Category: Plain language

This is a near-verbatim transcript of an in-person interview I did with Kate Harrison Whiteside in Vancouver, BC, on October 18, 2017, as part of my project to compile an oral history of the plain language movement in Canada between 1980 and 1995. Although the transcript reflects her views at the time, those views might have evolved since the interview took place.

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IC: Thank you for taking the time to meet with me!

KHW: You’re welcome!

IC: So I guess the first question I have for you is “When did you become involved with the plain language movement, and what inspired you to join?”

KHW: I got a contract to simplify a federal government financial form, much like your Revenue Canada tax application form—it was for an agriculture agency; it was a national program. And I instantly recognized that it needed some simplification, and someone mentioned to me, “Oh, you know, there’s a conference going on in Vancouver. Why don’t you go there? It’s plain language, it’s legal, but why don’t you find out about it?”

So I went… came to Vancouver, and that’s where I met Cheryl Stephens, and that’s where I got my first intro to plain language and what was going on here, which was quite—I won’t say radical—but it was very progressive compared to what was going on elsewhere. I hadn’t even heard of it at that time. I had been simplifying technical agricultural scientific documents for a number of years, but I didn’t know what I was doing was plain language. [Laughs]

After I went back to Manitoba, I called up Cheryl, and I said, “You know, this is way too important to just be left to kind of happen on its own—let’s do something.” So that was my introduction to plain language, my introduction to Cheryl Stephens, and then we thought, “OK, let’s do something.” So, we formed the Plain Language Consultants Network and decided to do a conference. And back then, early ’90s, all we had was email, and that had just happened. I remember just looking at my fax machine going, “I wonder what’s going to happen to you.” And through Cheryl’s contacts, we were able to do the first conference in 1995 in Winnipeg, which was really successful. So that was my introduction to plain language. Continue reading “The plain language movement in Canada, 1980–1995: Interview with Kate Harrison Whiteside”

This is a near-verbatim transcript of an in-person interview I did with Cheryl Stephens in Vancouver, BC, on August 10, 2017, as part of my project to compile an oral history of the plain language movement in Canada between 1980 and 1995. Although the transcript reflects her views at the time, those views might have evolved since the interview took place.

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IC: Thanks for agreeing to meet with me and talk to me about your experiences between 1980 and 1995.

CS: Sure.

IC: The reason I’m doing this project is because there doesn’t seem to be very much out there about the plain language movement in Canada, and I really wanted to capture the voices of people who were really active in that movement.

CS: Karen Schriver’s doing an article now on the plain language movement in the US and how it’s evolved. There’s not much on Canada.

IC: All right. So this can be as freeform as you’d like. I have a few guiding questions, but if you want to deviate from those, we can absolutely do that. But I guess the first question that I’ll ask is, “When did you become involved with the plain language movement?”

CS: 1989. I was working for a law firm managing their precedent system, trying to rationalize it, and it surely needed plain language. And I saw a report in Lawyers Weekly about Robert Eagleson making a tour across Canada. He’s a leader in the movement from Australia, and I believe it was the Canadian Legal Information Council subgroup—I think it was the Plain Language Centre that had just been set up. And I read the article and I was interested and I found out that the people who had heard him in Vancouver had formed a working group, a monthly discussion group. And I started going to that, and I started to apply what I learned on the law firm’s precedents.

Because at the same time we had a committee to come up with a style guide. It took us a year [laughs] with the lawyers arguing over style issues. That’s the big thing I encountered with the precedent system: There were competing documents that were simply in different styles. And we had to maintain that for some documents where there was Bob’s style and John’s style, you know. That’s how I got started with plain language. Took an interest and started looking into it.

IC: Mm-hm. You have a legal background.

CS: Yes.

IC: And at that point when you were doing the style guide, had you been moving more into the writing and the drafting, or were you still maintaining a practice or…

CS: No, I supervised paralegals. And half my time was supposed to be devoted to basically rewriting the precedents used in the corporate commercial department. So I was rewriting. I was comparing maybe a dozen existing documents to see if they did anything different. And most of them didn’t do anything different. They just were written in a different order or style, and so I was trying to come up with one that did it consistently.

So I’d looked at all the general English style guides that were available then, and they were OK. There was nothing specific to law. But that’s why we were coming up with our own internal style guide. And the plain language… There was also no plain language style guide. But there were courses and things that you could study.

