Yesterday I made a quick visit to Ottawa.
I drove there east from Bancroft, through rugged, beautiful country that was very hilly, almost mountainous, and covered in new white snow. It was incredibly beautiful. Just before the junction of Highway 41 and Highway 132, I passed a sign that said, “Welcome to the Bonnechere Valley”, the road went down a hill, and suddenly I was out of the snow and into something like late fall. I got to the town of Renfrew, where I stopped for food and fuel before getting onto Highway 17 for the run into Ottawa. I was due at my friends’ place at noon, then I would go to my building-code exam at 1PM.
The exam was held at a room rented for the afternoon by the Ontario Ministry of Housing, a room at Université St Paul University–that’s they way they tend to write things bilingully in Ottawa, even on maps. St Paul is a bilingual institution, apparently Catholic. I’d never heard of it before. I arrived in the exam room, finding it by seeing all the other people with thick building-code binders.
There is an elaborate testing protocol developed by the Ministry. The person hired by the Ministry, who oversees the test, handing out and collecting the material and making sure no-one cheats, is called an “invigilator”. I’d been to another test previously in another city, and everything had been on time, but this time, 1PM came and there was no invigilator. 1:15 came. A lady–cool, elegant, and French–arrived in the room to inform us that the invigilator had had car trouble and would be another 45 minutes. Some people left; others including me decided to stick around.
We went down to the cafeteria to get a snack. I chatted with two of the other examinees. One was an engineer getting one of his building-code qualifications; the other was from a municipality.
These courses and tests appeal to three classes of people: municipal building inspectors and officlals, contractors and construction people, and designers (such as me). Actual architects and engineers have their own qualifications. The courses are intended to familiarize people with the requirements of the Ontario Building Code. It helps if you have other experiece in building, which I have. It also helps of you are designing simple structures, which I am also doing. In my case, passing a set of courses and exams and getting certain insurance allows me to sell house drawings in Ontario, even though I am neither an engineer or an architect. This is what I have been doing since I was laid off a year ago April Fools Day (really).
I finished my snack and went back upstairs. On the stairs, I encountered a lady who asked me something in French. I frantically dug the words “Pardonnez-moi, je ne parle pas français bon” out of some deep recess of my memory, and continued up the stairs. I got back to the exam room and the invigilator arrived shortly thereafter. The exam began.
Ottawa is a bilingual city. It’s the jewel in the Bilingual Belt on the border between French-speaking Québec and English-speaking Ontario.
Directional road signs say things like “Ch. Hazeldean Rd.” (Ch. = Chemain, French for Road) to get the common bilingual construction where the French noun comes before the name and the English noun afterwards. It’s a way of packing “Chemain Hazeldean” and “Hazeldean Road” onto the same sign in a minimum of space. Other signs have full wording in both French and English, and there is a great usage of symbols instead of words. Symbols are often more compact and it doesn’t matter what language you’re reading it in–though there are some concepts that are hard to symbolize.
Ontario is not officially bilingual, but provincially-maintained highways have limited bilingual signage. Municipalities, such as Ottawa, can be officially bilingual however. Outside bilingual locations like Ottawa, the road signs treat words like “Road” as part of the street name, not to be translated. Thus on the 427 in Toronto you might see a sign that says “Rutherford Road East/Est ->” instead of “Ch. Rutherford Rd East/Est ->”
Originally, after graduating, I had wanted to get a job in Ottawa, but I couldn’t find one, and I ended up back in the Greater Toronto Area. My sister moved to Ottawa, however, and it remains one of my favourite cities. Parks, museums, the National Gallery, the canal, and of course the Parliament Buildings. And Québec is just across the river. One of the scenic parkways along the canal is named “The Queen Elizabeth II Driveway”, which always sounded to me like something Jeeves would use to being the Rolls up to the gates of Buckingham Palace.
So after the exam, I was waiting for my friends to collect me. We would be going back to their place for dinner with the family. I stood under the portico of the university, listening to passing students chattering in English and French, often both in the same conversation. I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to speak to the 20% of my countrymen who do not speak English. I want to hear new music, new ideas, new jokes.
I want to take this six-week French immersion course next summer. My experience with that Japanese immersion course last year was so encouraging that I think I could do it. Six weeks in an exclusively French-speaking environment? With courses and teachers and all? I was doing well in Japanese with 2.5 hours per week!
I left Ottawa this morning to go to Toronto. On the way, I was listening to French radio in the car. I could get the sense of what many of the stories in the news were about, for example, but the details were lost on me. But the French is back there, I can feel it. I want to let it out.
And maybe I can meet a beautiful French woman…
