Quebec City, and some comments on the bilingualist project.

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.