As the story goes, in the 1980s, once Francophones in the province of Quebec who wanted to secede from Canada found out that all other provinces in English-speaking Canada were rooting for them to leave, they changed their minds, not wanting to give them the satisfaction.
However, the Quebec government declared French its official language and proceeded in imposing it within all governmental services, which were subsequently offered in French. For visitors and those who didn’t speak French, services were also offered in English, but even this indication was written in French. These days, business names on storefronts must be posted in French, and all of this is carefully monitored by government officials of the so-called “Language Police” force.
One problem with this, as reported to VideoAge‘s Water Cooler by a Paris native who moved to Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, is that she couldn’t understand their French accents and preferred to communicate in English.
Currently, eight million Quebec residents speak French and one million identify English as their first language.
Then came a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, which reported that, in 2021, the then Cultural Minister Nathalie Roy prompted the government to mandate that music heard in public elevators and while on hold on their phone lines be from Quebecois musicians.
Today, the government has embarked on an ad campaign on TV and Social Media to decry the use of English words in everyday conversation, putting special emphasis on its dislike of the use of “Franglais,” a mix of French with English expressions, and on Tele-Quebec a new game show, La langue dans ma poche (The Tongue In My Pocket) is meant to celebrate the French language.
I have never heard or read such an outrageously blantantly prejudice and just plain factualy incorrect reporting!
At no time were other Canadian provinces rooting for Quebec succession. Not for culture or economic or other grounds. Generally the ROC regarded the prospect as a likely economic disaster. There was plenty of conflict, disagreement, a fundamental reworking of federal-provincial responsibilitiues made, sometimes painfully, over decades. Of course we had our own sub-maga minority of individuals in English-speaking Canada who were loud in ant-Quebec sentiment, but never did any province or territory prefer Quebec to go. ( And your statistics excludes Canadian francophony outside of Quebec such as nother Ontario and Now Brunswick). Yes a francophone entity in North America values culture as a survial and prosperty tool more overtly than our dominant anglophone culture on a policy level. So what? Shame on uour reporting quality.
I couldn’t agree more with G. Philip Jackson. The fact that this article was approved for publishing is appalling.