It is at this incipit of next episodeby Hubert Aquin, undoubtedly one of the finest in Quebec literature, that I sometimes think of when I finish reading the day’s news.
Hard to do otherwise. Even though I’ve lived in the countryside for nearly fifteen years, it’s my hometown that is most often mentioned when you open the newspaper. Weapons proliferate, murders follow one another. Is Montreal sinking in flames in the middle of its Lake Geneva?
No sensationalism here. I have the age of my memories, which still have fresh memories of the 1970s, Richard Blass and the Gargantua cabaret. I walked past it every day on my way to school.
But I am somewhat betraying the subject of this letter. Violence concerns me, but it is another agony that will be discussed. That of my language.
I live a few steps from a majestic lake where tourists are numerous, especially in summer. We meet them at the convenience store when they come to buy some groceries. They talk to each other in English, but are most often silent at the checkout. They know that they will be answered in French, less out of nationalist conviction than because their language is unfamiliar to us.
A few months ago, I was working in a city in the third crown where English was already used a little more. Nothing too annoying there. Customers of other nationalities, but not only, who tried all the same to make themselves understood, even if it meant jabbering a few words in French.
I now work in a town in the first ring. The change is radical, striking. English is omnipresent. We are no longer surprised to switch from one language to another as the habit quickly takes root. The other customers are waiting. We must quickly move on to the following.
The most maddening thing is the habit, precisely. We worry about “Hello-Hi from the city centre, but we should also, and perhaps above all, worry about its extension towards the suburbs. Here, it is easy to give in to English. They know that.
I don’t blame them. I am surprised and worried by our indifference. The French language is now a simple communication tool. It no longer says anything about our affiliations, or very little.
The regions as new defenders of the language? We may have come to this since the city and its crown look elsewhere. “You have to choose your battles, and we lost that one,” some will no doubt say. That’s up to us, I guess.