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» babble   » from far and wide   » manitoba, ontario, quebec   » "Old hometown has new French flavour"

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Author Topic: "Old hometown has new French flavour"
toddsschneider
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6280

posted 24 July 2008 09:14 AM      Profile for toddsschneider     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Anglos discover times have changed in the regions, too"

http://tinyurl.com/58rg5d

quote:
Anglophones who grew up in small towns in Quebec and are thinking of moving back home after decades of living and working in Montreal inevitably must come to grips with the fact that home is a lot more French than it used to be.

Mary Ruth Ott knew that intellectually before she and her husband, William, left Montreal in 2001 to retire in her native Lachute. But they've experienced it more personally since then.

Not in a bad way, she says, but in the simple things. Like dealing with a plumber. In Montreal, Ott says, you can generally count on the plumber being able to speak some English, even if you can't speak any French. Not in Lachute, though. Not anymore ...



From: Montreal, Canada | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
toddsschneider
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6280

posted 05 October 2008 09:45 AM      Profile for toddsschneider     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Changes are needed to improve life for anglos"

http://tinyurl.com/4th7ze

quote:
... First, the level of French young anglos can reach in the school system is not high enough. As a community, Quebec anglos pride themselves - correctly, we judge - on being more bilingual than previous generations. But students who come out of high school genuinely able to work in French without difficulty tend to be those with one francophone parent, the consultations suggested. That conclusion should be a wake-up call for English school boards (and English CEGEPs) ...

Then there is the familiar problem of bias in hiring. This is most blatant in the public sector, where anglos are still, after all this time, grossly under-represented in the Montreal municipal, the provincial. and the federal civil service and related organizations. Fixing this would be controversial, and nobody at any level has wanted to tackle this problem in a serious way. The result, as the QCGN notes, is that a "major disadvantage in the Quebec job market - being English-speaking with some degree of French fluency - is transformed into a major advantage upon leaving the province." It's not hard to see where that problem leads.

Another issue identified, outside metro Montreal perhaps more than inside, is a sense of "feeling isolated, not belonging, or being disconnected." Here the QCGN itself has a running start at being the infrastructure of the community. But when it comes to acceptance in the francophone society, we're afraid it will take a lot more emphasis on reasonable accommodation before anglos feel more at home ...



From: Montreal, Canada | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged

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