So I was looking at the title of the book we're
covering today for this deep dive, and I actually
had to do a double take. Yeah, it's quite a phrase,
isn't it? It really is. The book is called Honorary
Protestants. And my immediate reaction, you know,
it wasn't confusion so much as just marveling
at the sheer bureaucratic absurdity of that.
Right. Because how can someone be an honorary
member of a religion? It sounds like a... I don't
know, like a massive loophole, like a label you
just slap on a file folder because you literally
do not have a cabinet for it. That is essentially
what it was. The thing is, it wasn't just a file
folder. It was the lived reality for generations
of people. We're talking about the Jewish community
in Montreal trying to navigate a school system
that... legally speaking anyway, didn't even
know they existed. Which is wild to think about,
especially when you look at the full title. It's
Honorary Protestants, the Jewish School Question
in Montreal, 1867 -1997. By David Frazier. Right,
by David Frazier. Published in 2015 by the University
of Toronto Press. But I want to focus on those
dates. 1867 and 1997. I mean 1997 is not ancient
history. No, not at all. If you're listening
right now, you probably remember 1997. I was
listening to the Spice Girls and worrying about
Y2K a couple years early. And meanwhile, in Montreal,
the school system was still legally grappling
with whether you were Catholic, Protestant, or
this bizarre third honorary thing. It really
puts the long in the long 20th century. And you're
right to focus on the bureaucracy of it, because
that is exactly where David Frazier lives. He
isn't just a historian. He's a professor of law
and social theory at the university Nottingham.
Okay, so he's not writing a personal memoir here.
No, not at all. He's looking at the plumbing
of the state. He's looking at the wiring, the
contracts, and specifically this massive legal
fiction. To set the stage a bit, you have to
understand that Montreal's public school system
wasn't divided by language or by neighborhood
like we see in most modern systems. It was constitutionally
protected as a strict binary. You were Catholic
or you were Protestant. That was it. Just those
two boxes. Exactly. The British North America
Act of 1867. Lock that in. Which I guess makes
sense for 1867 if you're really only thinking
about French Catholics and English Protestants.
But then you have this massive influx of Jewish
immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
You've got thousands of families arriving. They're
settling down, paying taxes and obviously expecting
to send their kids to school. And the system
basically hits a syntax error. It just does not
compute. The Catholic schools were largely French
and deeply doctrinal at the time, so they really
weren't an option. So by custom, and I want to
stress that word, custom is doing a lot of heavy
lifting there. Jewish K through 12 students were
absorbed into the Protestant system. Hence the
title, the honorary Protestants. Exactly. And
that is the mission of our deep dive today. We
want to explore how a community navigates a system
that was fundamentally not built for them, because
absorbed does not mean accepted as equals. Yeah,
let's dig into that honorary status, because
just hearing it, it sounds incredibly patronizing.
It implies you're a guest in the house, like
you're allowed in the building, but we are absolutely
not giving you a set of keys. That is a perfect
way to put it. This book has split into 14 chapters.
And the core struggle across all of them isn't
just about where kids sat to learn algebra. It's
about the fight for rights. The legal struggle.
Yes. For a huge chunk of this history, Jewish
families paid school taxes. And often they paid
at the higher Protestant rate. Right. But they
had zero representation on the school boards.
They couldn't vote for the trustees. They couldn't
be trustees. Taxation without representation.
A classic case. And Frasier maps out how the
Jewish community was not passive in this. They
were negotiating the environment constantly to
gain rights to education. They were lobbying,
leveraging their growing numbers, trying to get
a say in how these districts were actually run.
But I have to ask, why didn't the system just
adapt? If you have a massive third group of people,
just make a third panel. Why cling to this strict
Catholic or Protestant label for 130 years? Because
of the constication. That religious divide was
baked right into the founding documents of Canada.
Changing it would have required a constitutional
amendment. Oh, and nobody wants to open that
can of worms. It's a political nightmare. So
instead of changing the structure, they just
changed the definitions. They stretched the legal
definition of Protestant to basically mean non
-Catholic. Wow. which is a very lawyerly solution
to the problem. We can't build a new door, so
we'll just legally redefine who gets to walk
through this one. Precisely. And this gets us
into the absolute meat of Frazier's analysis
and why it got the academic reception that it
did. Frazier uses this concept throughout the
book called the contextual stance on the rule
of law. Okay, let's unpack that phrase, because
when I hear rule of law, I usually think of something
rigid. You know, the law is the law. You follow
the rules as written. Right. The traditional
black letter law view. It's written down. It's
clear. It's binding. But Fraser is arguing that
law is actually a living social negotiation.
