IBAAW

Some of you may know that I am an advocate for bilingualism in Canada. When I was twelve years old, my parents and I decided that I would start attending a French Immersion school for junior high, and so I did, for three years.

I just watched the movie Babel (IMDb), which is all about how misunderstandings are caused, and how they are sometimes based on language and cultural stereotypes. It is a topic I am most definitely interested in, since I have experienced a few instances of misunderstanding due to language barriers. Obviously, my experience with the matter was not as dramatic or life-and-death as those portrayed in Babel, but still hold importance in my life at this point.

I believe that Canadian society should be bilingual. I think that if we are to have laws that promote speaking both official languages, and being accessible in both tongues, we should take it all of the way. One of the aspects I would like to see in my ideal version of Canada, would be for everyone to have at least a conversational knowledge of either English or French, depending on their birth language. I would like to see French taught in schools beginning in Kindergarten. I would like to see French taught with more importance than it is taught at this point. When I was in elementary school, we started taking very basic French lessons in the sixth grade. My mother continues to work at that school, and now it is not French being taught but Spanish. I have nothing against Spanish, but I do believe that we are a bilingual country that supports both English and French. Shouldn't we have an emphasis on learning these two languages before others? After all, we, as Canadians, generally look upon our bilingual nature as something to be proud of. Is it in name only? Are we proud of the words on the Bilingualism Act? Or are we proud of bilingualism, as people who are striving to communicate in both of our official languages?

I recently was in a situation that let me examine the bilingual situation in our country a little more closely. When I signed up for Katimavik, one of the perks was improving my French, which had, I will admit, diminished a bit when I returned to English school in the tenth grade. When I arrived, I was eager to learn, and slightly disappointed to find that my fellow anglophones did not share my goal. I don't hold it against them in anyway. I think the main reason that learning the language held no interest for them, and they've agreed with this point on several occasions, was because in most of their cases, French held no use to them at all! Living in Western Canada myself, I can see the point of this. Other than a few small francophone communities, there is hardly any exposure to a French culture. The largest groups of francophones are located on the opposite end of the country. I suppose I always assumed that as I were to move closer to these predominately French-speaking areas, more French would be accessible. However, I was wrong, as I quickly learned from my group mates from Ontario. They used even less French than I had in Alberta.

Following our arrival in our first placement in the English city of Kelowna, British Columbia, we were all asked many times why we had decided to take part in this project known as Katimavik. The anglophone part of the group cited various reasons ranging from traveling the country, to getting back at ex-girlfriends! The francophones unanimously stated "to learn English." Why such an imbalance? Well, quite simply, the world is much more accessible in English. Even the most stubborn of sovereignists in our group could recognize that English was the language necessary to make it in Canada today.

In Kelowna the Quebecoises worked diligently to work on their skills in English. They spoke in English as much as possible. The held English jobs where they were forced to immerse themselves in the language for eight hour days. They attended their English classes, and completed their English homework. They improved and today are considered bilingual by most standards. In contrast, when we arrived in Quebec, anglophones always made sure to travel with someone who could be used as a translator. Their jobs involved manual labour, and very little instruction, which meant very little interaction with the French language. I attended French classes with them, in hopes of being able to pick up more of the language myself, and although they took the notes, they did not retain much. I don't mean to say that they did not learn anything at all! I just mean, in contrast to the francophones. Near the end, there were a few who had begun to understand most of what was said to them, however, they did not achieve bilingualism in the same way the girls from Quebec did.

Another example of the lack of interest English-speaking Canadians put on learning French came to me while working in an elementary school in the city of Orleans, Ontario, which is a suburb of Ottawa, Canada's National Capital. Ottawa is one of the most bilingual cities I've ever been to. Orleans was a very popular community for French-speaking people in the Ottawa region. So much so that the Quebec girls in my group, ever so focused on improving their English, would become slightly frustrated when salespeople, hearing their accents, would switch to French, when they wanted to be practicing their English. (I can see their point of wanting to be constantly immersed in English, but here I must say I applaud these salespeople for their accessibility through bilingualism in these situations.) Yet I recall during a Social Studies lesson on bilingualism and multiculturalism in Canada, a sixth grade student saying he could hardly tell we were bilingual here, and so what was the point. Well, I was flabbergasted! If he thinks they're hardly bilingual there, where a large portion of the population speaks in both languages, and the street signs are presented in both languages, he should take a trip out west!

I just don't think that it's right that we should claim to be a bilingual country, when in actuality we aren't. Or that we should make the francophone population work to learn English, when so many of us are unwilling to learn French in return. But, I do believe that bilingualism can work, and that Canada should go for it, and really put effort into it, so we have something to be really be proud of, instead of just hiding behind the name of an act we don't entirely follow!

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