Memorable Manitobans: Georges Forest (1924-1990)
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Georges Forest
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Language rights activist.
Born at St. Boniface in 1924, he founded the Agence d’Assurances Forest Limitée in 1948 and operated it throughout his life. He was a candidate in the 1963 and 1968 federal general elections but came in a distant fourth place each time. He engaged in a long battle to restore French as an official language in Manitoba, winning a famous court case in the Canadian Supreme Court over a unilingual parking ticket in 1979. He was co-founder of the Festival du Voyageur in 1970. He received a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977. He died of a heart attack at a Festival dinner in St. Boniface, on 14 February 1990. He was buried in the Glenlawn Memorial Gardens.
See also:
Divided Minority: Franco-Manitobans and the Forest Case by Emmet Collins
Manitoba History, Number 64, Fall 2010
Sources:
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 16 February 1990, page 40.
“Friends, francophones remember Forest” by Gloria Taylor, Winnipeg Free Press Weekly, 25 February 1990, page S7-9.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 21 January 2018
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