tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton") (07/28/89)
>>> We are not kids asking permission, we are 'Constitutional prisonners' >>> trying to recover out freedom. While I don't for a minute agree with the above as it is worded, Tim McLellan <TMCLELLA@UALTAVM.BITNET> responded: >Why does your freedom have to fetter western English speaking Canadians >with your language? I don't think the Quebecois have or have had any interest whatsoever in doing this. Where did you get the impression that Quebec wants this? Strange stuff. If you are confusing the big push, *on the part of the rest of Canada*, over the last 20 years to move to bilingualism, you're blaming the wrong party. I am convinced that Quebec is not responsible for that -- that's not what they wanted. They wanted to be the ultimate masters within their own domain. Small scale nationalism, not national bilingualism. >I suspect Quebec francophones would gain more support from WESC if they >didn't shove their language down our throats. French is not a commonly >recognized language "out here". There are communities within our cities, >as well as towns that are predominately French. But that is no reason >for the rest of us to have to put up with French within our share of >the national government, nor within our regular lives. I hope that you are not confusing Quebec with the francophone communities outside Quebec, like that *in Manitoba*, who have pushed for rights *within* their own province. Different story, isn't it. >Bilingual consumer goods are redundant if the consumer speaks just English. I don't recall what the law is on packaging. I believe the idea goes that goods manufactured for resale in Canada must have both official languages. That would mean, for instance, that English goes on such products in Quebec. (can anybody clear this up with certainty?) At any rate, if it is so, they I say "so what" to the argument, in either direction. Redundancy is not oppression, unless it involves bureacracy :-) >If I were to travel to Spain, I wouldn't expect anyone to understand my >English. I would be grateful if I found someone who did though. When >I travel to Quebec, I wouldn't expect anyone to understand my English. >I would be grateful if I found someone who did. > >Please don't have the audacity to think that if you travel to Western >Canada that everyone should understand your French. Be grateful if you >find someone who does. As a English Canadian, speaking of personal experience living in and about Quebec and your own province of Alberta, I think that the audacity is mostly all yours. No quebecois I have ever met presumes to demand *anybody* anywhere else speak french. On the other hand, Albertans I have known and lived with have roughly expressed the sentiment "Speak 'Canadian' Dammit!", about the use of French, where 'Canadian' is intended to be swapped for 'English'. I guess I ran into so much of it out there because I was working in the small towns with coal miners and ranchers and such, but I do think that there's a strange distortion in truth about what the French themselves want. At the same time, there's an intense subjective focus within Quebec right now. I personally think all such subjective distortion is equally contemptible, on the part of English *or* French.