Show openness
It is heartwarming to read such flattering comments. The author’s reflections illustrate very well the challenges of protecting our identity and our social and financial progress. We must maintain an openness so that our Anglophone brothers and cultural minorities feel not only welcome, but part of our evolution.
Normand Matte
Blind to decline
Mr. Scherzer, it is probably because you are an anglophone that you do not perceive the decline of French in Montreal.
Marcel Fafard
Like Louisiana?
Quebec does not want its specificity to resemble that of Louisiana.
Pierre Martin
If all English speakers thought so …
If all English speakers were so open-minded, there would no longer be two solitudes in Montreal!
Louise Fauteux
A nice trick
It is like saying: “When we are rich, we will return to the protection of French currently in danger and that informed observers are increasingly noticing. This kind letter is just a nice trick against the backdrop of an ode to multilingualism.
Claude Bedard
Managers, employees and customers
Completely agree with these comments. What if every business manager, big or small, said to his employees: “Here, we work in French. As is done in Germany, Spain, Norway or Denmark. But if a customer only speaks English, then make yourself understood in their language as is done in countries around the world.
Jocelyn Sévigny, Sorel-Tracy
We have to fight every day
No, Quebec will not automatically be “distinct”. We have to fight every day to keep French in the metropolis. Incredible laxity has taken place for the preservation of French for decades in Montreal and by continuing to do nothing French will become folklore in Montreal 100 years from now. This is unfortunately an inescapable fact.
Pierre Beaudoin
The “brush” rather than the club
Thank you for this excellent opinion piece! Entirely in agreement with the need to use a “brush” and not a club to modify our linguistic laws in order to preserve our economy!
Jean Lavigueur, Chief Financial Officer, Coveo
Guided by pride
What a beautiful text: it is not fear that should guide us, but pride. And what our governments should put forward is the wealth of being able to speak several languages. We have a long way to go before we get there.
Solange Tougas
The good old days, not reality
It is rather ironic to see an anglophone lecture in French Quebec. Him, the fruit of the Anglo-Saxon majority, with a language and a culture that are in no way threatened. Impossible to put yourself in the shoes of this French-Canadian minority in North America which is struggling to survive. We can surely not trust the will of the federal government and the ROC, who struggle to understand our history and have long forgotten the historic battles of this beautiful province, to accept us as we are: different, progressive and tenacious in our desire to to take our place in our own way and not in the way desired by those who insult us, ignore us and want our political and economic impoverishment. It is good to remember the heyday of social peace when Quebec was enslaved, but if these people still survive, it is thanks to their own efforts, because the praise, and especially the respect of others for what we are and the place we want to have remains a major obstacle to progress. An interesting text about the undefeated, but a little less melancholy please.
Michel Damphousse