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Comment by cmer | Hacker News Reader

There already is a recurring pattern. Not exactly like this situation, but a pattern of discriminating against anything that is not French. It's getting completely out of hands. Soon, "non historic anglos" (ie immigrants) won't be allowed to get their hydro bill, correspondence from the government or any service in English.

We moved out of Quebec mostly for the politics 5 years ago and I'm so glad I did. We're never going back.

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I think it's perfectly normal for people in a small enclave nestled in the heart of the giant Anglo-saxon hegemon to feel insecure about the long-term survival of their unique language and culture and want to take extra steps to preserve it. I'm completely sympathetic with them refusing to provide services in a foreign language when that language is a serious threat to their existence as a cultural group.

Look what happened to French in Louisiana, or Irish in Ireland, or Native American languages across the continent. Quebecers don't want that to happen to them, and I can't blame them.

By the way, always remember that Quebecers never chose to become part of Canada or any English-speaking society; they were conquered by military force.

Most places were conquered by military force, multiple times for that matter, that's not what makes Quebec unique or a terribly interesting piece of history.

In fact, as places that explicitly chose to be part of a country, Quebec ranks pretty highly, since they've had multiple referendum's about leaving Canada.

What was the referendum result though? 49.4% for statu quo vs. 50.6% for independence? That's not really what I'd call a plebiscite for being part of Canada.

Something like that... and since the referendums happened when Quebec was most inclined to separate (in recent memory) that's really a good sign that > 50% of Quebec would prefer not to.

Are you really thinking that half the province against each other is a good sign?

Please.

It's much less than half now, that was at the ultimate peak - was the point he was making.

Like I said, support for that movement is way less than half now, the first result I found from a quick search [0] suggests 18% as of 2015.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-angus-reid-ca...

I think a majority vote choosing to stay is a hell of a lot better than "forced to stay by the military"... which is what you'd get from the post I originally replied to. And it's not "against eachother" so much as "politely thinking that we'd be better of splitting the country in two" for most of them.

I misread the contextual OP, he wasn't supporting the francophones.

> They were conquered by military force.

This will no doubt come across poorly, but it's important to keep in mind when it happened. Quebec was allowed to keep their language, despite being conquered.

The current government is downright hostile towards Anglophones and immigrants.

And proceeded to get told by the english landowners to "Speak White" when we'd speak our native french tongue.

We're just about as white as they come. "Speak White" means "Speak the english of your captors."

There is an actual poem from about the time of the Quiet Revolution named "Speak White" which would explain this really well, here's (ironically) an English translation of it :

https://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=738881

In Quebec City they are loudly proud of how many Anglos they have driven away. They pretty much purged the city of anything non-French in the two last decades and are displaying it as a success story.

For me, displacing large communities based on their mother tongue is nothing to be proud of. Be it either way.

Citation needed? I'll concede that I haven't lived there so I could be wrong, but I've been to Quebec city twice, including once with people who spoke no French at all, and never felt any hostility. Again, I'm not disputing that it could be different for the local Anglo minority, but I'd need to see some sources before I believe that you're not exaggerating.

There’s a difference between a tourist and a local. As a tourist you bring dollars. But try getting any government service in English and you’ll get eye rolls and rude behaviour. Even cops in Montreal will not speak English generally.

How many governments around the world provide services in a foreign language?

That's just a plain lie.

Sure, as for literally any other subject, you may find people with extreme views on the topic, but that's what they are: extreme. That doesn't make it the general consensus.

Please stop spreading lies like this.

It's not a lie at all.

Yes it is. The point is _not_ about driving Anglos (or whatever culture) away, but about being proud of being able to communicate in French. As a matter of fact, exactly the same thing English speakers ask to literally the rest of the world.

Edit: and, of course, this does not apply to tourists or visitors. This point is about people who want to live in Quebec.

It was an exhibition on the top floor of the tallest building in the city. It was comparing Montreal to Quebec City trying to draw more people and business to Quebec City. One of the "selling" points was a statistic saying that:

1. Montreal has about 50/50 French/English split whereas in Quebec City it's something like 98/2 French/English. Yes, that was presented as an advantage.

2. There was a graph showing how the city is becoming more and more French-speaking over time. Again, proudly presenting that fact as a selling point.

I never said they are openly hostile but by hindering any English business and opressive language laws they drove whole communities of English speakers away. That's a fact.

