French Quebec Saga Continues

[Grant Barrett]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/031500canada-french.html

Pokemon Wins a Battle but Not the Language War

By JAMES BROOKE

ONTREAL, March 14 -- With French billboards dominating the skyline, French
prevailing in offices and boutiques, and tourism officials promoting this city on the St.
Lawrence as "Paris without jet lag," some Canadians argue that French North America is no
longer under siege. Almost 250 years after losing the Seven Years' War, Quebecers
can finally relax.

Indeed, polls indicate that popular support for making this province a new nation
has fallen to a new low, about 39 percent. A recent student riot against a youth
conference organized by the province's separatist government suggested that young Quebecers
are more interested in jobs, dropout rates and cuts in education budgets.

But a battle this winter to get French-language Pokémon cards for Quebec children
and legal battles brewing this spring over language laws reflect the fact that Quebec's
French-speaking majority continues to view itself as an oppressed minority. And as
English-rights proponents challenge mandatory French supremacy in signs, workplaces
and the yellow pages, some people fear a new break in Canada's carefully maintained
linguistic peace.

"In North America, we are only 2 percent," said Louise Beaudoin, Quebec's language
minister, who won the battle for French-language Pokémon cards and Nintendo manuals.
On Monday, lawyers for the provincial government finished arguments appealing a ruling
by a Quebec judge that struck down a provincial sign law, saying that French is no
longer "vulnerable" in Quebec.

In modern Quebec, where six million people -- 83 percent of the population -- speak
French, "linguistic security" remains a major issue.

Schoolchildren learn that when British soldiers conquered Quebec in 1759, Dutch was
the second language of New York, German was the second language of Pennsylvania, and
60,000 defeated Quebecers spoke French. Today, while the lost European languages of
colonial America are historical footnotes, Quebecers grow up vowing to resist "la
Louisianisation" -- a code word for the assimilation of Louisiana's French-speaking
Cajuns.

"Language is at the root of Quebec nationalism," Lysiane Gagnon, a La Presse
columnist, wrote recently.
For the last quarter-century, an elaborate legal code has made Quebec a vast
language laboratory experiment to shore up French, similar to the way that Gaelic has been
revived in Ireland and modern Hebrew strengthened in Israel.

Waiters and shop clerks in this tourist city must first greet customers "bonjour."
On public signs, French words must be "predominant," generally twice the size of those
in any other language. If a business wants to buy an advertisement in English yellow
pages, it must first buy one in French yellow pages. (French advertisers are not
obliged to buy English advertisements.)

In public schools, English-speaking children are encouraged to start learning French
in kindergarten. But French-speaking children are not allowed to start English
classes until fourth grade. By law, all children of immigrants must be schooled in French.
A recent poll conducted for The Gazette, the English daily newspaper here, found
that 71.4 percent of French-speaking respondents complained that their children were not
learning enough English.

"Tongue troopers target city," a recent headline in The Chronicle, an
English-language weekly, warned over an article describing how Pointe Claire, an English suburb of
Montreal, had been ordered to change its street signs. To obey French grammar, the
word "Avenue" was to precede names, not to follow.

Many English-speaking Quebecers see such measures as unfair and authoritarian. In
the last 25 years, about 250,000 English-speaking Quebecers have left the province.
Feeling besieged, leaders of the remaining English-speaking residents resort to such
measures as counting library books that Montreal is buying this year. While about 17
percent of Montreal's households are English-speaking, only 6.7 percent of the 120,000
books expected to be purchased this year are in English, said William Johnson,
president of Alliance Quebec, the largest English-language lobby.

"It is simply mythology to say that French is threatened in Quebec," said Mr.
Johnson, who often speaks French at home. "Requiring this kneeling down of all languages
before French is sheer linguistic imperialism."

But many French-speaking Quebecers see such measures as essential.

"Without French signs, the message to visitors and immigrants is very ambivalent,"
said Robin Philpot, spokesman for the Société St.-Jean-Baptiste, a leading nationalist
group here. "The gains in Montreal are fragile. You could easily have immigrants --
and French kids -- saying, hey, the future is English."
Demanding French toys, Nathalie Petrowski, mother of an 8-year-old boy, wrote
despairingly: "My torment started with Nintendo control panels in Japanese and English. The
torture continued with Pokémon cards."

Overall, Quebec's weight in Canada's population has slipped from one- third at the
time of confederation, in 1867, to one-quarter today. Despite official measures to
strengthen French here, the proportion of French-speakers in Quebec's population is
expected to erode slightly over the next quarter-century, to 81 percent.

With Quebec's birthrate one of North America's lowest, provincial leaders are
pushing to expand the number of French-speaking immigrants by almost 50 percent over the
next three years, to 17,000. Although only 40 percent of immigrants here adopt or
maintain French as their home language, officials say that is an increase over the 25
percent level of the 1970's.

"If French Quebec 'loses' the immigrants, people will no longer be speaking French
in Quebec in two generations," wrote Ms. Gagnon, the columnist.

Among the nearly one million French-speaking Canadians outside of Quebec, the
conversion rate to English is about 30 percent for each generation, estimated Ms. Beaudoin,
Quebec's language minister.
This winter, many Quebecers were outraged when Ontario's premier, Mike Harris,
refused to make Ottawa a bilingual city under a consolidation plan that is to take effect
next January.

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a Quebecer, thundered in Parliament that it is "very
important that the national capital be bilingual."

Joseph Facal, Quebec's minister for intergovernmental affairs, said, "It is another
illustration that, living in French, outside of Quebec in Canada, is a daily, uphill
struggle."

But behind closed doors the linguistic mathematics were not lost on Mr. Facal and
other separatists. If they were to demand that greater Ottawa, with a French-speaking
population of 15 percent, be bilingual, who is to say that Montreal, with an
English-speaking population of 17 percent, should not be bilingual too?
In the end, Quebec's separatist-controlled provincial legislature sidestepped a call
for bilingualism and instead passed a resolution that merely urged Ottawa to provide
services in French to its estimated 110,000 French-speaking residents.