Is Montreal too English?
It's a question that is debated on much too regular a basis in the French media, this obsession that Montreal is anglicizing. It remains a staple topic in the never-ending portrayal by language militants of Francophone Quebeckers as victims.
At the recent anti-Bill 103 rally at the Pierre Charbonneau Centre in Montreal, the master of ceremonies, Denis Trudel, railed from the dais that if the law was passed, it would mean that, over the next thirty years, it would lead to 50,000 new anglos in Quebec. He could have remained politic and say that there would be 50,000 less francophones, but instead, he made no attempt to hide his contempt. That's the type of nastiness that is generated on a daily basis by language militants against anglos.
The message, that we anglos are taking over, is something that we brush off as nationalist fantasy, it's something we're used to.
While we have learned to live with that, it was with a measure of sadness, that this week, I read a Montreal Gazette news article and listened to a
CBC radio talk show discussing that news article, where a bunch of self-loathing Anglo Quebeckers were re-selling the fiction of oppression and the myth that we are marching across the city, conquering Francophone neighbourhoods, hitherto bastions of language purity.
"First we take Manhattan, then we take Plateau!"
I can't imagine any local community newspaper which caters exclusively to Jewish, Arabic, Italian or Greek Montrealers, debating whether an increase in that community's population would be a good or bad thing for the city. But for the Montreal Gazette and a group of
hoity-toity Anglo apologists, buying into the argument that a rise in the use of the English language (and Anglos as a result,) is a bad thing for Quebec, seems to be the intellectual thing to do.
The article in question is this week's Montreal Gazette story by
DAVID JOHNSTON entitled
More English or less French? (Great Taste, Less Filling?)
Mr Johnston tells us that it is his considered opinion that anglos are spreading across the city and invading traditionally Francophone districts. This statement alone wins him an automatic place of honour on
vigile.net.
The 'alarming' prospect is surely sending shock waves throughout francophone boroughs, like the Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal's snobby, self-declared neighbourhood of cool, bohemian nationalists,) where Luc Ferrandez, the borough mayor, might consider erecting big signs (not billboards) at the entrance to his Utopian kingdom, reminding all who enter, of the district's political philosophy - "
No Billboards, No Cars, No Money and No Anglophones"
While it may be hard to argue against Mr. Johnston's 'gut feeling,' not so for his gratuitous and faulty use of statistics.
"I do think Montreal is becoming more English. But it’s not just that there are more anglos around, I added. It’s also because there has been an increase this past decade in the ongoing exodus of francophones from the Island of Montreal to off-island suburbs.Consider:
The years 2001 to 2006 saw the Island of Montreal lose 47,650 more
people of French mother tongue to off-island suburbs than it gained from
those suburbs, compared with a net loss of 6,740 people of English
mother tongue and 22,830 people of other mother tongue"
"To be sure, francophones are still a 2-to-1 majority in the metropolitan region as a whole"
Mr Johnston argues that because a great number of Francophones are abandoning the island of Montreal, the linguistic balance is being altered.
According to his figures, between 2001 and 2006, 48,000 mother-tongue francophones left the island of Montreal and a combined total of 30,000 anglophones and allophones left as well.
Boiling it down, it means that for every 2 francophones taking flight, 1.2 anglos and ethnics were doing the same.
Since Mr. Johnston advises us that the present ratio between mother tongue French Montrealers and the rest of us, is 2-to-1, he actually proves that the exodus is improving the balance in favour of francophones!
These are his own figures, I didn't make it up.
Do I believe this is happening? Dunno... but Mr Johnston is apparently sure. Despite the fact that his figures are either muddled or prove the exact opposite of the point he tried to make. (Ah those statistics, always troublesome things for amateurs!)
After shaking my head at this mathematical boner, I was further dismayed by rest of the article, wherein the author vacillates back and forth over the issue (unproven) of whether more English in Montreal is a good or bad thing. Hamlet would be proud.
Mr Johnston, makes reference to a moronic statistical study written by that paragon of impartiality, separatist and fantasist, Pierre Curzi, entitled
"Le grand Montréal s’anglicise" which employs a variety of statistical leaps, to conclude that the sky is falling on French Montreal.
No thinking anglophone should ever reference trash like that.