IC: And when you became interested in plain language, would you say that it was already a movement at that point?

CS: It was a nascent movement. There was a meeting group in Vancouver. There might have been 50 people who were interested in it, and a dozen would come to a meeting. And it was the same, I guess, in other cities. Big cities.

Internationally, I’d say that at that time Australia was starting to be very active or to publish things from Robert Eagleson and Peter Butt, and they were about to open up their plain language centre at the University of Sydney Law School. And in the UK, there was a plain-language-in-law movement that gave rise to Clarity.

IC: Mm-hm. How would you compare the movement in Canada to the movement in other places around the world? You just mentioned Australia and the US. But during that time when you first started becoming involved, how would you compare what you saw happening in Canada versus elsewhere?

CS: Well, in Canada, there were two things. Financial institutions had adopted or favoured plain language, and they were trying to change documents. I remember at that time I went and signed a loan with Vancouver City Savings, and I just asked… they didn’t even think that you should have to read the form. They just asked for your signature. So I picked it up and I saw that it was first person—“we” and “you.” So I thought, “OK, I understand they’ve made an effort to make it clear. I’m gonna sign it.” So there were the financial institutions.

And then… the Native or Indigenous people’s movement was giving rise to some discussions on treaties and the like, and there were some people who were devoted then to consulting to that and thinking about putting things in plain language, who I encountered. And then there had been a study conducted by the Canadian Department of Justice that called for plain language in law. And around 1999, a report was released on access to justice in British Columbia that [Ted] Hughes chaired and Kathleen Keating worked on, and she managed to insert a chapter there about plain language in the justice system. So…

So that was 1989. And 1990 was when I got a job working in plain language, on the Plain Language Project of the Continuing Legal Education Society of BC. And I believe… I’m pretty certain that their plain language project was initiated after seeing the BC Justice Department report by Hughes, and at the same time the Plain Language Institute was initiated by the provincial government because of those reports.

So in 1990, there was a rapid advancement.

IC: And it sounds like that’s when the government got interested.

CS: The two reports that had been released brought things forward and people started doing stuff. Like, so there was the Plain Language Institute and the CLE plain language project in BC, and nationally, there was… the Canadian Legal Information Council launched its plain language centre.

And then… I don’t know other provinces well, but I know it was around that time they started taking up projects. There was a lot of interest initially from justice departments across the provinces and then the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bankers Association formed a joint initiative to research and publish on plain language.

So I got a job with the Plain Language Project at the Continuing Legal Education Society. The marvellous thing was they gave us three months to study plain language, to find what resources were available. And that was when I was doing the research, and I looked into what’s available on the continent or elsewhere, the North American continent or elsewhere, to study. And we found a couple of workshops that we could attend that were on plain language and legal-related writing.

So that was great. I got to study plain language for three months.

IC: Mm-hm. And beyond what the Canadian Bar Association and Canadian Bankers were doing, would you say that each province really directed its own plain language initiatives? Was there any kind of national cohesion?

CS: Well, each province directed their own. There was a national conference in Toronto, the Canadian Legal Information Council was a sponsor of that, and so people came from across Canada for that. At the conclusion of three days of workshops, there was a general assembly where the question was posed, “What comes next?” I thought that meant, “What should we do next?” But it meant, “Where should the priorities be for the funding agencies?”

IC: Right.

CS: So I said I think that we shouldn’t make this a one-time deal. I think that we should all be in contact and form some sort of group that keeps in touch, and it fell flat because, you know, the motivation was, “What issues should we address from the funders’ point of view.” But then two or three years later, I was contacted by Kate Harrison from Winnipeg, who was gonna be in Vancouver, and had been at that meeting, and she remembered that I’d said that and wanted to get in touch. So that’s how we met. And we got together for lunch. And she said, “How can we form an association?” So I said, “Well, this is our first meeting. This is the Plain Language Consultants Network, and how shall we proceed?” [Laughs]

IC: [Laughs]

CS: Because I was into, “Let’s do it. Let’s not talk about it or ask others about it,” you know. So that’s how the Plain Language Network got started, which became the Plain Language Association International. That was 1993.

IC: Mm-hm. And you’ve touched on this a little bit, but what would you say were some of the most important events—politically, socially, or culturally—that influenced the early days of the movement in Canada or when you first got involved?

CS: Well, in Canada, there were two main things, I think—oh, actually three.

