This article discusses the history of the St. Lambert bilingual education experiment in Montreal, Canada, and bilingual education in general. The experimental project was begun because parents did not feel that the traditional language classes were successful in teaching their children French. The belief that native language skills would suffer, and simple resistance to French, delayed the implementation of an immersion program at the kindergarten level. It had marked success: academic achievement, mother tongue competency, and other areas of intellectual development were not hampered. By grade 7, children who had begun in the program not only performed better than peers who had been through English-only programs in vocabulary tests, reading, spelling, and language skills, but also performed at or above the level of their French-Canadian peers in most tests of French language skills. Attitudes towards French-Canadians also improved, as well as general thinking skills, as a result of the bilingual program. Reasons for the program are outlined, including criteria for program-participant selection. The St. Lambert project is compared to other bilingual projects, and the present Canadian language situation is discussed. (CLK)