O Canada…

Not only I betrayed France by cross­ing the Atlantic Ocean, but appar­ently I also betrayed French lan­guage. Oh, that’s great.

Sum­mary: Quebec’s offi­cial lan­guage is French. Not Eng­lish. Not both lan­guages. French. The province is also quite a fighter: given its her­itage and the pre­pon­der­ance of French, there’s an ongo­ing debate regard­ing the sta­tus of Que­bec. Some want to sep­a­rate from Canada (they are known as sep­a­ratists or sov­er­eignists), some wish to sep­a­rate in the­ory but wouldn’t actu­ally vote “yes” in a ref­er­en­dum and some are fiercely against sep­a­rat­ing from Canada (they are known as federalists).

The issue is com­plex and highly polit­i­cal. It took me years to under­stand it and yet, I some­times quite don’t get every­thing. It’s also one of Canada’s most touchy sub­jects, so it’s hard to speak with­out offend­ing any­one. Not that I care anyway.

Some Que­be­cers would argue as fol­low: philo­soph­i­cally, the province isn’t a province but a nation, where peo­ple speak the same lan­guage and have dis­tinct soci­ety. Cul­tur­ally speak­ing, Que­bec is dif­fer­ent: it has its own artists, its own musi­cians, its own writ­ers. And Que­bec has a painful his­tory: Eng­lish have for long dom­i­nated Canada and there­fore, Quebec.

But the whole issue mostly revolve around lan­guages. Que­bec is the only province in Canada where French is the offi­cial lan­guage (only the province of New-Brunswick is bilin­gual). And it’s also the only place in North Amer­ica where French is widely spo­ken. Despite some Cana­dian lead­ers’ efforts, the coun­try is not bilin­gual yet, even though French is much more than a for­eign lan­guage in a lot of places in Canada. So, French lan­guage has to be pro­tected in North Amer­ica. And the best way to do that would be for Que­bec to be a nation. Oth­er­wise, French lan­guage would be doomed forever.

And here I am. I’m French, almost Cana­dian now. I speak French and Eng­lish. And I live in Ontario, not Que­bec. See where I’m going? My seat isn’t always comfortable.

Regard­less, note that I’m a French teacher, so I must care some­how. I do. I like French lan­guage — I like lan­guages as a mat­ter of fact. I’m just not sure how far you can go to pro­tect one. I was born as French and this lan­guage was given to me at birth. I like it because I can make nice sen­tences and read lit­er­a­ture. But I don’t think it should be a bur­den on my back nor a “gift” I should defend no mat­ter what. That’s prob­a­bly why I chose to live in Ontario and why I chose to live in Eng­lish, except at my cur­rent work where of course I speak French most of time.

It’s not because French is dis­ap­pear­ing in North Amer­ica, as I’ve heard many times, that I will take arms, move to Québec and run with the pack. I try to make my stu­dents love French, that’s about it. I don’t con­vert — I offer.

Accord­ing to some Que­be­cers, speak­ing French out­side Que­bec is use­less and bound to fail. Basi­cally, all French speak­ers should all gather in Que­bec and defend French. Besides, the dream of a bilin­gual coun­try is naive at best. Eng­lish on one side, French on the other. That’s it. Canada’s bilin­gual and bicul­tural cul­ture is often expressed in this term: the two solitudes.

How much time did I hear that? Too many. I was even called a col­lab­o­ra­tionist by a few Que­be­cers. Sold to the enemy, like the French who col­lab­o­rated with Nazi Ger­many dur­ing WW2. Ouch, it hurts. Their stu­pid­ity I mean, not the comment.

I don’t want to live in Que­bec. I have noth­ing against it, but I just don’t feel close to the cul­ture. Like I wouldn’t feel like liv­ing in Paris, or Munich for exam­ple. Noth­ing per­sonal. It’s just not for me. I feel com­fort­able in Eng­lish Canada: I like its mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, its pol­i­tics, its cul­ture and its peo­ple. It’s my home now.

Immi­grat­ing to Canada — or to any­where in the world — also means land­ing in the mid­dle of bat­tles we, immi­grants, nei­ther started nor are respon­si­ble for. Yet, we are “forced” to take a side. Or try to make things bet­ter, some­how. We can’t see the issues the same way locals do because we don’t usu­ally have the same back­ground and we don’t always share the same his­tory. But it could be seen as a chance: how about reset­ting every­thing? How about for­get­ting the old resent­ment and rivalries?

Related arti­cles:

1. French, Eng­lish and Montréal
2. Bro­ken English
3. French And Eng­lish (3÷10)
4. 10 Cana­dian Expressions
5. If You Immi­grate To Que­bec (4÷10)