One was the consumers’ movement of the ’70s was finally making its way into the banking system, and from a marketing point of view, for financial services, plain language was considered important.

And the second thing was the access-to-justice movement, which was coming into motion as a result of the Hughes report that said access to justice required plain language.

And the third thing was the literacy movement was teaching people how to write for people of low literacy.

So the three were motivating people from different sectors. The people in plain language in law and banking were saying, “Oh, well, this is not about literacy.” But we had common interests, and the readership and the general public has low literacy, the majority. So we were moving along the same paths but not connecting, and I felt we should connect.

IC: And that’s what you were trying to do with your network?

CS: No, the network was more that… there was no… the internet wasn’t going—or it was just getting started. And there was some email or forums—the old-fashioned version, I can’t remember, bulletin boards or something. And there wasn’t anything for people to keep in touch.

And so one of my first projects or contracts was with the Department of Justice and their public information section, so that was when I started an online forum, which became part of the Access to Justice Network, which had a website and this forum, and then that project required me to set up a website, which was Plain Language Online. So we were getting online quickly, because other people had more knowledge or experience of the internet.

And I was fortunate that my two sons were in university, and one was studying marketing, and the other was studying computer programming, and they were developing an interest or were making use of the internet and World Wide Web, and together with them, we put together these websites and things.

IC: Mm-hm. It also ties into the next question, which is “What do you consider your main roles and activities in the plain language movement?” And you’ve mentioned quite a few of these already. Are there any accomplishments related to the movement that you’re especially proud of?

CS: Well, looking back, some of the stuff you initiate out of necessity, like the Network, or because of a contract that comes your way, like Plain Language Online, but those were accomplishments that really contributed to developing the movement.

And then some of my early projects I’m quite proud of. I think they really contributed—for example, the federal government’s National Literacy Secretariat developed a booklet on plain language—you know that booklet on plain language. Plain Language: Clear and Simple. And that booklet was used to develop a three-day training program for federal civil servants, and then I was asked to take the booklet and turn it into an online training site. We called it the Plain Train, and it used the theme of a train conductor, and you could get on the train and learn about plain language.

And so it was a few lessons you could do quickly, and it was really… I don’t know if highly used was the thing, but civil servants made use of it, and it was available to the public, and people used it a lot. So that got lots of use, so I was proud of that.

Founding the Network, I think I mentioned that. And then we did a plain language glossary in BC, which I wrote the English definitions for, for legal and court-related terms, and that was great.

And I’ve done a few things just as a volunteer, which I’m proud of.

One of them was… I was asked to contract with the Vancouver Food Bank—and I was asked to rewrite their mission statement. It was quite technical and oriented toward people in the field of free food services to the public, and so I put it in plain language and the directors were really…

Anyway, I decided that I couldn’t charge them because it’s a charitable institute and something everyone should support. And so the directors wanted to know more about plain language, so I provided them with some training resources, and then they spent a year consulting with their users and produced a new plain language mission statement. So I felt that contributed to the community. I was proud of that. I’ve got to think about other things I did.

With the Bar Association, when the two CBA reports came out—one was on legal literacy, and the other was on plain language—I was on the volunteer committee of the Canadian Bar Association, the communications committee. And I was asked to read those reports and report back to the committee on how in BC we could take steps to implement those.

So that’s what I did, and my first recruits Penny Bain and Paul Winn had experience working on projects like that, and Paul had access to funding sources through the National Literacy Secretariat or another organization with the Department of Justice. And, anyway, along with them, we put all of the possibilities together into one project and started a project called Lawyers for Literacy. And what we did with that was… there’s a Lawyers for Literacy project now in the States which actually gets lawyers to teach literacy students, but our project was to inform all the lawyers of what they could do to aid clients who had literacy issues.

So we promoted plain language, and we published online resources, and we provided a packaged set of tools to every law firm in the province one year, and for a couple of years we provided that package to every graduate of UBC Law School. And what we found was you have to go back, like, every three years and remind people. But we gave them tools, and that was a great thing.

And I continued to work with the Bar Association, promoting plain language in different ways through its activities. And there was an international conference of the International Bar Association, so we got to promote that and share that toolkit with people from around the world, and there was a great deal of interest from around the world on that.

IC: And do you think—when you mentioned that this is something you have to go back to people and remind them about—do you think these principles that you were trying to put forth have been sustained in any kind of meaningful way at the UBC Law School and other places where lawyers are trained?

