Une réalisation bilingue

I had about six paragraphs written on the history of Quebec’s language problems, led off by a promise to keep it brief. (Pause for laughter.) I had gotten to about 1976. Then I came to a realization.

No one wants to read this crap.
Hey, quit cheering.

So I’ll stick to today’s situation, and provide a few links if the history interests you.

Quebec separatism is alive and well, but Montreal isn’t terribly sympathetic to it — Montreal may be the most uniformly bilingual city in North America. On the surface in Montreal, it appears that the local residents just don’t care what language they’re speaking. To the American visitor with aspirations to competency in another language (or two, or three), this seems like a great place to be.

The reality isn’t that simple. While the separatists are actually out of power at the moment (and federal Canada is benefitting from this), the language situation they’ve created lurks just below the surface, and affects virtually every interaction between people in everyday life.

Quebec’s 1977 Bill 101 (as amended) legislated the position of the French language in Quebec life. Most immediately visible to the visitor, road signs are French-only. More insidiously, business conduct is strictly controlled as well — you won’t see English-language point-of-sale systems in the province of Quebec, and in businesses employing 50 or more people, internal business communication must be primarily in French. Customers must be greeted first in French — only then can a conversation start in English. French-language signs must have primacy of place — in my dual-currency Burger King from last time (located in an area primarily catering to English-speaking tourists), the full-size French-language menu was posted immediately in front with graphics, while the two-panel, text-only English-language menu was posted along a side wall.

Perhaps most egregiously, access to English-language schooling (including private schools) is strictly limited to students whose parents either received English-language schooling in Quebec themselves, or can demonstrate that (a) their child has already received English-language schooling elsewhere in Canada and (b) their family is not planning to stay in Quebec. (That’s an oversimplification, but bear with me.) If you can’t meet those requirements, your kid had better pick up French quickly, because it’s illegal to send him/her to an Anglophone school. One driver of this legislation was the desire of immigrant parents, who post-WWII increasingly spoke neither English nor French, to send their children to English schools to give them better opportunities in Canada (or even the United States) at large.

The provisions of Bill 101 et al are enforced by their own government organization, the Office de la langue française, which some just call the “Language Police.”
These guys apparently spend their time shaking down businesses that aren’t sufficiently French, among other things (hat tip: Tim Blair).

It’s one thing for a country (or province) to have an official language. If you can’t speak it, you’re gonna have a tough time dealing with the government and existing in civil society. So be it. If a business doesn’t serve the public in the public’s chosen language, then it probably won’t do too well, and I won’t shed many tears for the consequences of its dumb business decision. But when language police enforce requirements upon businesses’ private, internal conduct, and even prevent children from receiving education in their parents’ language or the language their parents would choose for them, that’s flat-out wrong, and just barely this side of authoritarian.

Any way you slice it, it’s a beneficial political play for the separatists, who want to make sure Quebec’s population feels no affinity with the rest of Canada. If it means driving some of the Anglo long-time residents out (which is what happened in the immediate aftermath of Bill 101’s passage), that’s
good. If it pushes pan-Canadian businesses (who need to do much of their business in English) out, that’s great too — that accentuates the economic separation between Quebec and the rest of Canada. And the immigrants, who just want to make a better life for their children? Most important is making those kids Parti Québécois supporters; for everything else, they can fend for themselves.

It’s a fun place to visit. But the political environment deliberately makes Anglophones (who have been there nearly as long as the French) live their lives on the sufferance of an oppressive political-linguistic majority.
That realization left a bad taste in my mouth, and made me glad to pass beneath the U.S. Customs banner in Dorval Airport that welcomed me back to the United States.