The 'study' is based on the racist concept of 'mother tongue' which is just code for the no-longer politically correct term "
Québécois de souche." It assumes that those who aren't born from 'pure stock' and who can't trace their lineage back to the
"filles de roi," cannot be counted as 'real' francophone Quebeckers, even if they live their lives entirely in French.
"And now we’re on the cusp of a new francophone exodus – the exodus of francophone baby boomers from the workplace."
Anglophones should be relieved to know that according to Mr. Johnston, they can't qualify as baby-boomers and therefore only francophones may be on the cusp... Hmm....
"During
my appearance on Je l’ai vu à la radio, author and radio personality
Georges Nicholson, another panellist, acknowledged that more anglos are
able to function in French these days. But he asked me whether anglos
are any more deeply connected to Quebec, as a result of their knowledge
of French – whether, for example, they go to French theatre or read
authors like Réjean Ducharme, Quebec’s J.D. Salinger. I said no. Réjean
Tremblay of La Presse maybe, but not Réjean Ducharme."
I bet there isn't an anglo in a thousand (or a Russian, a Swede, German, etc) who ever heard of Réjean Ducharme. Trust me, he's no
Jack Kennedy J.D Salinger. If he was any good, he'd be translated into English like Solzhenitsyn or Marcel Proust. Maybe then I'd read the original French version (as I did with Proust's sublime '
À la recherche du temps perdu.')
The truth is that there are only two truly great international writers from Quebec, Saul Bellow and Mordechai Richler and one international poet, Leonard Cohen and no, I'm not going to state the obvious.
By the way, the French radio show that Mr. Johnston so proudly participated in, 'Je l’ai vu à la radio,' is hosted by Franco Nuovo, that wonderfully culturally sensitive ex-columnist for the Journal de Montreal, who during the Nagano Olympics, honoured the host country by changing his byline picture to that of himself wearing a rubber band around his eyes to give him that 'oriental look'. Marvellous!
As for going to French theatre, there's a legitimate reason why we don't go.
It isn't very good.... Sorry.
Now that doesn't mean Quebeckers are talentless, in fact the opposite is true. Francophone entertainers outperform their Canadian counterparts, but with a pool of only seven million francophones, they can only do so much.
The last French play I attended, was Quebec's only blockbuster, "
Notre Dame de Paris."
Comparing it to those plays that I've seen on Broadway, in New York, I can only say that it was a thoroughly disappointing affair, not exactly a '
Miss Saigon,' '
Cats' or '
Phantom of the Opera,' that's for sure. There was no live orchestra, just a canned music track. The staging was
cheap minimalist and while the music somewhat catchy, the voices were strictly sub-Broadway calibre. The only thing that reminded me of Broadway was the price of admission.
Never again.
The same goes for Quebecois film and television, all sub-par.
That's not say there aren't some flashes of greatness, I diligently watch Patrick Huard's TV show
Taxi- 0-22 because he is as good as any comedian in North America. His rapier wit and expert delivery places him just below Chris Rock and above Russel Peters in my estimation.
To expect a small community to compete with the world on quantity is unrealistic. How many Patrick Huards or Celine Dions are there out there?
To expect bilingual Anglos to consume Quebec French culture because they can, not because they find it interesting, is unrealistic.
"One
thing that I didn’t know then that I know now is that anglos are 12
times less likely to listen to French radio than francophones are to
listen to English radio, according to Statistics Canada."
Ya think?....See above explanation.
"......the
only other anglo on the panel, a native anglo Montreal musician named
Paul Cargnello who sings in French as well as English. Nuovo asked him
why an anglo, with such a big English market, would want to sing in
French.
“The question isn’t why, it’s why not?” said Cargnello."
I've never heard of this guy and I bet you haven't either.
Nobody who could compete in the NHL would ever stay in the American Hockey League, not if they had their druthers.
To say otherwise, well, let's be charitable and leave it at that.
"These
days I am surprised to find myself speaking French more deliberately to
bus drivers and retail clerks. I want francophones to see that I
recognize that I am living in Montreal, not Toronto or Boston."
I think the writer meant to say "deliberately speaking more French" rather than "speaking more French deliberately."
At any rate, I for one, always start conversations with people that I meet in public in French, but I don't speak French to suck up to anybody and 'prove' that I am a 'bon anglais.'
I do so out of common politeness and good manners, not to kowtow.