CS: No. [Laughs] Actually, the important role there was Richard Wydick was a California leader in legal writing, and his booklet was short and brief, and it’s been used across Canada to introduce plain language in legal writing. And that had a lot of influence.

But the thing is, if I could give you an example, at one point, when Sheila Fraser was our auditor general federally, she took note that the Canadian government adopted a plain language policy of communications and was doing this training and promoting plain language, so she required that her auditors check with each department when they did the annual audit and report on what advances they had made in implementing plain language.

So every year for several years then, they would report back what advances the particular department had taken. And I think that had a big impact and got Revenue Canada and others going. But the thing is, about five years ago, I mentioned this to a friend who works in the federal government, and she contacted her friend who was a communications officer for the Auditor General’s Office and said, “No. No such thing ever happened; I know nothing about it.”

IC: Oh!

CS: So to make sure I was sane, I went and did, you know, the Wayback Machine—the Internet Archive?

IC: Yeah.

CS: I did some searches there, and sure enough, I found auditors’ reports that contained reports on how they were implementing plain language. So I know it was happening for real. But the history’s been lost. And unfortunately that happens.

IC: Do you think that having something equivalent to the Plain Writing Act is something we should aspire towards? Or?

CS: Oh, yeah, it would definitely be valuable to have it.

IC: To have it legislated and…

CS: Yeah. Because if it’s informal and it’s a policy, those change. We still have a federal plain language communication policy. I don’t know if we still have one in BC—we had a whole page policy at one time. Well, you need to keep reminding people. And if you’re not going to do that… I think if the auditors had an entrenched policy to look at plain language, you would see some of that.

IC: What do you consider the biggest challenges in the plain language movement before the mid-1990s?

CS: Um, sharing information. At that time, there’s was a book that had published some papers delivered at a conference. There was only one such book available at the university where Karen Schriver was working. So there was nothing, really.

There wasn’t an internet, there weren’t World Wide Web pages. It was just impossible to share what had been learned. And one of my roles at the Plain Language Project for CLE was to liaise with other institutions and find out what they had learned, what they were doing. Because it just wasn’t being shared. There was no easy way to share it. So these initial online forums were valuable, and when the World Wide Web came along, it was tremendous help. Everything then could be a common knowledge, shared knowledge, and it was great for us.

And there was, for example, an institution in Maryland, part of the international research centre that the US government financed, and Karen Schriver and Ginny Reddish from the Carnegie Mellon Institute worked there on their plain language institute and were publishing stuff, but you really had to work to get it. So having the internet helped us tremendously to share that information.

In Toronto, the Plain Language Centre of CLIC had a library—they had I think 600 items. The centre closed because their funding ended. And then later the Canadian Legal Information Centre closed because their funding ended, and they turned over all their resources to the National Literacy Secretariat. I think at that time was existing under the Human Resources Department. So it went to the Human Resources Department’s library. That segment got reduced by Harper down to three people, who couldn’t maintain the library, so it basically was trashed.

And what they did at the time and for a long time afterward, if they were gonna trash something, they would send a memo out to internal staff saying, “It’s gonna be trash—do you want it?”

There was one fellow I’d been in contact with later who would always say yes, and so his office was filling up with things he was trying to save from destruction. But then he retired. So, yeah, it’s hard to entrench this stuff or even make the materials available.

IC: Do you know what happened to the materials after he retired?

CS: No. I don’t.

IC: OK. Do you remember who it was?

CS: No. [Laughs]. I might be able to find out, but I don’t remember now. [Cheryl later added that it was John Mark Keyes.]

And so when I retired and got rid of a lot of materials, I either sent them to the UBC Law School faculty, or later to Thomas Cooley, the law school at the university that Joseph Kimble was associated with, and they started collecting, and so I sent some of my own stuff and boxes that I got from Vicki Schmolka, from her library. She brought me two boxes of stuff. And so that’s where a lot of stuff is.

IC: OK.

CS: And the great thing about them is they’ll pay for the shipping charges. [Laughs]

IC: How much of that material do you think was unique to Canada or the Canadian context?

CS: Well, that reminds me of another institution which was an outcome of some of the national literacy work. It was an online collection, and that group would scan material or take material that was sent to them or track it down—and they focused on literacy materials and plain language materials—and then they lost their funding under Harper. [Laughs] Our bad guy. And so their stuff probably still exists, but I don’t know that they… but just as an archive.

