Throughout the Western world, 1968 was marked by student protests. Acadia was no exception. The year began with a strike at the Université de Moncton, which lasted from February 12 to 22; demands included a tuition freeze and the adoption of bilingualism at the municipal level. Eight months later, 1968 ended with a strike at Collège Sainte-Anne de Pointe-de-l’Église (December 5-13), where students opposed the institution’s prospective move to Yarmouth. The idea of a new location stemmed from the impending secularization of the college and the provincial government’s desire to attract more students to maintain its profitability.

The student strike at Collège Sainte-Anne thus offered a window into how classical colleges managed a pivotal year in the history of the modern world. These colleges, it should be remembered, were the Catholic educational institutions that had trained the French-Canadian elite for generations.

While students at the Université de Moncton justified their cause by drawing on ideas in vogue among young people at the time, notably theories of decolonization, those at Sainte-Anne preferred to emphasize the importance of local solidarity. They succeeded in mobilizing people of different generations and linguistic communities. As the student newspaper Le Reflet reminded its readers in an editorial written by Gail Hersey, a young anglophone from Digby, Nova Scotia, students preferred consensus to confrontation. Even if they were aware of the upheavals of their time, an era during which it was becoming normal for young people to take to the floor in a diversity of social debates, Sainte-Anne students chose to engage in their own way, maintaining a certain deference to their elders.

Finally, thanks to the efforts of students, as well as those of the economic and political elite of the Clare region, Nova Scotia’s provincial government agreed that Collège Sainte-Anne could remain in Pointe-de-l’Église. A secular institution from 1971, the Collège was officially renamed Université Sainte-Anne in 1977.