I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. We’ve had a lot of
sunshine on this trip – sometimes, too much – but very little rain, but there’s
this thing called the law of averages. Wind and rain have set in across Quebec
City and Ottawa and is will be hanging around, by the looks of it, for the next
four days at least. It marks a strange contrast to a month ago, when we were
stuck on an Amtrak train for 5 hours in the middle of nowhere because it was so
hot the track had warped, or our first stint in NYC where it felt like the
entire city was a cauldron.
We got the train up to Quebec City from Montreal the day before
yesterday, which was pleasant enough, until about 5 minutes from the terminus,
when we saw some massive factories spewing all sorts of crap into the air –
Quebec City is a town in need of a carbon tax. We go back the same way when we
leave for Ottawa – we need to change trains in Montreal because they have a
separate line for the journey to Quebec City which seems to have arisen through
poor government planning around 1900, at least a decade before the ‘access
rights to essential facilities’ theories started to develop (no, don’t ask). We
have an hour and a half between trains, but my worry is baggage – given it took
us 90 minutes to retrieve our things from Montreal station last time, if it
happens again, we could be in trouble. No, don’t think like that: the glass is
half full.
Anyway, so Quebec City is the heartland of the French-speaking
part of Canada. People here (at least in the City) speak English but it is
clearly their second preference – everything is in French. Even the buildings
and the city layout look incredibly European, and with French being spoken all
around you it is very easy to imagine you are no longer in Canada. The only
thing that seems incongruous is the cars. It’s like being in a European city
where you have to swerve Chryslers, Pontiacs, Dodges and those massive personal tanks favoured by many people
on this continent. You’d think the provincial government would import the odd
Renault or Citroen, or even a smart car, to lend an ever so slightly more
Parisian ambience. Having said that, they have smart buses here – they run on
electricity and are half the size of an ordinary bus which obviously cuts down
on running costs in off-peak periods. ACTION: stop whinging, take note, and take
action.
So on our first night here – blisteringly gorgeous sunshine – we
wandered around the buildings in the upper part of town, and had a drink
overlooking the river in a hotel which is apparently the most photographed
hotel in the world (how they judge these things, I’ve no idea). For dinner, we
had this thing called raclette, which is a Quebec dish similar to fondue where
you get a big block of cheese and some meat and/or vegetables (obviously, we
just got vegetables), and you put these on a metal tray under a grill which is
brought to your table, and you scrape the melting cheese onto the vegetables. I
wouldn’t say it was the most brilliant meal ever, but it was certainly an
experience. I don’t imagine there are many raclette restaurants in Australia.
I’d hate to be a kitchenhand at one, the washing-up process would be somewhat
elongated. We walked back, taking photographs of buildings and the horse-drawn
carriages in the dusk, some of which (if I do say so myself) look marvellous.
I’ll have to put some up when we get back.
Yesterday morning after breakfast (don’t ask) we caught the
funicular railway down to the lower part of the town, where we wandered amongst
the buildings. We found a fresh food market – food is so fresh here! – and
bought a bottle or two of Quebecois wine. One of these was consumed last night,
and was really quite nice. As we got hungry (must have been seeing all the
fresh fruit and vegies), we hunted around for a restaurant. There was fierce
competition – every second shopfront was a café or bistro or restaurant of some
kind – but the thing that surprised me was they all offered very similar menus.
And not French, as you’d expect, but Italian – pizza and pasta. So once we
inevitably gave up, Cathy had a salad. Caught the funicular back up, and had a
drink at a bar adjacent to the world’s most photographed hotel, and listened to
a Quebecois folk guitarist. We bought his CD, which’ll be a lovely souvenir.
Unfortunately I then came back to the room to do some university work (yep,
there’s no escaping it now) while Cathy wandered the streets some more. We
retired quite early last night, and every half an hour or so, we could hear a
horse-drawn carriage clip-clopping past the window. I think we’re starting to
get a bit tired, but if we knew that today’s weather would be so crap, we might
have pushed ourselves a bit more yesterday.
Today we braved the weather – it eased up somewhat about
mid-morning – and wandered around the wall which was built around the city,
from what I gather, in two stints: firstly by the French, and then finally by
the British. It surrounds what is still an active military facility. Walked up
and down the main city outside the wall (standing on the wall gave us a lovely view - and smell - of the factory emissions), and bought some local wine for later –
today is definitely a red wine day – and a buffet vegetarian lunch. Would have
loved to visit the Quebec provincial parliament but everything in the garden
was exclusively in French: significantly problematic. Soon enough we were
thirsty, and ventured into a bar for a drink and to get out of the cold. Ended
up sitting at the bar for a while watching the Olympics, and cheering for any
team competing against the Etats-Unis. At a different bar, I enjoyed a beer from
the Yukon territory called ‘Midnight Sun’, which was a strong stout infused
with coffee. Delicious, but couldn’t drink too many of them!
So we’re now back in the room, and will probably be here until we
leave for Ottawa tomorrow. And now seems a good enough time to launch into some
thoughts I’ve had about the Canadian bilingualist project.
You’d have
to be blind as well as ignorant to be in Canada and to be unaware that it’s a
bilingual nation (there are many more languages than two, of course, but there
are two *official* languages). This seems to be one of the nation’s most
defining features. Our first taste of Canada was Vancouver, where there is an
overwhelming majority of English speakers, but signage is in both English and
French. Probably hardly anyone in Vancouver speaks French, so the dual signage
in that city is symbolic more than anything. However, symbols matter greatly.
In Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, a true bilinguialism seems to exist. When a resident
greets an unknown, the usual greeting is ‘hellobonjour’, as a single word, thus
leaving it up to the respondent to set the language of the conversation. This
is probably because there are sizeable amount of both Anglophones and
Francophones in those provinces, so both are truly accommodated. (I wondered,
but too late, what would happen if I was greeted with ‘hellobonjour’ and I
responded in kind?)
In Montreal,
this was all out the door. I know the province of Quebec is the
predominantly French speaking part of the country, but apparently (according to
Lonely Planet), 40% of the population of Montreal do not speak French. I know
this doesn’t mean the remaining 40% speak English, but English would be the
major language of that 40%. And, at the end of the day, Quebec forms part of a
nation where one of the two national languages is one other than French. I
would have thought Quebec would assert their nation-within-a-nation status by
reversing the bilingual signs – French before English – but more often than
not, signage is French only. Signage in the Montreal metro (including all
advertising) is entirely in French. You’d be forgiven
for thinking you were in Paris, and this is probably the point.
I
find this surprising. French speakers are clearly a national minority, and
outside Quebec they are catered for (even in cities/regions where French
speakers would be very thin on the ground); but for non-French speakers in
Quebec, from an institutional viewpoint, it’s pretty much stiff fromage.
There’s a
provincial election on right now, and campaigning is in top speed. Apparently
it’s going to be close, so the parties are out to court the Anglophone vote.
Quelle embarrassment when it came to light recently that none of the four main
provincial parties had an English website. Three of these quickly published a
quick and nasty Anglo version, but the fourth (which I presume to be the
hardline separatists) have said a firm NON to that. I just find it amazing
that, given almost half of the population in the major city of Quebec does not
speak French (according to Lonely Planet) that none of the parties would have
arranged an English website until shamed into it (and the fourth makes their
refusal a point of distinction). And now there’s a story on the news about the
hardliners wanting to ‘new limits on the legal use of the English
language’ in order to make French even *more* prominent in Quebec. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/08/07/quebec-votes-2012-day-7-promises.html
Yes,
symbols matter greatly. The impression it gives me is that if you live outside
Quebec and speak French, you are accommodated and included by the national
culture to the best of its ability; but if you live in Quebec but choose not to learn French, you’re
excluded by the dominant regional culture.
This is *absolutely*
not a comment on the people of Montreal, who were really friendly to us, and as
soon as they realised you didn’t speak French, they switched immediately to
English. We encountered no communication problems. So at an individual level,
bilingualism definitely exists in Montreal: there is probably much more chance
of finding fluent English in Montreal (hardline separatists notwithstanding) than
there would be finding fluent French in Vancouver. My comments here aren't about the way bilingualism works 'on the ground', but about the theoretical,
cultural and institutional arrangements that have been established to define
Quebec as being different from the rest of the country. To this outsider, it
seems that the gesture of bilingualism extended to the province of Quebec by
the national government isn’t reciprocated by the provincial government to its
own residents with any enthusiasm, and what little reciprocation there is feels
token. Maybe there is no political separatism, but in a cultural sense, separatism definitely exists.
Visiting
Quebec City, which is the heartland of French Canada, my perceptions changed
slightly. Here, you are extremely unlikely to hear English unless (a) you walk
past an English-speaking tourist on the street or (b) you are in a shop and
clearly cannot understand the French spoken to you – in the latter case, the
shop assistant will switch to English, but it’s clearly a second preference for
them. English signage is almost totally non-existent. However, I hasten to say that everyone we’ve met spoke very good English, and, as
a result, we’ve had no problems getting transport, accommodation, food,
whatever.
But the reason my perspective changed is because Quebec City itself is charming: the buildings, the ambience,
everything: and language is clearly a part of that. The city wouldn’t have the
same charm if it wasn’t so overwhelmingly French. But there are clear
underlying tensions. For instance, today we walked past the Quebecois
provincial parliament, which I would have loved to have toured. But the signs
in the courtyard/garden area were exclusively in French, which signalled to me that
entering the parliament would be pointless since I wouldn’t understand
anything. That’s OK, I can handle being excluded; I don’t live here. But if I
was an English-speaking resident of Vancouver who was visiting Quebec to
understand more about a distant province of my own country, I might have felt
just as excluded.
Language
cuts both ways: I suspect the French-speakers in Quebec want to assert the
primacy of their language through (as far as possible) total exclusivity for
fear that to do otherwise would ultimately see a watering down of the French
culture, but it simultaneously sets the province at a distance apart from the
rest of the country. And this is the paradox I can’t reconcile – how can the
two linguistic bases forge nationhood when the majority extends the olive
branch but the minority does not?
I’m also
reminded of something that came up in an economics subject last semester, where
we considered whether there ought to be ‘language laws’ for immigrants. The
conclusion we arrived at was that those who are younger and/or more skilled/educated
will have incentives to learn the local language, whereas those who are older
and perhaps less skilled will have less incentive. I mean, really, this is
nothing more than common sense, and you see it everywhere, but it makes me
wonder why language is an issue in the Quebec election at all – if people move
into the province and can gain employment from learning French, or if businesses
can gain customers from transacting in French, they’ll do it. I don’t
understand how ‘language quotas’ can even be monitored, let alone enforced, so
I can’t see why it’s a live issue in the election at all. But again, these
comments are clearly from an outsider’s perspective: there are probably very
legitimate reasons that make perfect sense to residents, I just can’t see what they
are.
I’ll be chatting
with a mate of mine in Ottawa in a few days, who is a Francophone hailing originally
from Quebec City. I’m sure this’ll come up in conversation, and my perspective of
this issue will probably change again. And that’s a good thing. I’m also
reading a History of Canada as we travel, which is really enlightening. Education
is the way forward.
