Canada’s officially-bilingual cities

[BIMBAM]

Originally Posted by jamesse

I wonder what happened to the francophones in Louisiana? Possibly, the US government was not as lenient as Canada in allowing language freedom.

That's exactly it, but I'd blame more the Anglo dominated state of Louisiana than the Federal Government. It's the natural result when the state lacks major minority language institutions like Quebec and Ontario have for their healthier linguistic minorities.

[Acajack]

Most of Canada's provinces actually did treat their francophone minorities fairly similarly to how Louisiana treated theirs.


One of my parents went to school in the 50s in a province in the Maritimes where all of the kids were Acadian francophones but the teacher was forbidden from speaking to them in French - under the threat of losing her job or being thrown in jail. Since the teacher was Acadian and French speaking herself she would talk to the kids in French anyway, although they had an "emergency plan" if a ministry of education inspector showed up, and everyone would quickly switch to English.


All of the Canadian provinces except Quebec (obviously) and New Brunswick (to some degree) had what one might call assimilationist policies and practices vis-à-vis their francophone minorities until the 1960s and even into the 1970s in some cases.


In the case of Quebec, a hard attempt at "Louisianization" was never made due to a series of factors.


Initially when the British took over the colony in the 1760s, they might have liked to assimilate the French but were already dealing with a simmering revolt in the 13 colonies to the south. Since they didn't want two rebellions on their hands at the same time (or the French to join the Americans) they passed the Quebec Act in 1774 to allow francophones here to retain their language and religion. This actually angered the people in the 13 colonies even more, and was a factor in the American Revolution, but that's a whole other story...


Throughout the 1800s, there were attempts at assimilating the French speaking population of Quebec by swamping them with immigrants from the British Isles, and there was even a report by Lord Durham around 1840 that talked about it fairly bluntly and proposed some "solutions".


None of these attempts were very successful and often collided with the need to obtain the support of francophones politically given that over half, half or just under half the population of this entity that was to become Canada was made up of francophones. Francophones in Louisiana never carried that much weight demographically or politically.


Subtle efforts to erode the French language in Quebec continued well into the middle part of the 20th century, but again there were political and other reasons why it was rarely in a heavy-handed way.


Starting in the 1970s, the perceived need to make francophones (read = Québécois) feel more welcome across Canada in order to fight separatism led to a richochet effect of greater generosity towards francophone minorities in the anglo provinces. This is when bilingual services and also institutions like French schools enjoyed tremendous growth across the country.

[goldeneyed]

Originally Posted by Acajack

French often starts to fizzle out once the francophone population drops to around 50% (just above or just below).


This is Alexandria, ON which is in Eastern Ontario north of Cornwall and west of Montreal.


Pretty sure the majority here is French-speaking but notice the English-only signage.


https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.30582...7i13312!8i6656

I worked in Alexandria, ON for 3 years, commuting from Montreal. Most of the workers were francophones, easily 2/3, but everything was done in English. Almost everything in town had english only signage.

[jamesse]

Once I met an anglophone guy from NB and he told me that at school, there was a map of NB on the wall and they erased the francophone portion. lol

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

Can you find English-language services in Quebec City?

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In terms of the population, Gatineau is the most bilingual large city in Canada.


About 60% of the population can speak English and French, about a third speaks only French and perhaps 5% speaks only English (the latter being mostly "border jumpers" from

Where do these percentages come from?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Mouldy Old Schmo

Where do these percentages come from?

The Canadian census. There is a question on knowledge of languages - as in which languages other than your own do you know well enough to sustain a conversation.