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Old 06-05-2018, 07:42 PM
 
Location: Somewhere flat in Mississippi
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Are the mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau bilingual?
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Old 06-06-2018, 07:37 AM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
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Ottawa merged with most of its suburbs to form a megacity in 2001. Since then there have been three mayors: Bob Chiarelli, Larry O'Brien and Jim Watson (the incumbent).


Both Chiarelli and O'Brien were Ottawa natives but did not speak French.


Watson is a Montreal native who mostly grew in the small Quebec town of Lachute but also lived in a number of places outside Quebec. He speaks French but not as well as you might expect for someone of his background.


Prior to the merger some of the mayors of Ottawa were bilingual and some were not. It's roughly half and half.


The current mayor of Gatineau Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin is bilingual. His English is quite fluent even if he has an obvious accent.


His predecessor Marc Bureau had only a shaky command of English. I've looked for videos of him speaking English and could not find any. In news reports from the anglo media in Ottawa he seems to always be clipped in French with subtitles in English.


Bureau's predecessor Yves Ducharme was bilingual though. Like Pedneaud-Jobin is.
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