Quebecers never chose to become part of Canada or any English-speaking society; they were conquered by military force.

You could say the same thing for the indigenous people of Quebec. Why is there no protection for their languages? For example, the Malecite–Passamaquoddy language may have as few as 600 native speakers remaining [1]. This is a much more urgent situation than French, which has 76.8 million native speakers worldwide.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malecite-Passamaquoddy_languag...

Yes you could say the same thing about them, and I would be completely sympathetic to indigenous people in Quebec promoting the use of their own languages in their own territories, and discouraging the use of French. Unfortunately some of the groups have so few members (like the 600 you point out) that it would be difficult for them to be viable as a modern civilization using only their native language, but if they are somehow able to do so, that's great and I hope they succeed.

I explicitly mentioned in my comment that the destruction of indigenous cultures throughout the Americas was a regrettable thing, which is why Quebecers would like to avoid it happening to themselves.

I'm not blindly arguing here that French is the greatest language ever and nationalist Quebecers are correct on all political matters. I think French people were colonialists and their treatment of Native Americans in Quebec was terrible. But that doesn't change that now, however unsavory the circumstances of its birth, the Quebec culture doesn't deserve to be wiped out.

I don’t think we even need to entertain discussion of the idea that any culture should be wiped out. That’s a non-starter. The distinction here is one of political power.

Francophone Quebecers have enough political power to enforce and expand their language and culture laws in order to “defend” their culture. But never lose sight of the fact that this comes at the expense of more than just anglophone residents. This affects all other cultures within Quebec. And that’s why you see it take the form of more than just language, it includes attacks on minority religious symbols and clothing as well.

I'm sorry to hear you've been driven out by the politics (god knows after 26 years I'm quite exhausted as well). I don't know your story, and you might have been on a sharper end of the stick policy-wise than myself, but I do feel the need to make provincial politics the last thing to consider when contemplating a move if I am able to. I fear that having anglophones flee the province because of these policies are just add fuel to the injustice. I rather be a vocal and present reminder to my neighbors and coworkers that Quebec is made-up of more than the ruling class.

The attitude you display in this post suggests that it's a good thing for everyone that you moved. Quebecers are actually very tolerant of Anglophones and while it is difficult to adapt to using a new language it is not impossible and is actually fun in many ways.

French survives in a sea of anglophone hegemony only because of such language laws.

>>Quebecers are actually very tolerant of Anglophones

I can vouch for that - if you make any attempt at all to speak the most basic French they love you for making the attempt.

Try wearing a turban.

Well, it depends. If you want a dispense to wear a hard hat of a construction site because of your turban then yes, this may come as a problem: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-court-of-appe...

If you were in Québec you couldn't miss seeing all the anti-Singh (NDP leader who happens to be Sikh) comments, many referring to his turban.

(It is now illegal in QC to be a public servant and wear e.g. a turban, yarmulke, crucifix, etc. Public buildings are still adorned with crucifexes and saint's names for reasons of 'cultural respect'.)

This is the distillation of the delusional Québec separatist view.

It kills innovation and economic development, and leads to the rampant religious discrimination and xenophobia now seen in the province.

I mean you wouldn't have this reaction if you moved to France.

Quebec's official language is French - regardless of its status within the rest of Canada. Why would you move it immigrate to Quebec if you are not willing to learn French?

If you like Canada but not French, go to Vancouver or Toronto

Exactly. Ce n'est pas facile à apprendre mais c'est possible.

Anglophones built Quebec alongside Francophones.

We've as much right to this province as francophones.

Also, here's a hot-tip: telling people they don't belong somewhere and that they should go live elsewhere is usually a really great heuristic of when you're extremely wrong.

Well, the post you're replying to puts things in a way I'm not comfortable with. But inside it is something very correct:

French is the official language of Québec. If you want to live there and not do business with people in French, that is your problem.

I wouldn't say you don't belong there. By all means belong there. But the official language is French today, regardless of who built the province. If you want the province's official languages to be English and French, well, democracy is there to make that possible, even if it's unlikely at the moment.

You have a right to live in Québec. But for the moment, not a right to demand that businesses or government agencies communicate with you in English.

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As for me, I lve in Ontario. And FWIW, I believe very deeply that our society should beend over backwards to do business with people in a language they understand. So if someone is in trouble with the law, I am happy to have my tax dollars go to providing them with a translator. I think government web sites should have all sorts of translations available. I believe in the melting pot.

