And my immediate reaction, you know, 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:16.280 it wasn't confusion so much as just marveling 00:00:16.280 --> 00:00:19.160 at the sheer bureaucratic absurdity of that. 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:21.660 Right. Because how can someone be an honorary 00:00:21.660 --> 00:00:24.870 member of a religion? It sounds like a... I don't 00:00:24.870 --> 00:00:26.910 know, like a massive loophole, like a label you 00:00:26.910 --> 00:00:29.269 just slap on a file folder because you literally 00:00:29.269 --> 00:00:31.870 do not have a cabinet for it. That is essentially 00:00:31.870 --> 00:00:34.429 what it was. The thing is, it wasn't just a file 00:00:34.429 --> 00:00:37.369 folder. It was the lived reality for generations 00:00:37.369 --> 00:00:39.350 of people. We're talking about the Jewish community 00:00:39.350 --> 00:00:42.090 in Montreal trying to navigate a school system 00:00:42.090 --> 00:00:45.619 that... legally speaking anyway, didn't even 00:00:45.619 --> 00:00:47.719 know they existed. Which is wild to think about, 00:00:47.820 --> 00:00:49.820 especially when you look at the full title. It's 00:00:49.820 --> 00:00:52.479 Honorary Protestants, the Jewish School Question 00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:56.159 in Montreal, 1867 -1997. By David Frazier. Right, 00:00:56.259 --> 00:00:58.659 by David Frazier. Published in 2015 by the University 00:00:58.659 --> 00:01:00.799 of Toronto Press. But I want to focus on those 00:01:00.799 --> 00:01:04.200 dates. 1867 and 1997. I mean 1997 is not ancient 00:01:04.200 --> 00:01:06.500 history. No, not at all. If you're listening 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:08.819 right now, you probably remember 1997. I was 00:01:08.819 --> 00:01:11.280 listening to the Spice Girls and worrying about 00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:14.319 Y2K a couple years early. And meanwhile, in Montreal, 00:01:14.799 --> 00:01:16.859 the school system was still legally grappling 00:01:16.859 --> 00:01:19.959 with whether you were Catholic, Protestant, or 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:22.959 this bizarre third honorary thing. It really 00:01:22.959 --> 00:01:26.379 puts the long in the long 20th century. And you're 00:01:26.379 --> 00:01:28.299 right to focus on the bureaucracy of it, because 00:01:28.299 --> 00:01:31.700 that is exactly where David Frazier lives. He 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:34.459 isn't just a historian. He's a professor of law 00:01:34.459 --> 00:01:36.879 and social theory at the university Nottingham. 00:01:37.159 --> 00:01:39.239 Okay, so he's not writing a personal memoir here. 00:01:39.340 --> 00:01:41.359 No, not at all. He's looking at the plumbing 00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:44.500 of the state. He's looking at the wiring, the 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:47.519 contracts, and specifically this massive legal 00:01:47.519 --> 00:01:50.439 fiction. To set the stage a bit, you have to 00:01:50.439 --> 00:01:52.920 understand that Montreal's public school system 00:01:52.920 --> 00:01:55.519 wasn't divided by language or by neighborhood 00:01:55.519 --> 00:01:58.900 like we see in most modern systems. It was constitutionally 00:01:58.900 --> 00:02:01.540 protected as a strict binary. You were Catholic 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:04.140 or you were Protestant. That was it. Just those 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:06.519 two boxes. Exactly. The British North America 00:02:06.519 --> 00:02:10.159 Act of 1867. Lock that in. Which I guess makes 00:02:10.159 --> 00:02:12.580 sense for 1867 if you're really only thinking 00:02:12.580 --> 00:02:14.520 about French Catholics and English Protestants. 