There are places in North America where young French-speaking children once had to pee in their pants because they didn’t know enough English to ask the teacher for permission to use the bathroom. It was a simple strategy: Shame them into assimilating into the majority culture.
Things weren’t quite as bad in Quebec because the Québécois WERE the majority, in numbers at least. But there were cracks in the foundation. Big business was running mostly in English and it expected anyone who dealt with it, including its own employees and customers, to do so in English as well. Slowly but surely, this was having an impact on the French spoken in Quebec and the relatively low self-worth the Québécois had for themselves.
Someone came up with a radical idea: “The language is a common tool. It should be managed by the State.” The closest thing Quebec had was a provincial government, but it did enact legislation to make French the official language of the province, to make French predominant on all commercial signage, and to require all people moving to Quebec to register their children in French schools. Services to the English minority would be maintained, and parents who had been educated in English school in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada, could continue to send their children to English schools.
We can always debate whether the law went too far or whether there have been abuses that were perhaps never intended by the law. But the objective was certainly met. Quebecers now have a healthy dose of self-worth.
Contrast this with New Brunswick. The francophone Acadian population has hovered at the 33 percent level for quite some time, and this has made the Acadians a political power to be reckoned with. New Brunswick is the only province in Canada which can lay claim to true equality for both the English and French communities.
This reality seems to be lost on some, though. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit a small town in the south-eastern part of New Brunswick. The town was definitely French through and through, and was far enough from Moncton that you wouldn’t think signage would be a problem. And yet, the business slogans and other advertising, as well as the specials at the local restaurant, were all given in English. English ONLY!
I believe in free enterprise as much as anyone else and I also believe in freedom of choice. However, when the situation is such that the signage portrays a community as being the total opposite of what it is, one has to wonder how this French-speaking community can think highly of itself if it won’t even advertise to itself in its own language.
It’s with that in mind that I learned of Dieppe, NB’s intention of passing a by-law making bilingual or French signage mandatory. Some are crying foul, saying they should have a right to do business in the language of their choice. The point they are missing is this: They can continue to use English on their signs. They just have to add French as well. In a French place like Dieppe, how hard can that be?
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