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This was maybe 10 years ago but I was at the Champlain Mall (I think) in Dieppe (a predominantly French-speaking town next to Moncton, New Brunswick) and I was surprised that all the business signs were in English only, except for the French Bookstore (La Librarie something). The government road signs outside the mall were all bilingual but every store inside, except for that one exception, used English only, for all their signs. It seemed odd for a town that is more than half French - but maybe they have changed that?
In Dieppe they recently brought in a city bylaw to address this but I think it only applies to new signs so the old signs are grandfathered. (Note it is a bilingual requirement not a French only one.)
With some exceptions like northern NB where French signage is very common, most of the other places in Canada with francophone minorities have very predominantly English only signage. For example, in places in the east end of Ottawa like Orleans (30% francophone) and Vanier (close to 50% francophone), almost all commercial signage is in English only. Same goes for Timmins (40%) and Sudbury (30%) in northern Ontario. Even the small town of Hearst in far northern Ontario which is about 90% francophone has mostly English signage, as does Casselman in eastern Ontario (90% francophone) on the highway between Ottawa and Montreal.
I live in Gatineau, Quebec across from Ottawa. My part of the city is 95% francophone. Tim Hortons and McDonald's have bilingual menu screens here. Across the river in Ottawa in Vanier and Orleans which have many more francophones the menu screens of these same chains are in English only. All national chains also deliver bilingual flyers to my home here in Quebec, but deliver English only flyers to the homes of my relatives who live in Vanier and Orleans in Ontario.
AJ maybe some protests are in order by the local francophone demographic to bring to light the fact that bilingual signs are needed.
Agreed but I think that like you and many other anglos in Quebec say you feel, many francophones outside Quebec are weary of bashing their heads against a brick wall.
In a previous life when I lived in the ROC some of the work I did allowed me to see letters that minority francophone organizations received from national and international corporations refusing to use French outside Quebec and stating that their policy was that Quebec was a bilingual market, and the rest of Canada was an English market. Point final.
I also worked for a time for a fairly large Canadian national corporation based in Ontario and our online client input system has a language preference field for client information, and although in theory you could pick either E or F, the computer would not let you save client info with an F if the province code was any other one but Quebec. And for QC addresses you had a choice of E or F.
Agreed but I think that like you and many other anglos in Quebec say you feel, many francophones outside Quebec are weary of bashing their heads against a brick wall.
In a previous life when I lived in the ROC some of the work I did allowed me to see letters that minority francophone organizations received from national and international corporations refusing to use French outside Quebec and stating that their policy was that Quebec was a bilingual market, and the rest of Canada was an English market. Point final.
I also worked for a time for a fairly large Canadian national corporation based in Ontario and our online client input system has a language preference field for client information, and although in theory you could pick either E or F, the computer would not let you save client info with an F if the province code was any other one but Quebec. And for QC addresses you had a choice of E or F.
I am not making this up!
I believe you, but ultimately it is what it is, those protestors at Fairview will accomplish nothing just like any francophone protesters in Moncton will accomplish nothing, the country is clearly divided along linguistic lines,French dominates Quebec and English dominates the ROC,i've accepted that fact as theres not a thing i can do about it, if i dont like living as an Anglo in Quebec my only option is to move to someplace in the ROC, the reverse is true for the Francophone living in the ROC,
I dont see any resolution to the divisive nature of the issue/problem other than Quebec making the point that it is indeed another country and separate from the Canadian collective and go its own way..
The separatists will never get what they want. Any rational person can see past the lies and deceit they've used to further their racist, xenophobic agenda. It has never been about the preservation of French, because French has never been under threat. That's only the excuse they use. They want a nation state for the pure laine; not a multicultural, tolerant society. Being part of a country that has moved forward and started to welcome people from all over the world and embrace cultural pluralism has angered them. The majority of French Canadians will never agree with the separatist ideology.
The separatists will never get what they want. Any rational person can see past the lies and deceit they've used to further their racist, xenophobic agenda. It has never been about the preservation of French, because French has never been under threat. That's only the excuse they use. They want a nation state for the pure laine; not a multicultural, tolerant society. Being part of a country that has moved forward and started to welcome people from all over the world and embrace cultural pluralism has angered them. The majority of French Canadians will never agree with the separatist ideology.
