Métis-sur-Mer had everything of a peaceful village. Then, the reform of the Charter of the French language of the CAQ government turned everything upside down.
The Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, French (PL 96) hits hard. In particular, it forces municipalities with bilingual status whose English-speaking population falls below 50% to adopt a resolution in order to preserve said status and continue to offer services, communicate and display in both official languages. from Canada.
Last year, the former mayor Carolle-Anne Dubé threw a stone into the pond by justifying the maintenance of the bilingual status of Métis-sur-Mer in this way: Anglophones represent less than 12% of the population, but support the municipality of Bas-Saint-Laurent thanks to their higher taxes. “The district [anglophone] MacNider pays 71 cents per $100 appraisal. The Les Boules sector, French-speaking, pays 29 cents out of 100 dollars”, she underlined before asking: “So, who keeps the City alive? Francophones or Anglophones? »
Then she added: “Come for a walk in the Les Boules sector, tell me if you understand what people say when they speak. People speak bad French, don’t know how to write it, it puts me in all my states. »
The duty went to Les Boules and MacNider, the two boroughs of Métis-sur-Mer. And he understood everything the residents told him, on one side or the other.
The MacNider (or Metis Beach) sector of Métis-sur-Mer stands out in Matane-Matapédia, the riding with the most French speakers in Quebec.
Mailboxes are placed like flags along the voluptuous cedar hedges: Dingle, Hague, MacDougall or Birkenshaw. “I study French on Duolingo”, remarks a lady crossed a stone’s throw from the Corner House, after praying The duty to speak to her in English.
Ontario license plates abound in the gravel driveways of properties in the Anglophone borough. Small man-made streams weave through frayed birch trees on the private grounds of Beach Street before emptying into the St. Lawrence.
A man pauses on the sidewalk after an afternoon at the beach. “If you go to the end of the road, to the café, there is a big local community there”, launches the Torontonian, smeared with sunscreen, in the language of Doug Ford.
“The English are people who only come in the summer. The houses are not heated. They are people from Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, ”explains Anne Banville in front of her house on rue Principale des Boules (the French-speaking sector).
Except a few. Nancy Astle lives in MacNider year-round. The educator at Les Pinsons childcare center fears that PL 96 will upset her working environment. “I work in three locations and I only speak English [aux jeunes]. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it, ”she says in the language of Shakespeare, under the attentive gaze of her black and red-haired dog. “It is important that we keep [notre statut bilingue]… I think it should be bilingual everywhere. I don’t see why you can’t have both languages, or several,” she continues.
“Anglos for Bérubé”
On October 3, Nancy Astle will support… the PQ MP – and practically undisputed candidate for his own succession – Pascal Bérubé. “I love it,” she says bluntly.
He is an independentist. It advocates strong measures to strengthen the presence of French in Quebec. So why support it? ask him The duty. “Because he’s cute!” she jokes. “No, I had several meetings with him. I had some about the CPE. He always speaks to me in English. He is always polite. He signed my petition against 4-year-old kindergarten, ”she lists.
A few steps away, Bill Tredireick is also full of praise for Mr. Bérubé. “He’s a good man,” he said, cane in hand.
Met at his home, in Matane, the main interested party evokes the large proportion of English-speaking voters among those who voted in his favor in 2018. poll from the west, it’s just English. They vote for me! ” boasts the elected PQ. In 2018, he garnered the support of almost 70% of voters in his riding – and 58% of those in Métis-sur-Mer. ” Those are the “Anglos for Bérubé” “says the 47-year-old politician.
Nancy Astle is sorry that Bill 96 and the Act respecting the secularism of the Quebec state (PL 21) — which the PQ supported — have strained relations between Anglophones and the Quebec government. “Let’s say it like it is: the CAQ does nothing for us,” she adds.
Two worlds ?
Should Métis-sur-Mer maintain or renounce its status as a bilingual municipality? The question has still not been settled. And Mr. Bérubé is careful not to dictate a course of action to the municipal council of the locality, a member of the Association of the most beautiful villages of Quebec, which is now led by Jean-Pierre Pelletier – “an independentist” according to the elected PQ.
“I never talked about it [de la sortie de l’ex-mairesse]. I couldn’t. Me, I don’t like the uneasiness in life”, explains Pascal Bérubé to the To have to.
Nathalie Brochu and Éric Brochu are each seated on a padded reclining chair on the porch of their property on rue Desrosiers, on the Boules side. They have no problem with the municipality maintaining its bilingual status so that it continues to communicate in English with its English-speaking residents. “We were always the two [francophones et anglophones]. The fact that for us, there is not really any change”, affirms Mme Brochu while knitting, the glasses lowered on the tip of his nose. Two threads—one mauve, one blue-green—run along her legs, meander on the varnished wooden planks of the patio and go up towards two balls placed on a chair.
In this tightly knit community, relationships are strong, she says.
Anne Banville would like it to be so. She works part-time at the library and at the swanky Cascade Golf & Tennis Club (CG&T), which allows her to brush up on her English, she says. ” The people are very kind. I don’t speak much English, and they speak to me in French,” she says of regular customers at the Cascade, located in the upscale MacNider. “It’s a chance to be able to have another community that brings us a lot,” she continues, a pair of gardening gloves in her hand.
More than a year after the tremor caused by Mayor Dubé’s remarks, life goes on… along the main street of Les Boules, and further west, behind the hedges pierced by lupins guarding the summer houses and the “clean” gardens of Beach Street, away from prying eyes.
Armed with a garden hose, Francine has her sights set on wild rose bushes and cedars that she has planted in front of a pretty country house located in the heart of Métis-sur-Mer, straddling the two solitudes, which she acquired in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “There was Les Boules before, then there was Metis Beach. Then there, well, it’s a single municipality. Everyone is nice, everyone is “proper”, but is there a divide? It’s clear”, she says, while specifying that she will not let her cedars grow to the point of becoming an impassable wall for others.