This contextual stance looks at how the law actually
functions on the ground in society versus what
is just printed on the paper. So the text on
the paper said Catholic or Protestant. But the
context on the ground said, hey, we have 20 ,000
Jewish kids in this city. Exactly. And the rule
of law becomes the messy bridge between those
two realities. Frazier argues that the law isn't
just the statute. It's the compromise. Right.
It's the school board minutes where they decide
to, you know, hire a few Jewish teachers to keep
the peace, even if the strict regulations don't
mandate it. It's those backroom negotiations.
It sounds exhausting, honestly, just a constant,
century -long, low -grade friction. It was. And
the reviewers who praised this book really keyed
in on how well Frazier captured that legal friction.
Yeah. Let's talk about the reception. Because
when you write a book, this hyper specific, a
legal history of one minority groups schooling
in one specific city, you are inviting a very
particular kind of academic scrutiny. So who
read this and what did they actually think? Well,
the legal scholars absolutely ate it up. Jory
Binder from Osgoode Hall Law School wrote a review
that highlighted exactly what we just talked
about, that contextual stance. Binder praised
how Frazier skillfully explained these complex
historical developments. Because if you're a
law student or a legal scholar, This is basically
a master class in how rigid systems are forced
to adapt, right? Yes. It's a brilliant case study
in legal flexibility. And there was a broad academic
consensus on that side of things. Anthony Dimaccio
over at Bishop's University called it a valuable
new contribution to the field. High praise. But
the strongest praise actually came from David
S. Kaufman at York University. He used the word
unassailable to describe the scholarship. Unassailable.
I mean, that is the academic mic drop right there.
When another scholar calls your work unassailable,
they're saying, I checked your footnotes, I went
through your bibliography, and you are bulletproof.
It implies the archival work is just flawless.
And it is. Frasier clearly spent years in the
dusty basements of these school boards. He's
reading meeting minutes from 1903, 1925, 1950.
He meticulously reconstructed the entire legal
skeleton of this system bone by bone. And Kaufman
loved that. did, although even Kaufman noted
a slight wish that the book had covered other
related aspects, which kind of hints at how incredibly
narrow Frazier's focus is. Right, and I'm sensing
a bigger but coming here, because unassailable
scholarship is great, but reconstructing a skeleton
means you might be forgetting the flesh and blood.
And that is exactly the pivot point of the controversy
surrounding this book. Okay, let's get into the
plot twist, because there is a dissenting voice
here, and it is a loud one. Roderick McLeod.
Yes. Roderick McLeod's review is by far the most
critical of the bunch. And to understand why,
we have to look at where the title of Frazier's
book came from. Right. I asked you earlier about
the origin of honorary Protestants. Where did
Frazier actually get that phrase? He got it from
a different book, a book called A Meeting of
the People, School Boards and Protestant Communities
in Quebec, 1801 -1998. And let me guess, who
co -wrote that book? Roderick MacLeod. Wow! Okay,
that is just delicious academic drama. So Fraser
borrows MacLeod's own term to use as the title
of his book, and then MacLeod turns around and
reviews Fraser's book. Yes. The stakes were very
high. I am assuming MacLeod did not send him
a thank you basket. Definitely not. Because McLeod's
review isn't just nitpicking facts. He attacks
the entire tone of the project. He actually accuses
Frazier of using the title honorary protestants
sarcastically. Sarcastically. How do you use
a historical label sarcastically in an academic
book? Well, McLeod feels that Frazier is using
the term to sneer at the system a little bit,
to highlight the bureaucratic absurdity of it,
much like you did at the start of our conversation.
Guilty as charged. Right. It's easy to look back
and say, look at these ridiculous legal contortions
they went through. But for McLeod, who deeply
studied these Protestant communities, that term
wasn't a joke. It represented a genuine, pragmatic
attempt at inclusion during a very restricted
time. It was a lifeline. I see. So McLeod thinks
Frazier is looking down his nose at the historical
actors. He's taking McLeod's term, which was
meant to show a practical compromise, and using
it to mock the inadequacy of the Protestant boards.
That is bound to cause some serious academic
friction. Oh, absolutely. But the sarcasm accusation
is just the start. McCloud's main substantive
criticism of the book is what he calls a total
lack of a sense of human agency. human agency,
meaning the people in the book don't actually
feel like people. Exactly. McLeod argues that
Frazier is so completely obsessed with the legal
structures, the board minutes and the statutes
that he completely fails to show how individuals
felt or how they actually acted on a human level.
It's like the difference between reading the
blueprints of a house and actually living in
it. You know, Frazier is handing you the blueprints.
Every beam, every wire, every load bearing wall
is perfectly unassailably drawn. Yes. But McLeod
is looking at the blueprints. and asking, okay,
but what was it like to cook dinner in that kitchen?
