Living in Montreal Unilingualy

One of the most annoying Francophone columnists I know is the insufferable Jean-François Lisée, whose stock in trade are articles bashing anglos or articles defending or in fact extolling the virtues of the Quebec 'model'

Mr. Lisée is the favourite target of conservative bloggers who regularly rip apart his voodoo calculations or cherry-picked statistics.

In one of his most memorable pieces, he quotes a study that concludes that Quebecers don't really pay a heavy price for their very generous social services.
The study calculates the federal and provincial taxes paid by Quebecers in addition to payroll charges and levies and compares that to the value of the social services received in return.
Sounds great, until you realize that the study fails to include federal and provincial sales taxes, gas tax, school taxes, liquor tax etc.etc.
Hilariously the study actually puts a PST and GST credit in the benefits column without ever applying the actual PST and GST taxes in the taxes paid column! See the chart Here
Read the wonderful rebuttal to his nonsense entitled,  Les temps sont durs pour Jean-François Lisée

Another one of my preferred bloggers, is the always entertaining 'DAVID" over on antagonist.net who regularly skewers Mr. Lisée in articles like  "Arguing with Idiots"

In one particular piece DAVID critiques a piece wherein Mr. Lisée disparages the United States over the inequities of income distribution.
In that piece, Mr. Lisée  tells us (quite rightly) that between 1979 and 2007, income for the top 20% of American earners went up 95%, while income for the bottom 20% went up only 16%, quite a disparity!

Our industrious blogger David, added in some data comparing Quebec to the United States and found that during this same period, income for the top 20% of Quebecers earners went up an anemic 10%, while income for the bottom 20% went up only 4%.

In fact, DAVID points out, income for the poorest Americans went up four times faster than in Quebec. Ha!

When not offering a rosy economic picture of  Quebec, Mr. Lisée is busy bashing Anglo Quebecers or Canadians in general.

In a recent blog piece Mr. Lisée complains that there are too many Anglophone Montrealers who refuse to learn French.
It all started with a radio interview on the Montreal CBC's Daybreak show where the subject was just that- unilingual Montreal Anglos who don't learn French.
The moderator Mike Finnerty, talked with  Sherwin Tjia, an artist who moved here from Toronto a decade ago and never learned French. Worse still he remains unapologetic. Listen to the Interview

“I’ve been to parties and met Francophones and they say, “You don’t speak French? How long have you been here?” They ask that question with an agenda. They aren’t really interested in how long I’ve been here. [...] the agenda isn’t subtle – they want to be able to come to some kind of conclusion about you, and by extension, tell you how you should be.

In their mind, there’s some kind of Language Statute of Limitations. If I’ve been in Quebec longer than like, two years, and don’t know French – that’s too long. In their opinion, everyone in Quebec should be bilingual, or working towards it. At these parties, they say to me, “You should learn,” almost like a threat.”- Sherwin Tjia

Of course, the interview brought down a storm of criticism, tinged with rage, by the usual suspects of French language supremacists.

"This hostile indifference to our culture is the consequence of the undermining in recent years of the French language in Quebec, as was noted by columnist Jean-François Lisée in an article entitled "Is the Unilingue anglais back" which appeared on his blog. Alas! All this is only too true. For my part I would add that the least assimilable immigrants, the most arrogant, often come from the Commonwealth and serve as a spearhead for the eternal red necks, that ever since our conquest, refuse to accept that French is a language spoken in Montreal."-  Read more of this rant by Gilles Proulx  Link{Fr}

Read a subsequent  interview with Mr. Tjia over the furious reaction his radio appearance engendered in the Francophone press. LINK

Mr Proulx and Mr Lisée both make their assertion that Anglos must learn French to be good citizens, based on a false premise which holds that Quebec is an independent country, not a province in a majorly English country.
The idea that all public discourse in Montreal must be in French, is based on this fruit of a poisonous premise.

I have maintained all along that Montreal is not a French city, but rather a bilingual city. Perhaps it's time to reassess that appraisal and admit that Montreal is actually three cities, a bilingual one, a French one and an English one.
There are those who live bilingually in Montreal while others live unilingually, either in French or English.
That's the way it is.
For Mr. Proulx and Mr. Lisée to pretend that Montreal is a French city because 79% of the province of Quebec is French is just another case of cherry-picked statistics.
There is a block of English speakers, over 500,000, that make Montreal their home. Putting a finer point on it, almost all of these Anglos  live west of St. Lawrence boulevard(which neatly divides the city in two), wherein they likely form the majority!

Insufferable anglophobes like Proulx and Lisée continue to propagate the myth that Montreal is French because the province is 79% francophone.
And they continue to believe that the English live in Quebec by the benevolent good grace of the francophone majority and that furthermore, Anglos should be thankful and respectful for being tolerated.

It is an indisputable fact that one can get along quite nicely in Montreal without French, something that outrages the Proulxs, the Lisées and other French language supremacists.
And so it also follows, that in Montreal, there are people who speak only English, just as it is natural that in Pointe-aux-Trembles there are people who speak only French.

Living in English in Montreal...YESSIR!

Let's see.
My wife has a friend who came to this province many decades ago and married an Anglo Montrealer.
She settled in one of those English town that boasts more than 70% English residents. Everyone on the street where she lived was English. She raised a family, sent her kids to English school and shopped in stores where the clerks were all English, including downtown Montreal.
Television, newspapers, entertainment and dining out....all in English.
Even the repairman who came to fix her washer or stove spoke English, even if he was French.

In forty odd years she hasn't learnt one word of French and still doesn't speak anything but English.
She couldn't tell you who Beau Dommage is or VLB or what Loft Story or Occupation Double represents. She couldn't recognize a picture of Ginette Reno or Roch Voisine.
Ironically she does know who Celine Dion is....
She never in life turned her television onto a French channel or listened to the likes of Gilles Proulx on the radio. As far a she is concerned La Presse may as well be written in Greek, it is of no import to her.
As for missing out on French culture, she along with 330 million north Americans get on quite nicely without it, she isn't really deprived.

Unlike what Mr. Lisée and Mr Proulx would have us believe, she committed no great crime, no bigger than a unilingual francophone who spent her whole life in Montreal speaking only French.

Years ago I made a road trip with a francophone employee, a senior member of management, who astonished me by asking me the name of the musical group playing on the radio. When I told him it was the Barenaked Ladies, he shrugged his shoulders and admitted he never heard of them.
When I forced a lunch stop (I was the boss) at Smoked Meat Pete's out in Pincourt, he asked for mayonnaise for his smoked meat sandwich and ordered a glass of milk. Eccch.....
Not a word of English, not a clue about smoked meat and he lived in Montreal all his life. Egad!

So what....

Yes, you can live in Montreal never speaking a word of French, just as you can live in Montreal never speaking a word of English. You can safely ignore the 'other culture' if you so choose and get along quite well, thank you very much.

To each his own.... Speak French, speak English, speak both. It's your choice.
Absorb the culture of others or don't, it's your choice.

In the world of Proulx and Lisee 'choice' is not an option, it is in fact, a dirty word.

These two dinosaurs remain what they are, arrogant language supremacists and Anglophobes extrodinaire.

Do I support being unilingual in a society of two languages?
No, I've made my choice to speak French and am happy with that decision.
But I will not choose for others or force my opinion on them, either. No.

And so my advice to Sherwin Tjia is that you've got nothing to apologize for.
To those who dislike the fact that you live in the Mile End and speak only English,  tell them what they've been telling us Anglos for years;

'If you don't like it,  move away.'