IC: I guess the last question I have here, but you can continue talking if you want to afterwards, is “How do you feel about where the movement is today?”

CS: Well, it’s overwhelmed. You know, there’s so many avenues for research and not enough people who could do this as volunteers.

And… for example, the Plain Language Center in Maryland, and the Clarity group, which is international lawyers in support of plain language, and the Plain Language Association International got together and formed an umbrella group that would be able to. And they did meet and they formed the Plain Language Federation, of which they are the members, and then they met and came up with a list of research avenues and activities that could be pursued, but that organization was dependent on volunteers, and it needs to seek funding to do those projects, and it just hasn’t been able to do that.

So I feel that we’re overwhelmed, underfunded, and just facing difficulties.

The Plain Language Association International has depended on volunteers, and I volunteered for seven years, and over the next ten years, its membership didn’t substantially grow. And so I have hope for it now. Neil James from Australia is the current president, and he’s been organizing in a way that they’re making small progress—which is fine—they’re making incremental progress on various projects. But we need more volunteers.

It’s hard. If you work in plain language, it’s hard to make a living, first of all, and so it’s hard to have time to volunteer, to pursue general interests.

And that’s why Kate Harrison and I founded that organization in the first place, because every time you talk to a potential client about doing some work for them on a plain language document or project, you had to sell plain language first. You had to prove it would be effective and have results, and so I just thought, “Man I can’t do this on my own. I need help. I need to work with other people.” And so that’s why I was interested in starting the Network—sharing information. And doing the propaganda on a large scale by an association, rather than selling clients one at a time.

So we’ve made progress on making people appreciate plain language, and in the US the Plain Language Writing Act encouraged people, and we launched International Plain Language Day to keep an annual reminder of the need for Plain Language. And that’s had some impact and value.

I’m about to turn that group over to the Plain Language Association International, and they’ll carry through with it. It needs new thoughts, new approaches. I don’t keep up with things like Instagram and whatever, and so there’s hope. But we need young energy to carry forward.

But not to reinvent the wheel. So it’s great that you’re doing this study, because things have been tried, or there’s a basis or, there’s hidden research somewhere that would really be helpful to people if they can access it.

IC: Yeah. It really sounds as though we need a publicly accessible central repository for all of the literature, all of the research, all of, you know, the projects as exemplars, even, to be in one place so that practitioners and researchers…

CS: And students.

IC: …have one place to look.

CS: Yeah. I teach a couple of courses in the continuing education program—the plain language certificate program, and I provide students with links to of the resources that are available, and every time the course is offered, I have to check all the links to see if the material is still there. So it’s easier to deliver training nowadays and provide access to the resources, but they’re not permanent.

And the role that you did with that booklet, Plain Language: Clear and Simple, in a creating an online source for it, and in Rapport, my newsletter that was about plain language, has been invaluable, too.

And I do sometimes refer people to the Internet Archive to find an article. But we need stronger links to those things.

IC: Mm-hm. And if you look back to where things were when you joined the movement, do you see progress? Like, do you think that we have changed as a society in either accepting plain language or practising plain language? I mean, you do mention that we have to keep reminding people, but do you see any permanent progress?

CS: I see a lot of progress. A lot of it. So one of the things I did was with LinkedIn, I started a group, which now is operated by PLAIN. But that group started out with a couple hundred people because a particular forum that did exist was being converted to a membership forum, and people just weren’t paying $50 a year to participate. So that forum went down from 700 participants to 200. So I started this LinkedIn group to give people free access, and it started with a couple hundred people, and now it’s 18,000. And it has a growth of its own. It just grows on its own. So I know that there are at least 18,000 people especially interested in plain language.

And there’s been a great deal of progress. There’s training widely available. Everybody who was there at the beginning has written their own book, and those are circulating. Yeah, there’s been lots of advancement.

But there are people still who come along and it’s all new to them, so we need to guide and support them and let them know they’re not alone. I mean, that was one of my motivations with the group on LinkedIn was that you’re not alone. There are other people, and you can pose your questions and share your resources, and we’ll give them to you—give you that support. The other thing is that Ginny Reddish’s book, Letting Go of the Words, has kept plain language in mind for web designers and usability professionals and others.