French was definitely under threat several decades ago, or at least in danger of becoming so, and there were some legitimate grievances. That said, times have changed and the original post-colonial, class warfare and Protestant/Catholic undercurrents to the original conflict are really dated and irrelevant now, things mostly carry forward based on inertia. Someone needs to reimagine a nationalism, either Canadian or Quebecois, that makes more sense in the current geopolitical/cultural milieu. We can't use arguments from 50 years ago to justify either the ridiculous ethnic nationalist model of a sovereign Quebec or the equally dated two founding nations under a single sovereign model of a Canadian state. We need new myths and existential justifications that resonate with modern realities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jambo101
I believe you, but ultimately it is what it is, those protestors at Fairview will accomplish nothing just like any francophone protesters in Moncton will accomplish nothing, the country is clearly divided along linguistic lines,French dominates Quebec and English dominates the ROC,i've accepted that fact as theres not a thing i can do about it, if i dont like living as an Anglo in Quebec my only option is to move to someplace in the ROC, the reverse is true for the Francophone living in the ROC,
I dont see any resolution to the divisive nature of the issue/problem other than Quebec making the point that it is indeed another country and separate from the Canadian collective and go its own way..
Probably true, but I'll do what I can in my small world to further the dream of Canadian bilingualism in my local context. I can do this by offering service in French at my Burnaby pharmacy to the local Francophones (as I do), and by volunteering my time to making local faculty stuff bilingual (as I do, I am translating a student run conference presently). I'm one person, but I hope to set an example and get others to care about these sorts of courtesies.
Good points BB but i dont share your views on the need for strict language laws in Quebec to presumably save the francophone culture from becoming English.
I believe that legislation like bill101 etc has done nothing for Quebec but chase people away and encourage a cultural backwater status here in Quebec. Montreal before the arrival of the separatists was Canadas number 1 city the province was the preferred destination for many immigrants as the province was prosperous and thriving, one can only imagine where it would have risen to today had all these linguistic rules, regulations and language police never been instituted, and where is Quebec today? a culturally intolerant society that now wants to even restrict religious freedoms in an effort to achieve some kind of cultural purity,and still clings to the dream of separation from Canada.The province is in no way heading in what i'd call a positive direction.
While your efforts at trying to bring bilingualism to a small part of your community may be a noble cause it will accomplish very little in the overall reality of Quebec is French Canada is English and while many maybe bilingual i wouldnt call the country a bilingual country as people arent going to go to the trouble and effort to become bilingual just for no other reason than being biiingual.
or the equally dated two founding nations under a single sovereign model of a Canadian state. We need new myths and existential justifications that resonate with modern realities.
Care to expand further on why the two founding nations model is dated? I will agree that a Swiss founding nations model with Quebec as French only and the ROC is English only is probably not workable, but this is not a new thing.
And sure Canada is more diverse than ever but newcomers all gravitate to one founding nation or the other for practical purposes, and eventually they do this even for cultural purposes.
I also agree that the two founding nations model does ignore aboriginal realities but once again this is not a new problem - this has always been the case.
The separatists will never get what they want. Any rational person can see past the lies and deceit they've used to further their racist, xenophobic agenda. It has never been about the preservation of French, because French has never been under threat. That's only the excuse they use. They want a nation state for the pure laine; not a multicultural, tolerant society. Being part of a country that has moved forward and started to welcome people from all over the world and embrace cultural pluralism has angered them. The majority of French Canadians will never agree with the separatist ideology.
Your intentions seem noble because of that last sentence, unfortunately you are wrong as usual. It's completely wrong and ignorant to put all (or even most) separatists in the racist/xenophobic boat or construe separatism in Quebec as a means to achieve a pure/homogenous society. Separatism has a lot of support among the most tolerant and educated subgroups of French-speaking Quebec, and one of the main reasons (perhaps even the most important reason) is the perception that Quebecers are socially and economically more progressive (i.e. further to the left) than the ROC, and that as a minority they are sometimes affected by decisions they did not agree with but were made by the majority. Look at how Quebec voted at the federal level in the past 25 years, and then look at the separatist parties' stance on social and economic issues. Look at polls on social and economic issues -- whenever there's an outlier among provinces, it's likely to be Quebec. Most people in Quebec are at least mildly annoyed by the economic right (and, periodically, by the religious right), and some of those people believe that they will get rid of that with independence.
There are racists and xenophobes everywhere, and Quebec is not an exception. There are xenophobes in the rest of Canada too: among other things, the comments of many people in the ROC can only be consistent with the belief that Quebecers are inherently inferior and that we could never successfully manage anything ourselves, nevermind a country. But I digress. I guess all I really wanted to say is -- if you have ANY kind of statistical evidence that racist and xenophobic beliefs are more prevalent among Quebec separatists than among Quebec federalists (or any ROC subgroup for that matter), please show it.
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