Language Expectations

A few weeks ago, I was at a local Cage Aux Sports during a Canadiens’ game, cheering for the Habs alongside friends and strangers. You would figure that if we all have a common passion then there really wouldn’t be room for differences to appear among the melange of Anglophones and Francophones. While this may seem to be lacking morally-related substance, the issue, a simple comment from the night’s animateur ends up being a cause for concern in the melting-pot that is the island of Montreal.

Most hockey fans know that anyone who is a fan of the Montreal Canadiens is a fan of a movement, a fan of the gritty intensity that is unique to the sport of hockey. When describing a true Habs fan, passionate is a vast understatement. This alone should unite said fans and allow any and all differences to be shed. That was not entirely the case when the young animator kept the crowd alive in between the first and second period by asking a few people to give their best rendition of the Canadian national anthem. Three people performed, up first at a table not too far from my own, a man in his mid-thirties with his wife and two children. He stood up with the microphone in his face and began: “Ô Canada! Terre de nos aïeux...”, and didn’t fare too well. Nevertheless, his kids had a laugh and were proud of their father at the same time. Next up was a drunken twenty-something out with his friends. He too started, albeit reluctantly, with the national anthem sung in French. The last person selected to give it their all was a young boy celebrating his birthday by watching the game with his elementary school friends. His performance, however, was a little different: “O Canada! Our home and native land...”. Once the boy finished singing, he received the loudest applause; mainly from the mothers and fathers accompanying the boy and his friends. He won a t-shirt for his trouble.

What happen next rendered me slack-jawed and speechless. The lovely Francophone being paid to work in the public and cater to the needs of her clientele said something along the lines of this: “Ben, il a gagné sauf il n’a pas respecté la Loi 101!”. I couldn’t believe that something so entrenched in the past, something fuelled mostly by ignorance had snuck its way into the walls of a restaurant where anyone should feel free and comfortable. On top of that, she singled out the boy for being English and mocked all the Anglophones in the room. Needless to say, that left a sour taste in my mouth even though I come from a largely bilingual family, but this just goes to show that some people are willing to go to extremes in order to preserve the culture of Quebec.

Let’s face it, the culture of Quebec has developed since the last separatist movement and will continue to do so. It is estimated that by 2012, the city of Montreal will be an Allophone majority, meaning that the mother-tongue of most Montrealers will be neither Anglophone nor Francophone. Either way, English Montrealers influence the Quebec culture just as much as Francophones, and the next step in the evolution of the culture is to incorporate the changes brought by the masses who are new to the city and country. The kicker here is that the Canadian anthem was originally scribed in French and was meaningful to many peoples across the nation of Canada. While most people in the room that night probably didn’t realize that, I find it odd that the animator chose to express her own personal meaning of the anthem instead of keeping things as unbiased as possible. I do this as much as possible simply because I work in the public just as she does. While political correctness is largely overrated, I keep my personal opinions private as long as I am being paid, something that many people should do when dealing with issues as sensitive as language in Quebec. I guess that the real issue is purely that—when you’re depended on and in the public eye, one should draw the line and be politically correct.