Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

The average unilingual Anglo would feel more at home anywhere in Arkansas than in a fully francophone area of rural Quebec. Literally nothing feels LESS like home than having everyone speak, and all written stuff written, in a language you don't understand.

What's the more culturally similar place to London, Paris or English-speaking Monrovia, Liberia?

More seriously I'd say that this test of how somebody would do if they parachuted in is different from another question we could ask about long-term compatibility in a place you might move to, if you were willing to adapt. As one example, if you're gay, you're not going to be very happy in parts of the US. There are many reasons I've heard why Canadians don't want to settle down much in a lot of the US, and a lot of them seem to have to do with values and social structure. I think you'd also find that more English-speaking Canadians would be more drawn to Quebec and living in French if it offered opportunities like the big American cities. There is a lot of immigration around the world, largely across language barriers.

I don't have strong feelings about how language should be measured compared to other cultural factors and it's hard to even separate them, but I think a lot of cultural aspects (some of the most important ones) are forgotten most of the time, and the "Canadians can move to the US with little to no friction" idea is overrated.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by someone123

What's the more culturally similar place to London, Paris or English-speaking Monrovia, Liberia?

More seriously I'd say that this test of how somebody would do if they parachuted in is different from another question we could ask about long-term compatibility in a place you might move to, if you were willing to adapt. As one example, if you're gay, you're not going to be very happy in parts of the US. There are many reasons I've heard why Canadians don't want to settle down much in a lot of the US, and a lot of them seem to have to do with values and social structure. I think you'd also find that more English-speaking Canadians would be more drawn to Quebec and living in French if it offered opportunities like the big American cities. There is a lot of immigration around the world, largely across language barriers.

I don't have strong feelings about how language should be measured compared to other cultural factors and it's hard to even separate them, but I think a lot of cultural aspects (some of the most important ones) are forgotten most of the time, and the "Canadians can move to the US with little to no friction" idea is overrated.

I imagine I would have an easier time adjusting to life in England / UK than in the American South. I think the values in the U.K. might be more similar to ours, and the language / dialect variation would be at least about the same.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Architype

I imagine I would have an easier time adjusting to life in England / UK than in the American South. I think the values in the U.K. might be more similar to ours, and the language / dialect variation would be at least about the same.

A Canadian in England for the first time might well experience culture shock (I remember that I did). In the USA, not so much - you notice differences, but you understand where it's coming from.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

More or less. Someone from downtown St. Petersburg would more easily blend in / adapt in rural Siberia than in downtown Stockholm, and someone from Tokyo would more easily blend in /adapt in a remote Japanese fishing village than in Seoul, and it would be 100% due to linguistic considerations.

I recall when reading some American tourist guide about Europe and was surprised that it said Britain was "often thought of as less exotic", and I realized that up to that point it had always seemed obvious that France was the not-exotic European country, I had just never stopped to consider why.

A place operating in a foreign language vs a place operating in your language, that's not just a minor factor. It makes a HUGE difference.

The average unilingual Anglo would feel more at home anywhere in Arkansas than in a fully francophone area of rural Quebec. Literally nothing feels LESS like home than having everyone speak, and all written stuff written, in a language you don't understand.

Montreal is often referred to as an example that Anglo-Canadians can easily "do" Quebec and that therefore it's not really that different. But this is entirely due to the quirk of having a more or less self-contained anglo-ish enclave and community in Montreal.

In the absence of that (which is the case for 99% of the rest of Quebec) this opportunity drops off the map. Well, it exists for Gatineau too to some degree, though again this is largely due to the quirk of people being able to access a whole slew of jobs and services right across the river in Ottawa.

Anyway, on SSP we tend to fetishize urbanity to the point of believing that "urbanity" is our "nation" and that a big city denizen will be plug and play in any big city in the world.

That's not really true by any measure.

Nations are generally made up of both big cities and other life milieus. Even if city slickers around the world may have a number of things in common, being an "urbanite" is not a national identity.

[kool maudit]

Being an Anglo in Montreal now is not really different from being one in Berlin or Mexico City. There is a slight carve-out for the lives that surround the two English universities and perhaps the Gazette. In the 1950s and '60s, conversely, it was a place to which a working man might reasonably be expected to be transferred from Winnipeg or Halifax (I think it was SSP's Andy6 who phrased it like that).

