Anglophones in Quebec - how do you get by?

In My Humble Opinion
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I’ve always been fascinated by Quebec’s special status in Canada. From what IU know, up until the 1970s, Montreal was the major financial and cultural center of Canada, but it was overtaken by Toronto after language laws giving French favored status in Quebec were adopted.

I’ve seen old photographs of Montreal, where almost all business and vehicle signs were in English or bi-lingual. I assume at one time, there was a sizeable English-speaking population in Quebec.

Is there still a sizeable Anglophone presence in Quebec? Where are they? How do they get by, with French being the official language? What about day-to-day life, such as newspapers, TV and radio stations, movies, dating and so on? Do you feel like a stranger in your own hometown?

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Yes, there is still a sizeable anglophone population in Quebec. They “get by” in the francophone regions by speaking in French (unless they’re in Montreal or a very tourist-oriented area).

Think of it this way – for an anglophone who moves into a primarily francophone area, it would be no different than an immigrant from a non-English speaking country arriving in the U.S. and learning a new language (Enlgish) in order to get by.

In Canada, the education system is such that everyone gets at least the very basics of both official languages. In more biligual towns like Ottawa and Montreal most people can speak enough of both French and English to manage in day-to-day business and such (you kind of have to know both if you’re conducting business).

Plenty of us can speak French or English interchangeably. An anglophone living in the heart of French-speaking Quebec would become bilingual pretty quickly out of necessity.

Francophone friends of mine who live in Quebec City say that they rarely hear English, and occasionally their English gets rusty because they never need to use it. Though if they had to they could.

Newspapers and TV shows you can get in both languages – if you’re in a small enough town though it might be tougher to find a good publication in your language of choice.

Now what I find fascinating is how the Swiss deal with their languages. Wow. Cool.

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Re: Newspapers

Just to clarify – you still often have access to the major or national newspapers that are in English. Otherwise the local papers are in French.

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I just spent 2 weeks in Quebec. As an English speaker, I had very little problems getting along. There were, IIRC, only 2 people in the entire 2 week period who honestly didn’t speak enough English that it was semi difficult. Luckily, hubby and I remembered enough of our high school french that it was not a problem.

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McGill University is in Montreal, and English is still the language of instruction there, right? So there, at least, Anglophones must be getting by fine.

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It’s been years since I’ve been there but I remember some town on the Gaspé peninsula where I would not have been able to get by without my (limited) French. I’m sure in the more rural areas there are other places like that. But Montreal, Quebec City and the areas surrounding both didn’t pose any real problem.

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I managed by virtue of clinging to Elenfair and having her talk to everyone for me.

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Right you are, Spectre – my best friend’s wife did her undergrad at McGill (her dad’s on the faculty), and neither is especially fluent in French.

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I get by just fine, but then again, I’m fluently bilingual, and was before I moved here. My fiancé Jeremy, however, moved here last year from Florida, and doesn’t speak French. We live in a very anglophone part of town (definitely west of St-Laurent, close to Westmount), so he has no problems at the video store, grocery store, pharmacy, and so on.

What’s annoying is when a sales clerk, even upon realizing a customer doesn’t speak any French, pretends to not know English. There’s a certain store in the Village where this has happened to Jer. Places there that do a lot of tourist business (bars, restaurants, certain shops) know better and have (willingly) bilingual clerks. However, this place deals mostly with locals, and so they don’t have the same kind of tourist-friendly outlook.

There is definitely more English on both indoor and outdoor commercial signs than there was when I moved here in 1992. The “language police” were known to go around with rulers, measuring the English on signs to make sure it was exactly half the size of the French, but if this is still going on as much as it was in the 90s, it certainly isn’t being reported.

I think that overall, people have calmed down about the language issue. You’ll still come across a lot of rabid separatists, but I really don’t get the negative feeling I used to get up to and following the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. We elected a federalist provincial government earlier this year, if that says anything at all.

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I’m an Anglophone living in Montreal. I’ve lived here most of my life and have few problems. I speak French better than the average British Columbian but I am far from fluent.

We’ve got English t.v. channels, radio stations,bookstores,local newspapers, movie theatres etc. so no problems there. As you get further away from the areas with a sizable Anglo population it gets harder to find these things.

When it comes to employment you pretty much have to be able to speak French for the majority of jobs. It can be difficult for a unilingual anglo to “get by” in the job market (not so difficult to do so if your a unilingual Francophone).

Every now and then I get bad treatment for being an anglo but it’s fairly rare. I get really annoyed with this and vow to move back to Vancouver but I usually calm down within an hour. Sometimes I speak English the clerk will answer in French and we converse this way with no problems. This doesn’t bother me at all. In fact I think it’s kind of cool.

Sometimes i DO feel like a stranger in my own hometown but it’s mainly because I’m mad at myself for not speaking the official language better not because of the way others treat me.

BTW Eats_Crayons… The Gazette (The English Language. Daily.) is a local English newspaper.