00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:18.039 But then you have this massive influx of Jewish 00:02:18.039 --> 00:02:21.080 immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:23.219 You've got thousands of families arriving. They're 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:26.620 settling down, paying taxes and obviously expecting 00:02:26.620 --> 00:02:28.460 to send their kids to school. And the system 00:02:28.460 --> 00:02:31.159 basically hits a syntax error. It just does not 00:02:31.159 --> 00:02:33.800 compute. The Catholic schools were largely French 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:36.340 and deeply doctrinal at the time, so they really 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:39.979 weren't an option. So by custom, and I want to 00:02:39.979 --> 00:02:42.599 stress that word, custom is doing a lot of heavy 00:02:42.599 --> 00:02:45.719 lifting there. Jewish K through 12 students were 00:02:45.719 --> 00:02:48.120 absorbed into the Protestant system. Hence the 00:02:48.120 --> 00:02:50.939 title, the honorary Protestants. Exactly. And 00:02:50.939 --> 00:02:53.419 that is the mission of our deep dive today. We 00:02:53.419 --> 00:02:56.400 want to explore how a community navigates a system 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:59.099 that was fundamentally not built for them, because 00:02:59.099 --> 00:03:01.659 absorbed does not mean accepted as equals. Yeah, 00:03:01.699 --> 00:03:04.020 let's dig into that honorary status, because 00:03:04.020 --> 00:03:07.039 just hearing it, it sounds incredibly patronizing. 00:03:07.500 --> 00:03:09.500 It implies you're a guest in the house, like 00:03:09.500 --> 00:03:11.460 you're allowed in the building, but we are absolutely 00:03:11.460 --> 00:03:13.759 not giving you a set of keys. That is a perfect 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:16.659 way to put it. This book has split into 14 chapters. 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:19.580 And the core struggle across all of them isn't 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:22.120 just about where kids sat to learn algebra. It's 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:24.360 about the fight for rights. The legal struggle. 00:03:24.500 --> 00:03:27.319 Yes. For a huge chunk of this history, Jewish 00:03:27.319 --> 00:03:29.900 families paid school taxes. And often they paid 00:03:29.900 --> 00:03:31.840 at the higher Protestant rate. Right. But they 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.280 had zero representation on the school boards. 00:03:34.759 --> 00:03:36.400 They couldn't vote for the trustees. They couldn't 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:39.020 be trustees. Taxation without representation. 00:03:39.259 --> 00:03:42.120 A classic case. And Frasier maps out how the 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:44.419 Jewish community was not passive in this. They 00:03:44.419 --> 00:03:46.599 were negotiating the environment constantly to 00:03:46.599 --> 00:03:49.000 gain rights to education. They were lobbying, 00:03:49.259 --> 00:03:51.360 leveraging their growing numbers, trying to get 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:53.719 a say in how these districts were actually run. 00:03:53.860 --> 00:03:56.840 But I have to ask, why didn't the system just 00:03:56.840 --> 00:03:59.990 adapt? If you have a massive third group of people, 00:04:00.030 --> 00:04:03.389 just make a third panel. Why cling to this strict 00:04:03.389 --> 00:04:07.169 Catholic or Protestant label for 130 years? Because 00:04:07.169 --> 00:04:10.110 of the constication. That religious divide was 00:04:10.110 --> 00:04:12.490 baked right into the founding documents of Canada. 00:04:13.310 --> 00:04:15.050 Changing it would have required a constitutional 00:04:15.050 --> 00:04:17.050 amendment. Oh, and nobody wants to open that 00:04:17.050 --> 00:04:19.370 can of worms. It's a political nightmare. So 00:04:19.370 --> 00:04:20.910 instead of changing the structure, they just 00:04:20.910 --> 00:04:23.230 changed the definitions. They stretched the legal 00:04:23.230 --> 00:04:26.269 definition of Protestant to basically mean non 00:04:26.269 --> 00:04:29.839 -Catholic. Wow. which is a very lawyerly solution 00:04:29.839 --> 00:04:31.959 to the problem. We can't build a new door, so 00:04:31.959 --> 00:04:34.899 we'll just legally redefine who gets to walk 00:04:34.899 --> 00:04:37.560 through this one. Precisely. And this gets us 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:40.500 into the absolute meat of Frazier's analysis 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:43.040 and why it got the academic reception that it 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:45.639 did. Frazier uses this concept throughout the 00:04:45.639 --> 00:04:47.660 book called the contextual stance on the rule 00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:50.339 of law. Okay, let's unpack that phrase, because 00:04:50.339 --> 00:04:52.720 when I hear rule of law, I usually think of something 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:55.329 rigid. You know, the law is the law. You follow 00:04:55.329 --> 00:04:57.629 the rules as written. Right. The traditional 00:04:57.629 --> 00:05:00.370 black letter law view. It's written down. It's 00:05:00.370 --> 00:05:03.310 clear. It's binding. But Fraser is arguing that 00:05:03.310 --> 00:05:06.110 law is actually a living social negotiation. 00:05:06.949 --> 00:05:09.449 This contextual stance looks at how the law actually 00:05:09.449 --> 00:05:12.089 functions on the ground in society versus what 00:05:12.089 --> 00:05:14.470 is just printed on the paper. So the text on 00:05:14.470 --> 00:05:16.870 the paper said Catholic or Protestant. But the 00:05:16.870 --> 00:05:19.310 context on the ground said, hey, we have 20 ,000 00:05:19.310 --> 00:05:21.870 Jewish kids in this city. Exactly. And the rule 00:05:21.870 --> 00:05:24.550 of law becomes the messy bridge between those 00:05:24.550 --> 00:05:28.060 two realities. Frazier argues that the law isn't 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:30.639 just the statute. It's the compromise. Right. 00:05:30.860 --> 00:05:32.720 It's the school board minutes where they decide 00:05:32.720 --> 00:05:35.379 to, you know, hire a few Jewish teachers to keep 00:05:35.379 --> 00:05:37.740 the peace, even if the strict regulations don't 00:05:37.740 --> 00:05:39.920 mandate it. It's those backroom negotiations. 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:42.860 It sounds exhausting, honestly, just a constant, 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:45.899 century -long, low -grade friction. It was. And 00:05:45.899 --> 00:05:48.240 the reviewers who praised this book really keyed 00:05:48.240 --> 00:05:51.399 in on how well Frazier captured that legal friction. 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:53.660 Yeah. Let's talk about the reception. Because 00:05:53.660 --> 00:05:56.360 when you write a book, this hyper specific, a 00:05:56.360 --> 00:05:59.180 legal history of one minority groups schooling 00:05:59.180 --> 00:06:02.959 in one specific city, you are inviting a very 00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:05.639 particular kind of academic scrutiny. So who 00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:07.420 read this and what did they actually think? Well, 00:06:07.439 --> 00:06:09.680 the legal scholars absolutely ate it up. Jory 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:12.519 Binder from Osgoode Hall Law School wrote a review 00:06:12.519 --> 00:06:14.040 that highlighted exactly what we just talked 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:16.420 about, that contextual stance. Binder praised 00:06:16.420 --> 00:06:18.839 how Frazier skillfully explained these complex 00:06:18.839 --> 00:06:21.040 historical developments. Because if you're a 00:06:21.040 --> 00:06:23.839 law student or a legal scholar, This is basically 00:06:23.839 --> 00:06:26.540 a master class in how rigid systems are forced 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:29.660 to adapt, right? Yes. It's a brilliant case study 00:06:29.660 --> 00:06:32.879 in legal flexibility. And there was a broad academic 00:06:32.879 --> 00:06:35.759 consensus on that side of things. Anthony Dimaccio 00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:38.160 over at Bishop's University called it a valuable 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:40.480 new contribution to the field. High praise. But 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:42.519 the strongest praise actually came from David 00:06:42.519 --> 00:06:45.680 S. Kaufman at York University. He used the word 00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:48.910 unassailable to describe the scholarship. Unassailable. 