I lived there 1995-2012, so entirely within that longer transition.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

To say nothing or the fact that it discounts francophones from across the country who reside outside Quebec. Half my francophone family is from Ontario. I have francophone friends with roots in Saskatchewan. Not to mention liojacks’ ancestors in New Brunswick.

The silliness of the "liojack" portmanteau aside, we both account for that in our posts.

The reality is still that depending on one's tolerance for driving, between two thirds and three quarters of French-speaking Canadians can take in an evening Montreal Canadiens game and drive home to sleep in their own beds that night.

And 95% of these people are residents of Quebec.

[kool maudit]

Being an Anglo in Scandinavia, first Copenhagen and now Stockholm, is interestingly about as much of a displacement is being one in Montreal, but the tensions are arranged differently.

There is absolutely zero official recognizance here, of course, as this was never part of the Anglosphere. There is an incredibly high amount of English usage, though, and no cultural friction.

It's probably very marginally 'lighter' to be an Anglo here vs. Greater Montreal, actually.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

t (Montreal) was a place to which a working man might reasonably be expected to be transferred from Winnipeg or Halifax (I think it was SSP's Andy6 who phrased it like that).

This is an important point. Montreal has ceased to be a place where an anglophone from the ROC might be transferred to during his work career. Montreal has become an island figuratively as well as literally.

Moncton is entirely different. In my neighbourhood, we often get people from Ontario or the west moving in for five years or so as they wend their way up the corporate ladder.

I wonder how this disconnect between Montreal and the ROC ends up affecting the corporate structure of larger Canadian companies???

[kool maudit]

The effect is that Montreal is in another country. The border is not as fraught as actually doing the paperwork might make it, it's like Denmark-Sweden, and that's the compromise. From an EU perspective at least, though... yeah, those are different countries.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Being an Anglo in Montreal now is not really different from being one in Berlin or Mexico City. There is a slight carve-out for the lives that surround the two English universities and perhaps the Gazette. In the 1950s and '60s, conversely, it was a place to which a working man might reasonably be expected to be transferred from Winnipeg or Halifax (I think it was SSP's Andy6 who phrased it like that).

I lived there 1995-2012, so entirely within that longer transition.

I think than even in 2022 there is an illusion or a vision among anglos that things are still or should be like what you and Andy are describing, and of course this leads to friction points with some anglophones when it doesn't deliver on that, and with francophones who react to anglophones who have that expectation and behave accordingly.

But just as an example I've worked for some major Canadian corporations in the past and my impression is the vast majority basically run things with Quebec as a self-contained entity with very little HR cross-pollination with the "ROC" (sorry, guys).

Even in the places I knew there was very little cross-pollination between a company's locations in Ottawa and the Hull-Gatineau area even if it was the same metro.

The only exceptions might be if someone working in the ROC has a high degree of bilingualism (ie Pierre Dupont from Timmins) and is looking for a challenge in Quebec, or maybe he's a rising star in Toronto and the Quebec operations are sagging so they'll send him there to shore things up. Or maybe the bilingual Jean-Claude Surprenant from Rimouski who works out of your Montreal office is a high-flyer and is interested in a stint at the head office in Toronto. But these are exceptions these days, and more often than not there is a well-paid Senior VP job in Montreal that runs the entire Quebec operation for you.

[kool maudit]

It is not that different (on the above) from Stockholm-Copenhagen. That's a lot different from Belgrade-Zagreb or even Belgrade-Pristina, which were arguably on the table, at least rhetorically, when we last came close to actually having it out. But at least from the extremely diluted sense in which borders exist within 1) the Nordics and 2) the EU... there's a border there now.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Being an Anglo in Scandinavia, first Copenhagen and now Stockholm, is interestingly about as much of a displacement is being one in Montreal, but the tensions are arranged differently.

There is absolutely zero official recognizance here, of course, as this was never part of the Anglosphere. There is an incredibly high amount of English usage, though, and no cultural friction.

It's probably very marginally 'lighter' to be an Anglo here vs. Greater Montreal, actually.

