The protest is small but agitated. A few dozen opponents of Quebec’s proposed language law are gathered in a park in the traditionally anglophone neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, and the speakers are having trouble managing the crowd.
But they are also upset at something relatively novel: the support of their traditional allies, the federal and provincial Liberals, for a bill many English-speakers see as a violation of their rights. “Quislings,” says Hugo Shebbeare, another organizer. That shift is a reflection of declining political and demographic weight. The anglophone share of the Quebec population, now about 10 per cent, has dwindled over the past several decades. Native English speakers left the province in hundreds of thousands between the 1970s to the early 2000s, driven by the rise of the Parti Québécois and francophone nationalism.
As colourful as her opposition to Bill 96 can be – “They want to engage in a complete erasure of our language, culture, and way of life,” she claims – Ms. Goldwater shares another quality with many Quebec anglophones: an abiding attachment to the province. It would take someone holding a gun to her head to make her move to Toronto, she said, calling it “the most boring, flat, constipated city.” The truth is, she acknowledged, she’s a Montrealer through and through.
It helps that the linguistic reality on the ground in Quebec is generally far more harmonious than the debate playing out in newspaper op-ed pages and the floor of the National Assembly. When Mr. Jedwab was vacationing in Florida before the pandemic, he ran into François Legault in a supermarket. They knew each other slightly from their roles on opposite sides of the province’s debates around federalism and language, and struck up a nice conversation.
coachsantina Living in Alberta as a Franco is not a bed of roses either. Franco-Albertans do not have a big university like McGill or a large newspaper like The Gazette.
Pierre Trudeau's minor league intellectualism brought us perpetual Canadian subsidization that enabled Quebec's socialist paradise. Just think of the federal equalization program that gives 60% of a $16 billion fund to the prosperous, privileged, entitled Republic de Quebec.
Small wonder the English Quebecois fled west along the 401 beginning in 1976 when Rene Levesque brought the PQ to power.
Why are shameless Quebecers, allowed to impose French on majority of Canadians who do not understand it & extort equalization money from Albertans, hurting with the highest unemployment rate? FP_Champagne JustinTrudeau theJagmeetSingh ErinOToole BillBlair yfblanchet
Not just there but also the federal gov where one must be bilingual to be a cabinet minister or senior bureaucrat.
Same applies in Camada for francos. Time to end that disgracefull forced marriage.
acoyne It has been like this for decades. I got out and never looked back. Life seems so much less stressful outside Quebec over the language issue.
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