Life is a theatre. Canada too, it seems. The Catapulte theater troupe has indeed undertaken to put on an ambitious play on the delicate theme of the state of French in Canada. Ambitious, because to write it, the company undertook to cross Canada to collect testimonies using expert debates. For now, the project responds to the working title Oh ! Canada.
This week, it is in Montreal, at the Center du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, that Catapulte provokes several discussions, including one on Bill 96 and the realities of linguistic minorities, which was held on Wednesday. On the one hand, there was Liam Lachance, an English teacher at Cégep Dawson, who fiercely opposes, among other things, an obligation for Francophones and allophones to attend a Francophone Cégep. On the other hand, the translator Sabrina Mercier-Ullhorn and the author of Hungarian origin Akos Verboczy leaned in favor of this reform of the Charter of the French language for the protection it would offer to the future of the French language in the Quebec.
Originally from Abitibi, Sabrina Mercier-Ullhorn says she discovered bilingualism in Montreal when she arrived in the metropolis at the age of 18, while Akos Verboczy, who wrote Quebec Rhapsody. Itinerary of a Bill 101 Childconsiders his “forced” francization by law 101 as a gift.
Sensitive to linguistic minorities
Franco-Manitoban by birth and Franco-Ontarian by culture, Danielle Le Saux-Farmer, one of the playwrights working on the project, is very sensitive to the realities of linguistic minority communities. His colleague Nicolas Gendron, Quebecer-Guatemalan, is an ardent defender of the laws protecting the French fact in Quebec, she specifies. Along the way, the duo teamed up with Quebec native Noémie F. Savoie.
Launched three years ago, the project could see the light of day within two years. But how to bring together on a single stage linguistic realities as different as those of Montreal and Saint-Boniface? Danielle Le Saux-Farmer does not rule out the possibility of producing different versions of the play depending on where it will be presented, or even including local actors at each stopover.
The crossing of Canada has begun, since the Catapulte theater has already held round tables in Caraquet, New Brunswick, in Sainte-Geneviève, in the west of the island of Montreal, and in Ottawa.
“It’s very ambitious. It even surpasses us. The idea comes from me and Nicolas. Nicolas wanted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Bill 101, because he loves the French language so much. I said it was fine, because, as Franco-Ontarians, we were also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the federal Official Languages Act. With our Quebec and Canadian profiles, we came together to set this up, and recently in the project, we invited Noémie, who is from Quebec, who also lived in Halifax, studied translation and linguistics,” says Danielle Le Saux-Farmer.
Temporary fog or climate crisis?
Reigning both over emotions and over reason, language, in all cases, arouses passions. “It gets angry, it gets excited, it tears the shirt. And that’s what interests us too. We will always be in this relationship, in fear of loss as a Francophone,” says Danielle Le Saux-Farmer.
The Catapulte troupe will surely have to carry out a considerable pruning of the testimonies collected to put on its play.
“In fact, we always try to position ourselves between the feeling, the linguistic weather, and the climate. What, really, is the state of the French fact in Canada? Is it really in decline? We said that today: “the hour is serious…” ; another says “the figures are stable”, or again, “me, that’s not what I read”. How to find it? »
Between the figures and the anecdotes, like the one collected, the same morning, from one of his friends who was not able to be served in French, how to make sense of things?
“Me, I have the impression that the hour is serious in Ontario,” she said. I have the impression that elsewhere, the hour is serious, but that here [au Québec], there is a myth. I have the impression that what bases many elements of Bill 96 is feeling. »