My rant of the day is about Quebec and I don’t know where to start. I never understood the language laws in Quebec and I still don’t. I understand that the Quebec french speaking population wanted to preserve their language and their culture but I don’t understand (and never understood) why the rest of the country was forced to be bilingual. I’m not a french hater or anything of the sort but Canada is huge and the majority of the people who live in the province of British Columbia are never going to be as far east as Quebec so what’s the point of forced bilingualism.
The second part of this rant hits more home to me. All throughout my thirty-odd years I’ve hear about countless incidents when some Quebecers wanted French spoken only. Now in Quebec they law requires that signs be in French. The clothing store Old Navy for instance was asked to change their name to ’La Vieille Rivière’. I don’t know if Old Navy dropped their English name for the French, or what ended up happening. Their are other instances of a woman who threatened to call the language police on the owner of a petstore because the parrot she bought spoke English only. One last example of and Quebec-Indian restaraunt owner being warned by authorities that coasters at his bar were breaking the law because they advertised a British beer.
Quebec sounds like it is being run under a language and cultural dictatorship. Now not all Quebecers feel this way, it seems to be an even split. Half of their province’s population want to separate from Canada and half want to remain. I understand their need for preservation of culture but why is the rest of Canada not allowed to ever do the same as Quebec. Heaven forbid if a new immigrant came to Ontario and chose to go to a French streamed school and not be allowed to. Preserve your language and your culture but don’t squash the English and their rights as a Canadian in Canada a predominantly English speaking country. I think Engllish Canada would have alot more sympathy to the French-Canadian language dilemma if the double-standards weren’t a part of the equation.
Thanks to www.cbc.ca for some of the stories used in this post.