But...

All I can do is advocate for it and vote for it. If a different province votes for something else... I respect that.

I feel that official languages is in a very different bucket than laws about what people can wear in public.

As someone living in EU, there is a practical limit to this. Languages NEEDS should be satisfied: For example, a translator should be provided to someone not speaking common languages (for the area) trying to get medical care.

But language WANTS might not be economically viable. For example in Scandinavia, Sami people (estimated population <100k) demanded all government interaction (documents, services, etc) to be translated in all their dialects (there are 11+ dialects, which are different in writing). Amount of work to be done to support that request would be astonishing.

Ironically the same true for French. There are 20+ very different dialects, is Quebec ready to work in all of them on government level? Or are we talking about le français standard?

So there is some practical limits to this, and so far EU is handling it's ok-ish. EU-wide systems are available in all official languages of all members, and minority languages are embraced when practical.

Where are you coming up with 20 different dialects of French? Are you talking about the various French-based creole languages, which are totally separate languages (e.g., someone from France has essentially no hope of understanding a native Hatian Creole speaker). If that's what you mean it's a bit silly to call them "dialects" instead of "separate languages" because Haitian Creole and French are as different as English and French.

Or are you talking about the various regional languages/dialects/"patois" in France? If so, sure, many could be called "dialects of French" but they aren't spoken at all outside of France so it isn't really relevant to Quebec.

I'm referring to a fact that before economical needs created unified time / measurement system / language, each region had their own language-dialect. For example Gallo-Romance languages and so on [0].

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France

Yes, you're right. And those dialects still exist; I know people (born before WWII in semi-rural areas) whose first language was something so different from the standard that it'd have been very difficult for someone from Paris to understand.

But as far as I know, none of them are spoken in Quebec...

Saying anglophones built Quebec alongside the francophones sounds a bit like French people saying they built Algeria or Vietnam as a justification for not granting it independence.

The reality is that the anglophones built Quebec because they were colonizing it, and without them the francophones would have "built Quebec" just as well.

The French started earnestly colonizing Quebec less than 100 years before the British conquest so that analogy does not seem apt at all...

What matters is that the inhabitants when Britain invaded were almost all French, and French speaking. It doesn't matter much if their parents had been there for a long time already or not, it was their home and they had founded it.

Both countries invaded, both English and French speaking people built it into what it is today. Arguing about which imperialist culture was there first (especially when the difference is so small historically) to justify attempts to exclude one of those cultures is VERY different than arguing that imperialized regions have a right to independence. There is a vast difference between spreading discrimination/hate and advocating self-determination.

In general, I am in favor of the rights of regions to self determination as it is generally better when people are ruled by a government they consent to.

I support the right of Hong Kong, Catalonia, Quebec, Scottland and others to succeed if the majority of their inhabitants have a strong and consistent desire to leave.

I do not support discriminatory policies or attitudes that are intended to drive certain groups of people away.

What's funny that you think that about me is that I'm an anglophone that absolutely HATED my mandatory French classes in Vancouver high school.

I also remember being a kid being ANGRY at Quebec for daring to want to separate, and thought we should just "kick them out, if they want their own country so badly."

I've come to appreciate Quebec as a unique and meaningfully distinct part of Canada. I do not think it weakens my Canadian identity to have one part of the country have a fiercely proud and unique perspective on feeling equally Quebecois and Canadian at the same time (or some balance of the two). Just because I don't have a similar sense of identity about my province, doesn't mean others can't.

I do think it's a bit unfair that the Federal Government has to treat English and French equally while Quebec itself does not, however I've also learned ago that fair actions and intentions do not always lead to fair outcomes. If Quebec did not fiercely fight to protect it's French-speaking status, it would have died a long time ago and got swallowed up from both sides by the English side of Canada. And that would have been a shame.

Finally, I'm an immigrant. And as such, I am deeply welcoming to other immigrants to Canada. But I also am conscious of the fact that refugees notwithstanding, immigrants have a choice in which part of the country they immigrate to. And given that, I don't think that it's unreasonable to build expectations for them that if they move to Quebec they will need to study and master French if they want to integrate. This should not be any more of a shock or burden than expecting Belgian immigrants to understand that there is a French half and a Flemish/Dutch half, and they are quite different.

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