And Karen Schriver keeps publishing a couple of things on the evidence base [for] plain language, in general and in law. And her new article is great to give people a history of plain language in the US. Which in terms of development of the movement, Canada followed the same path because then we were discussing and making these advances as international. So you know, I’m optimistic, but we need money. We need governments.

And so under… Canadian government, Harper, he closed everything that had existed online or otherwise to circulate plain language training or plain language resources, and I’m hoping that under the federal Liberal government and the BC new government, there will be money devoted to increasing access to justice and access to training in plain language so some of these things can move forward. ’Cause the only block has been money.

I know for myself, I needed to make a living and put two kids through university at the same time. So my volunteer time was limited, and I had to be selective. And it’s like that for most people.

IC: Well, you certainly did a lot with the volunteer time that you gave.

CS: Yeah. Yeah. Out of self-interest…

IC: [Laughs]

CS: I needed support from other people and their information. But I’ve always thought volunteer work in the community was important.

IC: OK. Yeah, it’s interesting. So far everybody that I’ve interviewed for this project has been in Eastern Canada—Ontario and Quebec—so I think I’d like to learn more about BC specifically. And you did mention the working group and meetings that took place. Were there any particular BC-related initiatives that you can think of that made an impact locally?

CS: Well, as I say Kathleen Keating was the editor on Hughes’s report and inserted the chapter on plain language. Not long after that, she was hired as a consultant to produce plain language documents for the small claims court, at which point she discovered there was no operating manual. So she worked on producing the regulations or rules for small claims court. I mean, a manual—an operating manual for the internal staff—which was released to the public. And then new forms.

And that was a big splash and had an influence on access to justice. And the access-to-justice issue in recent years in BC hasn’t been focused on plain language—more on technological developments. So the plain language… the small claims court and some tenancy issues and things like that are being transferred online to a program that helps people resolve those issues with a mediator sort of person and using the online system.

But that means you can’t just go to it—you have to have access and understand the internet and all of that and be literate enough to use online things. And I told them—that their “plain language” rules of operation are not plain language. Their plain language is written by a practising lawyer who doesn’t have any plain language training. And good for him for trying, but there needs to be a renewed focus on plain language in all of this, and other access-to-justice initiatives need to go back and get their plain language right.

But generally, I did a tour of BC speaking to lawyers—sections of the CBA—and I was able to check back with some of them a year or two later, and individual lawyers were remembering what they learned and using that memory. But also I think it always is that you need a reminder.

One judge told me years ago that she’d been to the national training seminar that the National Judicial Institute and another organization put on annually for judges—it’s on writing—and which teaches plain language. And she said, like, three years after coming back and having to sit and listen to legal arguments every day, that it was starting to fade in her own memory, you know? It’s a habit you have to keep up and you have to be reminded of.

Yeah. There’s a lot of interest in courts across the country, but [also] in BC, on people who handle their own legal cases. Not just in small claims, but now because of lack of money and necessity, go to the BC Supreme Court or higher and represent themselves.

They’re called “self-represented litigants,” which is like… that it’s not the default that you take your own case. You’re a self-represented litigant. You know, it’s ridiculous. But that’s the focus now, because it takes up so much of the court’s time to help these people through the process. And that has been focused on process and not on simplifying legal documents or issues. So plain language would be helpful there.

And a volunteer group put together a manual for self-represented litigants and asked me to look it over, and I said, “You know, this is not in any way plain language.” It needed a whole rewrite. But the publishing date was approaching, and they just released it.

This is my gripe. People leave the idea of plain language till the last minute. [Laughs] And it’s not that easy to do—it takes time. And not just time to edit it, but you have to do a reality check like running it by some potential users and seeing if it works for them.

Like, I used to think the word entail, E-N-T-A-I-L, was a legalistic term that you should avoid. And then I was on the bus and I heard a bouncer from a bar talking to a woman who’d been a barmaid or something there, and he asked her what her new job entailed, and she answered without having to ask what “entailed” means. So, you know, you have to test with users. Maybe they know “entailed.” Maybe even though I think of it as a legal term, it’s not. How simple do you have to be?

IC: Mm-hm. Absolutely. Do you see… I mean, obviously you’re still active in the movement, and you’re still active teaching, but I also know that you are “retired” [finger quotes]. [Laughs]

CS: Yeah.

