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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:
“Language law verdict gets champagne toast,” Winnipeg Free Press, 14 December 1979, page 6.
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: 10 November 2021
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