"When the Constitution Act of 1867 was enacted, section 93 guaranteed certain educational rights to Catholics and Protestants in Quebec, but not to any others. Over the course of the next century, the Jewish community in Montreal carved out an often tenuous arrangement for public schooling as "honorary Protestants," based on complex negotiations with the Protestant and Catholic school boards, the provincial government, and individual municipalities. In the face of the constitution's exclusionary language, all parties gave their compromise a legal form which was frankly unconstitutional, but unavoidable if Jewish children were to have access to public schools. Bargaining in the shadow of the law, they made their own constitution long before the formal constitutional amendment of 1997 finally put an end to the issue. In Honorary Protestants, David Fraser presents the first legal history of the Jewish school question in Montreal. Based on extensive archival research, it highlights the complex evolution of concepts of rights, citizenship, and identity, negotiated outside the strict legal boundaries of the constitution."--

Introduction : constituting law, constituting justice in the Jewish school question -- Invoking equality, invoking legality : Jews constituting their Canadian identity -- Schools, taxes, Jews, Catholics (and Protestants) : the origins of the Jewish school question -- Jews and Roman Catholics, school taxes and Protestants : the first Jewish school question -- Taxes, the Rabbi and the schoolboy : Section 93 and the Pinsler Case -- Promises, promises : "honorary Protestants" in Protestant schools -- Jews, Protestants, and taxes (again) : the Jewish school question in the 1920s -- Jews, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the law : the Jewish school question goes to court -- Jews, Protestants, and Roman Catholics : two crises, and the Jewish school question, 1928-31 -- The Protestant Jews of Ste. Sophie and La Macaza : constituting school and community in rural Quebec -- Outremont and beyond : the Jewish school question moves west -- Hampstead and beyond : from the ghetto to citizenship and equality under law's shadow -- TMR, St. Laurent, Cte Saint-Luc : democracy, law, and the end of the Jewish school question -- Constituting Canada and the jewish school question in Montreal, fin.