IC: Do you see the new generation stepping up to take over some of the advocacy work and the responsibilities, or do you… Do you see the continuation?

CS: I don’t see it happening fast enough. I think it was 1999, I went to a conference of Clarity in Mexico City, and I remember sitting in the general assembly. There were several hundred people there, and I was sitting up at the back, and I looked out, and they were mostly all grey heads. And I asked then where are the younger people? We really need them. And I raised that with PLAIN at the time—that we need these young people involved. So I think one thing they did was come out with a student membership rate. But I don’t see enough people.

And let me tell you, for me, retirement meant I no longer market or advertise. I network online, and I still work, but because I’m not marketing my services, it’s intermittent work, and I still need to work. But it did give me more time to do online things—to network online and encourage people online.

And I at one point offered, you know, to mentor people if they would contact me, and they… some people did—half a dozen. But they were not interested in mentoring about getting involved in plain language. So I think some people, young people, maybe they need encouragement and support and mentoring to become more active.

Because I’ve been teaching the introductory course through Simon Fraser for… maybe I’ve had four or five sessions, and I’ve encouraged people, students, to join PLAIN and to get involved. So I see their names later, and I see that some of them are getting active and contributing their ideas and thoughts and blogging. I don’t know that they’re actually volunteering for roles, and I understand why, because it’s a commitment of time and effort.

Even going to these semi-annual conferences, which are actually annual if you include Clarity and PLAIN, and then there’s Maximus, who has an annual conference regarding health literacy, so plain language in health. Nobody’s paying your way; if you’re a freelance editor or consultant, you’ve got to pay your own way and see it as an investment.

Most people don’t see conferences as an investment. And I used to see it that way and have the money to go, and I remember I did a presentation in Toronto for the International Business Forms Association, and so I did a presentation one year. And nothing happened for three years, and somebody contacted me and said… offered me a $10,000 contract. Well, that made it worthwhile. But you’ve got to be in a position where you’re not starting your own new business, you can afford to go, and you can wait three years for it to produce a result. And not everybody can.

IC: Mm-hm. Right. So it sounds as though even though now there’s more opportunities to get trained in plain language practice such as the certificate program at SFU, those aren’t necessarily translating into new advocates in the movement itself promoting plain language as an ideal for access to justice or, you know, social justice, or health literacy or anything like that.

CS: Yeah, well, they’re active in the sense they’re networking and promoting it in their, like the other Editors’ Association of Canada or ACES or other groups. So they’re spreading the word. But, yeah, volunteering to be a director or, you know, write a newsletter or whatever, that takes a big effort, big contribution. Anything I could do to encourage young people, I would happily do.

IC: OK, well that pretty well covers the questions that I was planning to ask you. Do you have any other final comments or questions for me or anything?

CS: No, I’m good. [Laughs]

IC: OK! Thanks. I’ll stop the recording now.

This is a transcript of an in-person interview I did with Nicole Fernbach in Ottawa, ON, on June 9, 2017, as part of my project to compile an oral history of the plain language movement in Canada between 1980 and 1995. In 2026 she reviewed the transcript and made some minor revisions. Although this transcript reflects her views at the time of the interview, those views might have evolved since the interview took place.

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NF: I went to law school in Bordeaux (France) where, after 4 years, I graduated (Licence en droit) in 1971. In parallel, I did a Licence en lettres in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature, also in Bordeaux; I majored in English literature and Anglo-American civilization, as well as Scandinavian studies. After graduating, I felt there was a future in law and language, especially in a multilingual or non-civil law context. The field was not developed academically in France where it would appear somewhat “transversal.” There were translators and interpreters in international institutions—for example, the United Nations (New York) or the Council of Europe (Strasburg)—but access was limited.

Since 1969, I had been following the political and linguistical developments in Canada. I was given an opportunity here when the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario) gave me a scholarship. In August 1971, I became a graduate student and teaching assistant in Political Science. Meanwhile, some factors were at play. At the time, under the Official Languages Act, Canada had instituted official bilingualism. More practically, it meant a statutory obligation to translate government, judicial and legal documents in both official languages, English and French. A legal translation industry was burgeoning and lawyers were needed. I changed plans, more precisely the opportunity to study for a Ph.D. in political philosophy in Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario). I opted for a position as a legal translator in the private sector. Continue reading “The plain language movement in Canada, 1980–1995: Interview with Nicole Fernbach”