Keith Spicer, Canada’s first official languages commissioner, has died | CBC News

Keith Spicer, Canada’s first official languages commissioner, has died. He was 89.

Spicer was also a columnist and editor for a number of newspapers, including the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and the Vancouver Sun.

Spicer served as languages commissioner from 1970 to 1977. In that role he was tasked with promoting the new Official Languages Act to Canadians, according to his profile on the commissioner’s website.

“Commissioner Spicer saw institutional bilingualism as an ideal of human dignity that called upon the mutual respect of the two language groups,” his profile says.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised Spicer for promoting bilingualism across the country.

“With his visionary leadership, negotiation skills, and frank honesty, he helped the Official Languages Act gain acceptance among the Canadian public and advocated for the rights of French-speaking minorities everywhere in Canada,” Trudeau said in a media statement Thursday.

Spicer is credited with helping to establish the advocacy group Canadian Parents for French and lobbied for an increase in French immersion school programs across the country.

A spokesperson for Canadian Parents for French said the organization is mourning Spicer’s passing and offered condolences to his family.

“The parents who worked directly with him in the ’70s share fond memories of how he empowered them to share their voices and how he supported their desire for every Canadian child to have the opportunity to learn French, regardless of where they lived in the country. He had such a strong vision and he was tenacious in moving projects forward,” the spokesperson said.

The Canadian Museum of History described Spicer as “a young and colourful journalist who promoted bilingualism with humour and energy.”

In 1974, Spicer’s office came up with a board game called Oh Canada! that promoted bilingualism. Two million copies of the game were produced.

Official Languages Commissioner Raymond Théberge said he was saddened to hear of Spicer’s passing.

“Through my eyes as a young Franco-Manitoban, Keith Spicer represented the true embodiment of the Official Languages Act. He was a star, but more importantly, he was my star. His vision of bilingualism and openness to others particularly appealed to me,” he said in a media statement.

Théberge said he and his office offered their deepest condolences to Spicer’s family.

In 1978, Spicer was invested as an officer of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honours. Spicer’s profile on the Order of Canada website says “he implemented the policies of the Official Languages Act with courage and imagination.”

Spicer also served as the chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) from 1989 to 1996. He stepped away from that post temporarily in 1990 after being asked by then-prime minister Brian Mulroney to chair the Citizen’s Forum on Canada’s Future, which looked into the country’s political future following the collapse of the Meech Lake constitutional accord.