00:06:49.089 --> 00:06:51.509 I mean, that is the academic mic drop right there. 00:06:51.670 --> 00:06:53.810 When another scholar calls your work unassailable, 00:06:53.889 --> 00:06:55.870 they're saying, I checked your footnotes, I went 00:06:55.870 --> 00:06:58.069 through your bibliography, and you are bulletproof. 00:06:58.370 --> 00:07:00.769 It implies the archival work is just flawless. 00:07:01.269 --> 00:07:04.089 And it is. Frasier clearly spent years in the 00:07:04.089 --> 00:07:06.310 dusty basements of these school boards. He's 00:07:06.310 --> 00:07:10.490 reading meeting minutes from 1903, 1925, 1950. 00:07:11.110 --> 00:07:13.569 He meticulously reconstructed the entire legal 00:07:13.569 --> 00:07:16.730 skeleton of this system bone by bone. And Kaufman 00:07:16.730 --> 00:07:19.800 loved that. did, although even Kaufman noted 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:21.939 a slight wish that the book had covered other 00:07:21.939 --> 00:07:25.000 related aspects, which kind of hints at how incredibly 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:28.019 narrow Frazier's focus is. Right, and I'm sensing 00:07:28.019 --> 00:07:30.860 a bigger but coming here, because unassailable 00:07:30.860 --> 00:07:33.680 scholarship is great, but reconstructing a skeleton 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:35.720 means you might be forgetting the flesh and blood. 00:07:35.899 --> 00:07:38.759 And that is exactly the pivot point of the controversy 00:07:38.759 --> 00:07:40.740 surrounding this book. Okay, let's get into the 00:07:40.740 --> 00:07:43.079 plot twist, because there is a dissenting voice 00:07:43.079 --> 00:07:46.300 here, and it is a loud one. Roderick McLeod. 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.100 Yes. Roderick McLeod's review is by far the most 00:07:50.100 --> 00:07:52.920 critical of the bunch. And to understand why, 00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:55.300 we have to look at where the title of Frazier's 00:07:55.300 --> 00:07:57.399 book came from. Right. I asked you earlier about 00:07:57.399 --> 00:07:59.639 the origin of honorary Protestants. Where did 00:07:59.639 --> 00:08:01.879 Frazier actually get that phrase? He got it from 00:08:01.879 --> 00:08:04.300 a different book, a book called A Meeting of 00:08:04.300 --> 00:08:07.079 the People, School Boards and Protestant Communities 00:08:07.079 --> 00:08:10.790 in Quebec, 1801 -1998. And let me guess, who 00:08:10.790 --> 00:08:13.949 co -wrote that book? Roderick MacLeod. Wow! Okay, 00:08:14.149 --> 00:08:16.209 that is just delicious academic drama. So Fraser 00:08:16.209 --> 00:08:18.649 borrows MacLeod's own term to use as the title 00:08:18.649 --> 00:08:20.730 of his book, and then MacLeod turns around and 00:08:20.730 --> 00:08:23.529 reviews Fraser's book. Yes. The stakes were very 00:08:23.529 --> 00:08:25.730 high. I am assuming MacLeod did not send him 00:08:25.730 --> 00:08:28.829 a thank you basket. Definitely not. Because McLeod's 00:08:28.829 --> 00:08:31.470 review isn't just nitpicking facts. He attacks 00:08:31.470 --> 00:08:34.809 the entire tone of the project. He actually accuses 00:08:34.809 --> 00:08:37.730 Frazier of using the title honorary protestants 00:08:37.730 --> 00:08:40.590 sarcastically. Sarcastically. How do you use 00:08:40.590 --> 00:08:43.029 a historical label sarcastically in an academic 00:08:43.029 --> 00:08:45.610 book? Well, McLeod feels that Frazier is using 00:08:45.610 --> 00:08:47.750 the term to sneer at the system a little bit, 00:08:48.090 --> 00:08:50.710 to highlight the bureaucratic absurdity of it, 00:08:50.830 --> 00:08:52.710 much like you did at the start of our conversation. 