Chaput honoured with Order of Canada

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This article was published 17/01/2023 (902 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A retired senator from Ste Anne was one of 99 people appointed to the Order of Canada, announced by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon on Dec. 29.

Maria Chaput was the first Franco-Manitoban woman to be appointed to the upper house of the Parliament and served from Dec. 12, 2002 to March 1, 2016.

She was nominated for being a tireless champion of the Franco-Manitoban community and for her work on official languages during her tenure as senator.

Reached in her home in Winnipeg, the 80-year-old former senator said this was an honour no Canadian expects to get.

“Being one of the Canadians honoured that way is really out of this world,” she said. “I’m very honoured and very humbled too, because so many other Canadians could also receive this award.”

When Chaput responded to a message from the Governor General’s office, she thought she’d be giving someone a reference, a familiar task for her. When told she was being named to the Order of Canada, she wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I was just speechless for a few seconds,” she said.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon described those receiving the honour as “trailblazers in their respective fields”. “Their commitment to the betterment of Canada fills me with pride and hope for the future,” she said in a press release.

Chaput’s work on the official languages act and earlier work establishing the province-wide francophone school division came from a spirit she said was always part of who she and her family was and is.

The oldest of a French speaking family of 11, she said her father and mother’s families were structured, disciplined, hardworking, honest and caring, something that was passed to their children.

“From both sides of the family we had give or take the same values, we all worked hard, we had to be honest,” she said. “Everything was done in French.”

An avid learner, Chaput’s early education was limited. She was educated by the Grey Nuns, but post-secondary education was not to be. “University was for some of the boys but not for the girls in those days,” she said.

Through it all, being French was an important part of her identity.

“French language, speaking French, living in French was really part of my DNA,” she said. “That’s what I was.”

That’s why when her own daughters entered school which was English only in Ste Anne, she knew something had to be done.

“We parents realized that if we want to keep our language, we needed French schools for our kids,” she said.

A door to door campaign acquired the necessary signatures to achieve their goal, but Chaput soon realized a single French school was not the solution.

“We had no control over how the money from the government was spent,” she said. “The school board didn’t speak French, so we looked at it and altogether the parents in Manitoba, we worked towards getting a French school division.”

The process, she recalled, was hard and “caused a lot of heartaches” with neighbours disagreeing on the need for the change. Chaput said the message to those in opposition was that they weren’t searching for change “because we don’t like you”.

“This is our need, and this is our right because French is one of the two official languages in Canada and minorities have rights,” she said.

This experience spurred further learning, and Chaput said she began to get involved on boards and committees at the provincial level.

She was also involved with a DSFM committee on the Official Languages Act and began to discover concerns with how the French community was counted. Because funding depended on numbers, that was crucial information. Chaput said she then discovered, services weren’t supposed to be offered based current methods.

“I learned that the Supreme Court of Canada had always rejected that way of counting themselves,” she said.

While working for Senator Ron Duhamel of St. Boniface, Chaput was told she should become a senator, but initially was not convinced.

“Like most Canadians I had no idea, not a clue what it did,” she said of the Senate. “I told Ron Duhamel, what would I do there?”

But the idea grew and Chaput said she soon realized the Senate was for the protection of minorities in Canada, representing Canadians from all walks of life.

“That appealed to me,” she said. “It spoke to me.”

She realized she did have a reason to reach for the position.

“I’m going there for the French speaking minorities and all minorities,” she said. “I’m not there to judge, I’m there to help them get their rights.”

So, when a phone call arrived in December, 2002 from Prime Minister Jean Chretien asking if she’d like to be a senator, she was ready with her answer.

“Of course, I said yes,” she said. “I was honoured but I was so pleased because I thought, well there I will be with some of the decision makers and I will try to make a difference.”

Being the first female Franco-Manitoban senator was a responsibility she felt.

“I felt that I was privileged to be able to advance, to work for the community and get them to have the rights that they really should have, and I also saw that I might be able to help other minorities get their rights,” she said. “So, to me it was something that really excited me because I thought, I need to make a difference.”

Work to revise the Official Languages Act continued through her tenure as senator as she drafted three or four bills that never went through. One went to the committee stage giving them the opportunity to hear from French minorities from across Canada, and to her surprise, English speaking people in Quebec.

“They are the minority there,” she said.

The last revised bill was brought to the Senate in December 2015.

While the bill was never passed during her tenure, Chaput said she’s proud of the work she did. When the Liberals took office, Chaput said they committed to revising the Official Languages Act.

“That committee would be inspired by the work that I had done in the Senate,” she said.

While that’s the pinnacle of 13 years of work, Chaput admits it doesn’t sound like a lot on paper.

“It might not be much, but when you work at the federal level it is such a slow process to change things,” she said.

She remains uncompromising on her call for French language services to be available everywhere.

“As long as Canada has two official languages, one of them being French, Canada has an obligation to ensure that services in French are available across Canada,” she said.

While she still follows the news, Chaput said she doesn’t weigh in on issues anymore.

“I don’t get involved anymore because I always say, you guys are on the train, I jumped off. I’m sitting on the balcony watching the train go by and wishing and hoping it will go on.”

Chaput said it’s up to the younger generation to do what they want, even if it’s totally different than what she would have chose.

“They know what they want and what they need. I don’t anymore,” she said. “They’ll get things together, they’re human beings, they care about the environment, they care about the people, they’ve got compassion, they’re honest; I mean what the heck, the world should be in good hands.”