In Memoriam: Dr. Jacques Rebuffot (1936-2022)

Dr. Jacques Rebuffot, Emeritus Professor of Second Language Education at McGill’s Faculty of Education, passed away on January 5, 2022, at the age of 85. He will be deeply missed by his wife of 60 years, Denise, and their three children (Geneviève, Anne, and Philip) and seven grandchildren.

Born and raised in France, Jacques Rebuffot was introduced at an early age to second language learning, thanks to his Provençal-speaking grandparents. Jacques learned to speak Provençal fluently and, in addition to French, his mother tongue, he went on to master English and to read Latin and Greek. After teaching French literature and the Classics at a French lycée for six years, and drawn to Canada’s linguistic diversity, Jacques moved to Canada with his wife, Denise, in 1969 and settled in Montreal. After teaching French as a second language at Malcolm Campbell High School for four years, Jacques began his career at McGill University in 1974, joining the Department of Second Language Education, where he served as guide and mentor to future second language teachers of French and English, and also, initially, to teachers of Latin. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000.

During his 26 years of service to McGill, Jacques played key administrative roles, serving as Department Chair for more than a dozen years, as Program Director for the M.Ed. in Teaching French as a Second Language and for the Certificate in Second Language Teaching, and as Associate Dean (Academic) of the Faculty of Education. He supervised more than 35 graduate students and was instrumental in implementing the first French immersion teacher education program at McGill. He served as president of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics (1991-1993) and was recipient of the prestigious Prix Coutu-Vaillancourt, awarded by the Association québécoise des enseignants de français langue seconde in 1997 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of second language education in Quebec. One such contribution was the publication of his book, Le Point sur l’immersion au Canada, published by Éditions CEC in 1993.