Keith Spicer: Canada’s first official languages commissioner dies at 89

Keith Spicer was a Canadian scholar, government employee, journalist, and writer who died on August 24, 2023. Spicer served as Canada’s first Commissioner of Official Languages from 1970 until 1977.

As a neutral officer of Parliament, he was appointed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and directly answered to Parliament. Under the 1969 Official Languages Act, his duty as the country’s “language ombudsman” was to safeguard the rights of the French and English languages in all federal organizations. (In the past, the federal government of Canada conducted business primarily in English.) As a long-term advocate for an officially bilingual Canada, he supported the use of both English and French in service and at work, as well as the teaching of “French immersion” in English-language schools across the country.

Keith Spicer: Canada’s first official languages commissioner dies at 89

First commissioner of official languages for Canada, Keith Spicer, passed away on Thursday in Ottawa at the age of 89. He is perhaps best known to Canadians who carefully followed the constitutional discussions in the early 1990s for his frank description of the “fury in the land” directed at the prime minister who had appointed him to head a committee on national unity.