I suppose that Montreal for an anglo does offer more of a true community and also being part of a larger mainly anglophone country and also the continent it's on also helps to "pad the nest" but I suppose in the Nordics compared to Montreal there isn't a subtle feeling (sometimes self-generated, sometimes not) that one is an interloper or even a ''threat'' to the nation.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I lived there 1995-2012, so entirely within that longer transition.

Personally speaking, I loved the city and unlike many Montreal Anglos I knew, I never really thought it was tenable for it to find a line between what it is now and, say, New Orleans. Despite the city it might have been if it had continued as the "Canadian metropolis", it never seemed worth the decapitation of the French fact in North America; in a sense we might as well still speak of the Writers' Building in Calcutta.

That said, and though I managed to find my way by sticking in close proximity to a few old institutions and circles, I never really squared the circle between the old, brick-and-iron, almost pre-Canadian Montreal of my visual affections and the contemporary Quebecois city it is. I liked the tension, but I never bridged it, even at peak bilingualism.

And when I look back, all things considered, I probably just wanted, and should have moved to, New York.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I suppose that Montreal for an anglo does offer more of a true community and also being part of a larger mainly anglophone country and also the continent it's on also helps to "pad the nest" but I suppose in the Nordics compared to Montreal there isn't a subtle feeling (sometimes self-generated, sometimes not) that one is an interloper or even a ''threat'' to the nation.

Exactly

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

But just as an example I've worked for some major Canadian corporations in the past and my impression is the vast majority basically run things with Quebec as a self-contained entity with very little HR cross-pollination with the "ROC"

Correct, although I think this is detrimental to Montreal. The Montreal office will handle French-language marketing and sales, but any high value-added technical work that is not language-dependent will be done out of Toronto. This is especially true of foreign multinationals. Canada as a $1.7T economy with 38 million people warrants a little bit more than a guy and his sales team, but Quebec with a $390B economy does not.

IMO, Montreal can’t afford to be less bilingual and Anglo-accommodating than it is right now. It doesn’t seem conceivable to me that 9 million French speakers can support a global metro of 4.5 million people. The little European countries that do support a global city concede just as much ground to English, maybe more.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The little European countries that do support a global city concede just as much ground to English, maybe more.

And they're not French. French is a very specific thing that Swedish isn't. Swedish people will easily volunteer the idea that Swedish is a very small, marginal language that is really just one of their particularities, like pickled herring, and so of course they expect to have to learn English if they want to really do anything.

I have heard this dozens of times, maybe over 100 times.

This does not, cannot, never will happen with French. If you have any affection at all for that language and its peoples, you have to accept this.

Not all animals will breed in captivity.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Correct, although I think this is detrimental to Montreal. The Montreal office will handle French-language marketing and sales, but any high value-added technical work that is not language-dependent will be done out of Toronto. This is especially true of foreign multinationals. Canada as a $1.7T economy with 38 million people warrants a little bit more than a guy and his sales team, but Quebec with a $390B economy does not.

.

It's true of ROC-owned or controlled companies and those foreign multinationals that choose Toronto for their Canadian HQ. Hence the importance of building up one's own homegrown corporate base.

For Quebec-based companies, the high-value head office and "main operations" stuff generally happens in Montreal and environs.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

It doesn’t seem conceivable to me that 9 million French speakers can support a global metro of 4.5 million people.

They probably can't, and New Orleans still isn't off the table, historically. The best hope, strangely, is a future where the present-day US and Canada are broken into smaller pieces, and where Spanish has a much greater official foothold.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

And they're not French. French is a very specific thing that Swedish isn't. Swedish people will easily volunteer the idea that Swedish is a very small, marginal language that is really just one of their particularities, like pickled herring, and so of course they expect to have to learn English if they want to really do anything.

I have heard this dozens of times, maybe over 100 times.

This does not, cannot, never will happen with French. If you have any affection at all for that language and its peoples, you have to accept this.

Not all animals will breed in captivity.

Or even basic knowledge of it. One doesn't even have to be sentimental in order to observe this.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

They probably can't

Although Stockholm, at 2.5 million, seems eminently sustainable within Sweden, and really offers everything that Montreal does, in its own way.

It even has a higher GDP despite the far smaller population.