The Post-War Period 249

the Evangeline Unit formed their own organization in 1975.

GROWING ASSIMILATION

After the Second World War, Acadians and their communities were becoming anglicized at an alarming rate. According to the census of 1951, there were 15,477 people of French origin on the Island but only 8,477 (or about fifty-eight percent) declared French as their mother tongue. Twenty years later, in 1971, the situation had deterior- ated considerably. Of the 15,325 people of French origin, 7,365 (or about forty-eight percent) learned French as their mother tongue. Only 4,405 of these people declared that they could speak French fluently**. Already in 1956 the Inspector for Acadian Schools, Fran¢ois- E. Doiron, had deplored the ever-increasing rate of assimilation:

As time goes by it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve the French language in our province and there is no doubt that French is losing ground at an alarming rate. This is particularly distressing to those of us who have pride in our French origin and would like to preserve our language and the French traditions.

More and more Acadians are giving up their language, and in several of our large French parishes English has been adopted as the language in general use, with French spoken by a few of the older people. Therefore, our only hope for the future lies in trying to teach as much French as possible in the schools.*°

There were many factors contributing to this anglicization. French was taught on a limited basis in many schools, even if Acadians were in the majority. There was a shortage of qualified francophone teachers. Several Acadian parishes had anglophone priests for a long time. With the arrival of television, much more English was introduced into the home. Urbanization caused an increase in the number of marriages between francophones and anglophones. In order to find work, more and more Acadians had to move to Summerside and Charlottetown where the English-speaking environment made it difficult for families to preserve French, particularly since there were no French schools for their children.

It should also be emphasized that preserving the French culture was not made any easier by the fact that the language occupied an