00:08:52.990 --> 00:08:55.850 Guilty as charged. Right. It's easy to look back 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:58.289 and say, look at these ridiculous legal contortions 00:08:58.289 --> 00:09:01.710 they went through. But for McLeod, who deeply 00:09:01.710 --> 00:09:04.070 studied these Protestant communities, that term 00:09:04.070 --> 00:09:07.350 wasn't a joke. It represented a genuine, pragmatic 00:09:07.350 --> 00:09:10.049 attempt at inclusion during a very restricted 00:09:10.049 --> 00:09:12.870 time. It was a lifeline. I see. So McLeod thinks 00:09:12.870 --> 00:09:14.830 Frazier is looking down his nose at the historical 00:09:14.830 --> 00:09:17.769 actors. He's taking McLeod's term, which was 00:09:17.769 --> 00:09:19.909 meant to show a practical compromise, and using 00:09:19.909 --> 00:09:22.350 it to mock the inadequacy of the Protestant boards. 00:09:22.970 --> 00:09:25.009 That is bound to cause some serious academic 00:09:25.009 --> 00:09:28.779 friction. Oh, absolutely. But the sarcasm accusation 00:09:28.779 --> 00:09:32.240 is just the start. McCloud's main substantive 00:09:32.240 --> 00:09:35.259 criticism of the book is what he calls a total 00:09:35.259 --> 00:09:37.919 lack of a sense of human agency. human agency, 00:09:38.080 --> 00:09:39.399 meaning the people in the book don't actually 00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:41.899 feel like people. Exactly. McLeod argues that 00:09:41.899 --> 00:09:44.679 Frazier is so completely obsessed with the legal 00:09:44.679 --> 00:09:47.220 structures, the board minutes and the statutes 00:09:47.220 --> 00:09:50.419 that he completely fails to show how individuals 00:09:50.419 --> 00:09:53.379 felt or how they actually acted on a human level. 00:09:53.500 --> 00:09:55.399 It's like the difference between reading the 00:09:55.399 --> 00:09:57.320 blueprints of a house and actually living in 00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:59.519 it. You know, Frazier is handing you the blueprints. 00:09:59.620 --> 00:10:02.179 Every beam, every wire, every load bearing wall 00:10:02.179 --> 00:10:05.200 is perfectly unassailably drawn. Yes. But McLeod 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:07.279 is looking at the blueprints. and asking, okay, 00:10:07.580 --> 00:10:09.779 but what was it like to cook dinner in that kitchen? 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:12.539 Did the roof leak? Were the neighbors awful to 00:10:12.539 --> 00:10:15.980 you? That is the perfect analogy. McLeod is asking, 00:10:16.379 --> 00:10:18.539 where are the parents in this narrative? Where 00:10:18.539 --> 00:10:21.200 are the actual students? Where's the emotional 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:23.279 toll of looking a child in the eye and saying, 00:10:23.500 --> 00:10:26.950 you are an honorary citizen here? Frazier's book 00:10:26.950 --> 00:10:29.690 treats the Jewish community almost like a legal 00:10:29.690 --> 00:10:33.330 entity navigating a contract, rather than a marginalized 00:10:33.330 --> 00:10:35.789 group of human beings living through exclusion. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:38.980 Let's play devil's advocate for a second. Isn't 00:10:38.980 --> 00:10:41.399 that the point of a legal history? I mean, we 00:10:41.399 --> 00:10:43.799 established Frasier as a law professor. If you 00:10:43.799 --> 00:10:46.440 buy a book by a law professor about legal structures, 00:10:47.039 --> 00:10:49.200 isn't it a bit unfair to criticize it for not 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:51.220 being an emotional social history? It feels a 00:10:51.220 --> 00:10:52.960 bit like yelling at a cookbook because it doesn't 00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:55.679 have a good plot. And that is exactly the defense 00:10:55.679 --> 00:10:58.179 that reviewers like Binder and Kaufman would 00:10:58.179 --> 00:11:00.399 make. They would argue that you need the blueprint 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:03.649 first. You have to... meticulously reconstruct 00:11:03.649 --> 00:11:06.190 the legal trap before you can understand the 00:11:06.190 --> 00:11:08.610 people caught in it. But McLeod's counter argument 00:11:08.610 --> 00:11:11.330 is that you cannot fully understand the law if 00:11:11.330 --> 00:11:13.470 you ignore the human element that forces