Review of "Sorry, I don't speak French"

[Harold F. Schiffman]

The politics of language: A newsman ponders official bilingualism A second
tongue is second nature in Montreal

Apr. 23, 2006. 01:00 AM MICHEL
BASILIRES

Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis that Won't Go
Away

by Graham Fraser

McLelland & Stewart,
340 pages, $34.99

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Veteran Toronto Star newsman and author Graham Fraser has distilled more
than 40 years of watching and engaging in Qubcois life, politics and
culture into a thorough and careful study of Canada's official language
policy. His book begins with a historical look not only at the roots of
the issue but the politics emerging from it, a section Fraser suggests
that readers familiar with the subject may skip. I read it and found he's
pretty much covered everything, in as short a space as the information
will allow.  This is the driest section of what is otherwise a
surprisingly engaging book on a subject we are all tired of debating, but
can't seem to let go of. Fraser spends the rest of the book examining the
tortuous path of legislation and its practical fallout. Fully bilingual,
and with an attraction to his francophone compatriots, Fraser seems most
exasperated not with French Canada's demands for "special treatment," but
with English Canada's stubborn refusal to understand the issue through
francophone eyes. He argues that bilingualism is properly regarded as an
inherent right of Canadians, and the very idea of considering
dual-language co-operation as special treatment is itself an example of
English-Canadian ignorance.

In his chapter on the practical results of institutional bilingualism in
the federal government, he focuses on Ottawa, relating many instances
where anglophone complaints are shown as small-minded, misguided and,
well, xenophobic. He allows that the implementation of bilingualism has
caused troubling issues for those who work in the public service,
including barriers to promotion and social awkwardness in the workplace.
Yet always he is clearly on board with the goals and philosophy he sees in
the project.  Fraser portrays an ideal proposed by those who felt French
Canadians were by birth entitled to a level playing field in the federal
sphere: that they should enjoy the same ease of access to, and opportunity
to participate in, the governance and service of their native land,
without the barrier of language to restrict them. Seen this way, it makes
a lot of sense. It's only fitting that citizens in a democracy be able to
participate fully and naturally in public life. Fraser argues that from
the start, this ideal of bilingualism has consistently been misinterpreted
by anglophones, who instead saw a draconian and costly effort to force
bilingualism on all Canadians.

In tracing the results of official bilingualism, Fraser credits it with
going a long way to satisfying the goals of Confederation. If, after all,
it has not been the total success its architects had hoped for, at least
it has worked well enough to keep us all in the same country so far. He
acknowledges the small-mindedness of both camps in the debate, their
successes and failures, their compromises, and their occasional mutual
generosity. Fraser, having lived and worked in French for many years, is
himself an example of the goodwill extended by anglophones toward
French-speaking Canada. He details the increasing support for immersion
and the adoption of French by other prominent Canadians in all spheres.
However, as a product of a French immersion project himself, he shows that
while immersion has helped pave the bridge between linguistic communities,
students tend to learn a different French, one with an unnatural (English)
syntax, one instantly recognizable both by its speakers and by
francophones as not genuinely French: a new dialect he calls a kind of
Creole.

He points out something every Montrealer knows: That city is now fluently
bilingual (indeed, increasingly trilingual, with the growing presence and
influence of Spanish). Bilingualism thus has a different meaning for the
current generation of Montrealers, whatever their mother tongue. Yet
elsewhere, official bilingualism may seem more and more a dinosaur in our
increasingly multicultural cities. Fraser notes some of the absurdities
resulting from this ongoing argument, and anyone who lives in a bilingual
area has dozens of their own.

Here's three of mine:

Quebec's own language policy, both official and unstated, has resulted in
a situation where, in Toronto, one can receive directions from the public
transit authority over the telephone in dozens of languages, while in
Montreal, one can receive directions only in French.

If you fly from Montreal to Paris, you'll note on arrival that there are
many more English public signs posted in the French capital than at home.

I was once berated at Mirabel airport for speaking English, and at the
Brussels airport for speaking French, on the same day.

Overall, this intelligent book is livelier than we might expect, and less
painful a subject than we might fear. Language is, after all, not just a
tiresome argument, but as vital a part of us as where we live.

Accordingly, those of us who would be French Canadians, as much or more
than those of us who would be Qubcois, have the right to expect to exist,
in all aspects of our lives, in our own language, in our own country. It's
refreshing to hear this argued so well and so positively.

Sorry, I Don't Speak French is an excellent introduction, overview and
assessment of where we started, where we've been and where we are as a
maturing bilingual society.



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Michel Basilieres is the author of the novel Black Bird (Vintage Canada).

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