The storm Michael Rousseau, CEO of Air Canada, blew over Quebec for several days. Following his unilingual English speech and his comments on French in Montreal, columnists tore their shirts in the media, the general population said they were insulted and politicians from all parties expressed their indignation. Even Justin Trudeau, who nevertheless appointed a Governor General unable to speak French, said the situation was “unacceptable”. That says it all!
However, what has Michael Rousseau dared to assert in a candid manner? That one can live comfortably in the greater Montreal area without having to pronounce a single word of French, and even that it is not necessary to learn this “custom” language to occupy important positions within largest companies in Quebec.
In fact, the role that Michael Rousseau comes to play in this story by verbalizing such evidence is in certain respects incidental and anecdotal, but perhaps also prescient about the future of Quebec …
A magnifying mirror
The greatest thing that we can hope for from what will probably quickly become a news item is that the words of Michael Rousseau encourage us and even force us once and for all to look at ourselves in the mirror in order to become aware of our our own turpitude and our lack of pride in the French language, which is said to be part of our deep identity as a people.
Nearly 50% of Quebecers have trouble reading a complex text, revealed the Literacy Foundation to us; a good proportion of students entering CEGEP or university have difficulty writing two lines without making several mistakes; compulsory reading of a literary work is seen by a majority of students as punishment or mental torture.
Let us also think of all those little snakes that French-speaking Quebecers have become accustomed to swallowing without even wincing: accepting to be greeted or even served only in English; make an appointment by Internet on platforms where French is absent; start speaking English in a group when one person cannot understand the language of Félix Leclerc; agree to take courses in English in a French-language educational institution like HEC Montréal; allow thousands of francophone and allophone students to continue their studies in anglophone CEGEPs, etc.
Mommy, mommy …
But Michael Rousseau is also a formidable symbol of what Quebec has been, is and could unfortunately become, and this language that we still dare to call “official”. By his family name and his French origins on his mother’s side, but also on his father’s side if we go back a few generations, he embodies self-forgetfulness, accelerated assimilation and the alienation of a whole people in the face of to the conqueror, to the power of money and to this globalization crushing particular identities.
” Mommy, mommy, what happened to my name “Sang Pauline Julien. It would be easy to imagine the CEO of Air Canada humming this song nostalgically, thinking of his ancestors. But faced with the fate that could be ours as a people, should we not find it painful and even unbearable to hear the words of this song as well as to read the latest demographic and sociological studies that predict a future for us? darker? On the condition, however, of being fully aware of our history and our very special position in North America, which, looking at the behavior, ignorance and indifference in which a good part of the population is confined on these subjects, is far from the case.
Not so long ago, people who lived in east Montreal dared not go shopping west of Saint-Laurent Boulevard knowing that they weren’t going to be able to make themselves understood in their language. Tomorrow, who knows, people who will live outside the metropolis will perhaps dare less and less to set foot there so much they will be convinced that they will not be able to be served in their mother tongue and, above all, that they will be regarded and judged as poor people who persist in living in their backward, racist and withdrawn tribe.
How I would like to believe that this last scenario is science fiction, but when I look at the deteriorating linguistic situation in Quebec, I unfortunately want to contradict René Lévesque by sadly asserting that we are perhaps something like a small people who, with small betrayals and compromises, very slowly resigned themselves to disappear, taking care to make as little noise as possible.