the 00:11:13.470 --> 00:11:16.389 law to change. Why did a school board suddenly 00:11:16.389 --> 00:11:19.529 hire a Jewish teacher in 1930? If you only look 00:11:19.529 --> 00:11:21.889 at the official documents, it looks like a spontaneous 00:11:21.889 --> 00:11:24.649 administrative choice. But what if it happened 00:11:24.649 --> 00:11:27.870 because a group of angry mothers staged a protest 00:11:27.870 --> 00:11:30.830 outside the board office? If you strip away the 00:11:30.830 --> 00:11:33.470 emotion and the human activism, McLeod argues 00:11:33.470 --> 00:11:36.190 you miss the actual cause and effect. You make 00:11:36.190 --> 00:11:39.330 history look like this inevitable, sterile evolution 00:11:39.330 --> 00:11:41.929 of rules. That makes a lot of sense. If you ignore 00:11:41.929 --> 00:11:44.049 how people felt, you miss why they fought back. 00:11:43.789 --> 00:11:46.710 back. Did McLeod have any other critiques or 00:11:46.710 --> 00:11:49.289 was it purely about this lack of human agency? 00:11:49.889 --> 00:11:51.929 He also pointed out what he called errors and 00:11:51.929 --> 00:11:54.529 confusing passages. He found the legal jargon 00:11:54.529 --> 00:11:57.350 so dense at times that it actually obscured the 00:11:57.350 --> 00:11:59.889 narrative. So put all that together and you have 00:11:59.889 --> 00:12:01.870 by far the most critical review of the bunch. 00:12:02.210 --> 00:12:04.909 It really is a clash of fundamental philosophies 00:12:04.909 --> 00:12:08.330 on how history should be told. What matters more? 00:12:08.870 --> 00:12:12.029 The unassailable reconstruction of the legal 00:12:12.029 --> 00:12:16.190 framework or the messy emotional reality of the 00:12:16.190 --> 00:12:18.490 people living inside that framework. And when 00:12:18.490 --> 00:12:21.590 we look at the Montreal school system, both perspectives 00:12:21.590 --> 00:12:25.320 are vital. You really can't understand the emotion 00:12:25.320 --> 00:12:27.700 of the Jewish community without understanding 00:12:27.700 --> 00:12:30.299 the rigid constitutional trap they were placed 00:12:30.299 --> 00:12:33.179 in. Frazier builds that trap for us to examine. 00:12:33.559 --> 00:12:35.179 While McLeod wants to hear the voices of the 00:12:35.179 --> 00:12:37.340 people stuck inside it. Exactly. And for you 00:12:37.340 --> 00:12:39.179 listening, I think it's really worth remembering 00:12:39.179 --> 00:12:42.340 that this specific trap shaped the identity of 00:12:42.340 --> 00:12:45.460 Montreal for well over a century. It created 00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:47.659 a Jewish community that had to be integrated 00:12:47.659 --> 00:12:50.340 into the city's fabric, but remained legally 00:12:50.340 --> 00:12:53.539 distinct. inside the schools, but outside the 00:12:53.539 --> 00:12:56.120 power structure. It forced them to become incredibly 00:12:56.120 --> 00:12:58.039 adept at civic maneuvering. They couldn't just 00:12:58.039 --> 00:12:59.720 rely on the ballot box to protect their kids 00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:01.399 because they couldn't vote for the board. So 00:13:01.399 --> 00:13:03.159 they had to master the back channel. They had 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:05.720 to become experts in legal negotiation. It's 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:08.019 the ultimate training ground for civic resilience. 00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:10.480 If the front door of the school is locked to 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:12.500 you and the back door is locked, you have to 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:14.820 learn how to pick the lock on the window. Or, 00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:17.200 in Frazier's view of the law, you convince the 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:19.320 state that the window is actually a door. Right. 00:13:19.450 --> 00:13:21.450 Say, no, no, no, this is an honorary door. Exactly. 