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Alex – Oh I know there are local papers available in English in Montreal where the French papers often have an English affiliate (like Voir and Hour) but if you are in a more rural area, the local papers tend to reflect local demographics.

In small town Quebec you might only have the Gazette as a choice or one of the national papers like the Globe and Mail, even though it’s not “local” to your small town.

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Another thing that hasn’t been pointed out explicitly is that anglophones tend to cluster in particular sections of Montreal. My aunt lives in Montreal, and she and almost all of her neighbors are anglophones, as are the clerks in the nearby stores. As long as she doesn’t leave the neighborhood almost everyone she meets is an anglophone.

In some ways she’s a relic. She never learned French at all, and is now retired and over 70 years old, so I’m sure she never WILL learn French. (Actually, even English is her second language, and it was hard enough for her to learn that.) She stays in Montreal because its her home.

Ed

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underlining mine

The opposite occurs also. The other main alt paper, Mirror (it used to carry Cecil’s column), launched a French affiliate Ici.

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There are three English universities in Quebec. Two of them (McGill and Concordia) are in Montreal, and the third, Bishop’s University, is in Lennoxville, just outside of Sherbrooke.

Sherbrooke is one of the largest towns in the province after Montreal, Quebec and Laval (though I dont know exactly where its ranked). It is in the heart of the “Eastern Townships”, which has a very large anglophone population compared to the rest of the province (excluding Montreal). There are some towns, such as Lennoxville, which are actually MORE english than french, though oddly enough this little town of a couple thousand people has become the heart of the english community. I suppose this is due to the presence of Bishop’s, the Bishop’s College School (an english language private high school), Alexander Galt Regional High School (a large regional school), Champlain College (one of the 7 english Cegeps in the province) and Lennoxville Elementary School (a public english-language school). The Record is the local english newspaper, though most people read the Montreal Gazette for provincial news.

As I said, the area has quite a few anglophones - it was originally settled by the Loyalists, I think. The farmland in the area is separated into the traditional squares of an English township, whereas other regions of the province use the long rang-style divisions. One reason why anglos are called “têtes carées”(square heads) by francophones.

English school boards have slightly different rules regarding learning french than french school boards have about english. French students in french schools start taking english classes in grade 4, through to the end of high school (and possibly Cegep). English students in english schools have french classes starting in grade one, and in some cases kindergarten. I suppose it is generally recognised that the “average” anglophone will speak more french than the “average” francophone, and so it is taught more.

There was something else I wanted to mention, but I forget what, and I’m too sleepy to be bothered right now. :slight_smile:
Oh, and yes, I went to LES, AGRHS and Champlain College, and most of my friends and family went to Bishop’s (though I know few people who went to BCS). And I’m bilingual - mother is french, dad is english.

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I grew up as an anglophone in Arvida by speaking French outside of my home and school. Well, I guess that anglophone part is debateable. I didn’t speak either language till I was 5-but I became somewhat more proficient in English after transferring into an English school at the age of 6 or 7.

When I went to undergrad at McGill I spoke straight-up English at school and in Montreal, unless I was deliberately out to de-rustify my French.

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Anglo in Montreal here. I’ve never really felt anything but completely at home in my city.

French was a major fixture of my schooling from kindergarten up till university, I’m not bilingual but I know enough to get by. I don’t think there are many people who live here who don’t know enough French to have, at least, a conversation even though it may be awkward. And vice versa, actually.

We get American TV stations, Ontario TV stations, and we have a few of our own. We have daily and monthly papers, lots of theatre, almost all the movies shown downtown are in English (that I know of, anyway).

Dating… that’s an interesting question. Truth is, I tend to be friends with anglophones. I meet friends at school (I went to an English high school, English CEGEP (the biggest one in the province, in fact, English or French) and I currently attend an English university, and anyone else I meet is an extension of the friends I already know.

It feels so, so, SO weird to see signs in English when I go to the US or Ontario or anything. It just looks wrong.

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This is an important point, and it’s also true outside of Montreal.

If you go north of Montreal, in the Laurentians, you’ll find that there are fairly large numbers of anglophones but they tend to live in “pockets”. St-Adèle and St-Sauveur might be very French, but head to Morin Heights or Mille-Iles and you’ll find a lot more anglos.

Also, the English store signs shouldn’t be used as an indicator of the actual English-speaking population. The main factors for their wide presence were economic and political. In the 50s, there was a 40% average income gap between Quebecers of French and British ancestry. It’s true that the anglophone population of Quebec has somewhat dwindled, but the percentage of French speakers has remained the same. From here:

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<hijack>
That reminds me, is Ici still up and running? I was looking for their contact info online about a month ago, but icimontreal.com seems to be defunct. What about the paper?
</hijack>

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Alexnbink, do come to Doperéal!! We’re friendly, and we don’t bite. (Well, matt_mcl has been known to, but he’ll be busy nibbling on Potter.) :smiley: