Continuation

There are currently one million French Canadians living outside Quebec. Most are scattered along the Quebec border in Ontario and New-Brunswick. A few more are in Winnipeg. The francophones of English Canada face a difficult situation by living in an English society. English is inevitably the language of their daily life, so they can only be francophones at home. As such they cannot be true francophones; not as long as they greet strangers with ‘Hello’ rather than ‘Bonjour’.

This is what it means to live in a minority. However hard one struggles to maintain a language, how ever desperately one tries to hold on to a culture, it is impossible outside the confines of the cultural centre and the family home. Life in a minority is life with people who are culturally deaf. Assimilation is very hard to avoid.

What to make of it depends on one’s point of view. Our immigration system relies on assimilation. Otherwise, Canada would see the emergence of cultural ghettos and the social problems that come with them. Many new Canadians also dream of assimilation. Their goal is for their children to children grow up as full members of Canadian society, even if means they abandon the culture of their ancestors.

To French Canadians, assimilation is above all a source of fear. The fear of disappearing has long been a source of great angst. It’s easy to o see why: seven million or so French speakers are surrounded by over three hundred million Anglophones. The numbers are unreal.

Assimilation captivates the lives of French Canadians. Even in Quebec, an objectively Francophone province, not a month goes by without some minor controversy being caused by a Montreal newspaper about the abuse of French in the province. In the rest of Canada, fears of assimilation are supported by statistics.

(To be continued.)