00:13:22.149 --> 00:13:25.029 So synthesizing all of this, we have a book by 00:13:25.029 --> 00:13:27.970 David Frazier that is undeniably brilliant on 00:13:27.970 --> 00:13:31.090 a legal level, but potentially emotionally hollow, 00:13:31.330 --> 00:13:33.549 according to its biggest critic. We have a title. 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:36.519 Honorary Protestants, that is either a sarcastic 00:13:36.519 --> 00:13:39.059 jab at a broken system or a respectful nod to 00:13:39.059 --> 00:13:42.019 a historical lifeline. And we have the legacy 00:13:42.019 --> 00:13:45.620 of a public school system that spent 130 years 00:13:45.620 --> 00:13:48.840 trying to fit a complex changing world into two 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:51.700 rigid religious boxes. And a system that ultimately 00:13:51.700 --> 00:13:54.840 failed to do so. It did eventually change, obviously, 00:13:54.840 --> 00:13:57.639 but it took until 1997 for Quebec to finally 00:13:57.639 --> 00:13:59.679 move away from religious school boards and switch 00:13:59.679 --> 00:14:02.740 to linguistic boards, French and English. But 00:14:02.740 --> 00:14:05.080 for all those decades before that, being an honorary 00:14:05.080 --> 00:14:07.500 Protestant was simply the best the system could 00:14:07.500 --> 00:14:10.059 do. It really highlights the danger of building 00:14:10.059 --> 00:14:12.820 completely binary systems. When you divide the 00:14:12.820 --> 00:14:16.200 entire world into just box A and box B, you are 00:14:16.200 --> 00:14:19.120 inevitably going to alienate person C. And you 00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:22.259 force person C to negotiate their very existence 00:14:22.259 --> 00:14:24.899 just to get a basic public service like education. 00:14:25.149 --> 00:14:27.610 Which brings me to a final thought. I want you, 00:14:27.730 --> 00:14:29.549 the listener, to really sit with and explore 00:14:29.549 --> 00:14:32.429 on your own after this steep dive. We so often 00:14:32.429 --> 00:14:34.750 look to history books for the definitive truth. 00:14:35.029 --> 00:14:37.710 We want the final word on what happened. But 00:14:37.710 --> 00:14:40.029 here we have two groups of highly educated scholars 00:14:40.029 --> 00:14:42.190 looking at the exact same history, the exact 00:14:42.190 --> 00:14:45.129 same book. One group sees an unassailable masterpiece 00:14:45.129 --> 00:14:47.929 of legal research. The other sees a cold, confusing 00:14:47.929 --> 00:14:50.230 text that completely misses the human point. 00:14:50.429 --> 00:14:52.149 It's a great example of how history is never 00:14:52.149 --> 00:14:54.740 just one thing. Exactly. So the question is, 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:57.000 when you look back at history, what matters more 00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:59.519 to you? Do you want to understand the machine, 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:03.039 the laws, the structures, the cold mechanics 00:15:03.039 --> 00:15:06.899 of how a society operated? Or do you want to 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:09.779 understand the ghost in the machine, the anger, 00:15:09.919 --> 00:15:12.919 the hope, the actual agency of the people pushing 00:15:12.919 --> 00:15:15.980 against those walls? Can a history book truly 00:15:15.980 --> 00:15:18.799 be true if it gets all the laws right, but ignores 00:15:18.799 --> 00:15:21.519 how the people felt? That is a phenomenal question. 00:15:22.059 --> 00:15:24.360 And based on these reviews, I think Fraser McLeod 00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:26.299 would give you very different answers. I think 00:15:26.299 --> 00:15:28.259 they would, too. And honestly, it makes me think 00:15:28.259 --> 00:15:30.320 we need both kinds of books on the shelf if we 00:15:30.320 --> 00:15:32.100 ever want to see the whole picture. I completely 00:15:32.100 --> 00:15:35.000 agree. Well, thank you for unpacking this incredibly 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.960 dense but really fascinating topic with me today. 00:15:38.059 --> 00:15:40.039 It was my pleasure. And to everyone listening, 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:42.720 we will catch you on the next Deep Dive.