Did the roof leak? Were the neighbors awful to
you? That is the perfect analogy. McLeod is asking,
where are the parents in this narrative? Where
are the actual students? Where's the emotional
toll of looking a child in the eye and saying,
you are an honorary citizen here? Frazier's book
treats the Jewish community almost like a legal
entity navigating a contract, rather than a marginalized
group of human beings living through exclusion.
Let's play devil's advocate for a second. Isn't
that the point of a legal history? I mean, we
established Frasier as a law professor. If you
buy a book by a law professor about legal structures,
isn't it a bit unfair to criticize it for not
being an emotional social history? It feels a
bit like yelling at a cookbook because it doesn't
have a good plot. And that is exactly the defense
that reviewers like Binder and Kaufman would
make. They would argue that you need the blueprint
first. You have to... meticulously reconstruct
the legal trap before you can understand the
people caught in it. But McLeod's counter argument
is that you cannot fully understand the law if
you ignore the human element that forces the
law to change. Why did a school board suddenly
hire a Jewish teacher in 1930? If you only look
at the official documents, it looks like a spontaneous
administrative choice. But what if it happened
because a group of angry mothers staged a protest
outside the board office? If you strip away the
emotion and the human activism, McLeod argues
you miss the actual cause and effect. You make
history look like this inevitable, sterile evolution
of rules. That makes a lot of sense. If you ignore
how people felt, you miss why they fought back.
back. Did McLeod have any other critiques or
was it purely about this lack of human agency?
He also pointed out what he called errors and
confusing passages. He found the legal jargon
so dense at times that it actually obscured the
narrative. So put all that together and you have
by far the most critical review of the bunch.
It really is a clash of fundamental philosophies
on how history should be told. What matters more?
The unassailable reconstruction of the legal
framework or the messy emotional reality of the
people living inside that framework. And when
we look at the Montreal school system, both perspectives
are vital. You really can't understand the emotion
of the Jewish community without understanding
the rigid constitutional trap they were placed
in. Frazier builds that trap for us to examine.
While McLeod wants to hear the voices of the
people stuck inside it. Exactly. And for you
listening, I think it's really worth remembering
that this specific trap shaped the identity of
Montreal for well over a century. It created
a Jewish community that had to be integrated
into the city's fabric, but remained legally
distinct. inside the schools, but outside the
power structure. It forced them to become incredibly
adept at civic maneuvering. They couldn't just
rely on the ballot box to protect their kids
because they couldn't vote for the board. So
they had to master the back channel. They had
to become experts in legal negotiation. It's
the ultimate training ground for civic resilience.
If the front door of the school is locked to
you and the back door is locked, you have to
learn how to pick the lock on the window. Or,
in Frazier's view of the law, you convince the
state that the window is actually a door. Right.
Say, no, no, no, this is an honorary door. Exactly.
So synthesizing all of this, we have a book by
David Frazier that is undeniably brilliant on
a legal level, but potentially emotionally hollow,
according to its biggest critic. We have a title.
Honorary Protestants, that is either a sarcastic
jab at a broken system or a respectful nod to
a historical lifeline. And we have the legacy
of a public school system that spent 130 years
trying to fit a complex changing world into two
rigid religious boxes. And a system that ultimately
failed to do so. It did eventually change, obviously,
but it took until 1997 for Quebec to finally
move away from religious school boards and switch
to linguistic boards, French and English. But
for all those decades before that, being an honorary
Protestant was simply the best the system could
do. It really highlights the danger of building
completely binary systems. When you divide the
entire world into just box A and box B, you are
inevitably going to alienate person C. And you
force person C to negotiate their very existence
just to get a basic public service like education.
Which brings me to a final thought. I want you,
the listener, to really sit with and explore
on your own after this steep dive. We so often
look to history books for the definitive truth.
We want the final word on what happened. But
here we have two groups of highly educated scholars
looking at the exact same history, the exact
same book. One group sees an unassailable masterpiece
of legal research. The other sees a cold, confusing
text that completely misses the human point.
It's a great example of how history is never
just one thing. Exactly. So the question is,
when you look back at history, what matters more
to you? Do you want to understand the machine,
the laws, the structures, the cold mechanics
of how a society operated? Or do you want to
understand the ghost in the machine, the anger,
the hope, the actual agency of the people pushing
against those walls? Can a history book truly
be true if it gets all the laws right, but ignores
how the people felt? That is a phenomenal question.
And based on these reviews, I think Fraser McLeod
would give you very different answers. I think
they would, too. And honestly, it makes me think
we need both kinds of books on the shelf if we
ever want to see the whole picture. I completely
agree. Well, thank you for unpacking this incredibly
dense but really fascinating topic with me today.
It was my pleasure. And to everyone listening,
we will catch you on the next Deep Dive.