I am a baby-boomer from Quebec born from an exogamous marriage of a pure-bred francophone and a pure-bred anglophone, both natives of Quebec. I have always rubbed shoulders with both cultures and spoken both languages in my family, at work and in society. My parents decided that the children would all go to French school until university, where they would be free to choose.
If I hadn’t been educated in French, including at CEGEP, I would consider myself an Anglophone today. But I’m not: I identify as francophone and I’m proud of it. It is at school that one cements one’s identity, hence the importance for newcomers to take the Francophone route. This is the way forward to enrich our distinct Quebec society, which deserves to continue and progress in French.
Quebec is a small planet orbiting near an enormous English-speaking star that exerts a strong power of attraction by its mere presence. Maintaining our Francophone trajectory requires sustained individual and institutional efforts. There is nothing wrong with wanting to use all the democratic tools at our disposal. Individuals are born and die, institutions perpetuate their culture. No desired future without institutional support.
I noticed the secondary role assigned to French in the federal public service, where I worked twice. The ideas are thought out in English and they are translated afterwards. French is being diluted in the public space in Montreal, where I come from, and in Gatineau, where I live. The census data is irrefutable: the French language is losing ground. Almost all the English speakers I have met do not recognize any organic value in the French language; it has a cosmetic value at most, with rare exceptions. It will always be so.
Bigger ambitions
In his text published this weekend in The duty, Alexander Hackett takes up the stereotype that Anglophones are in favor of the protection of French. But you object when Francophones choose concrete and effective means. No question of going beyond pious wishes. You are demanding the right to veto our future, and to find us one of the many tiles in Canada’s multicultural mosaic. Sorry to disappoint you, but we have much bigger ambitions. We’re smart enough to be respected as a people, not just an audible group.
Does our language today occupy its rightful place, as you claim? In the 1960s, the president of the Canadian National Railways, Donald Gordon, said in English that there was no francophone competent enough to hold a senior management position at the head office located in Montreal. Sixty years later, CN’s head office is in the same place, there are no Francophones on its board of directors, and the CEO is a unilingual Anglophone from Toronto.
The CEO of Air Canada, also based in Montreal, says he has lived there for the past 14 years without having to speak a word of French. He apologized the next day…for saying it. Mr. Hackett, maybe you could become his French teacher? As his recent appearance before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa demonstrated, he needs a lot of help. Communicating to your refractory English-speaking compatriots your openness and your apparent skills in your second language would showcase your talents better than lecturing French speakers about their language laws and policies.
I am always surprised that anglophones ask francophones in Quebec to rely on the political benevolence of Canada’s anglophone majority. When we wanted to merge the municipalities of the island of Montreal, the Anglophones immediately mounted the barricades to ensure their linguistic and cultural specificity. No question of trusting the French-speaking majority. They obtained the privilege of deciding by referendum to leave all of Montreal and keep their municipal fiefdoms. Who are the real separatists in Montreal? (Sounds of crickets…)
All Quebec taxpayers, mostly French-speaking, have paid you for a brand new university hospital. They subsidize three English universities (McGill, Concordia, Bishop’s), a children’s hospital and many more social services than French-speaking minorities in other provinces can even imagine in their wildest dreams. In the 67 years that I have known my mother, the Government of Quebec has served her in English, without exception.
Assume your destiny
If you know Francophones elsewhere in Canada, ask them how often they are served in French by their provincial governments. Ask them if they can educate their children in French and, if so, how much they had to plead in the Supreme Court to have this right. These are stubborn facts, not platitudes or baseless impressions.
What did Anglophones say when Justin Trudeau’s federal government appointed a unilingual Anglophone Lieutenant Governor in New Brunswick, the country’s only officially bilingual province? (Sounds of crickets…).
A judge found it unconstitutional, but the federal government is appealing the decision. What would Anglophones have said if the Governor General appointed by this same Justin Trudeau was able to speak only French and his native language? (Outcry drowning out the sounds of crickets…)
If the linguistic question resurfaces every twenty years in Quebec, it is because Anglophones do not allow the Quebec people to progress according to their distinct identity. But whatever we say and whatever we do, Quebec is a free and democratic society capable of assuming its destiny.
This is what our locusts are saying.