Bernie O'Neill
Columns
September 18, 2008 12:17 AM
By: Bernie O'Neill
Are you not going to vote for Stephane Dion’s Liberals because of how poorly he seems to come across when speaking English?
Part of me can understand this is the way people react to the man. They feel like he’s not making a connection with them, that he’s struggling to communicate, that he just seems uncomfortable, which makes you feel uncomfortable. The leader of the Bloc Quebecois seems to speak better English, is what people must think.
Yet another part of me feels bad this is our reaction, perhaps because I know what it’s like.
I grew up in Ontario but for many years, through various circumstances, ended up going to university and then living and working in Quebec, even though when I got there my French was not very good.
My French improved, but never to where I felt comfortable speaking at any great length or interviewing people for news stories.
Eventually I could understand most of anything that was being said. But that’s not the same as speaking with ease.
I was working at English newspapers, living in an English part of the city (N.D.G.), living with an English-speaking girlfriend who was attending an English university.
I worked with words all day. But they were English words.
French was the language that buzzed around us on the bus, in the subway, at the restaurants, but life could be lived there without it.
Not being fluently bilingual meant many of the better jobs, including the very best newspaper jobs, were out of reach.
So I took French classes and listened to French TV and radio and watched Habs games on French TV and even did a language exchange with a unilingual francophone who lived up the street.
In the end I think we were amazed how much we struggled, neither of us able to master the other’s mother tongue.
I think we both looked at each other — sitting there over a beer, him drinking a Labatt Cinquante and me a Labatt’s 50 (same beer) — as if to say, well, if I sit here long enough, eventually he will give in and start speaking my language, which of course he must know. He’s just holding out on me.
Deep down, too, I also think it was a matter or pride. Neither of us saw anything particularly wrong with our own language. Perhaps the other guy could learn mine and that would take care of everything.
We were a metaphor for Quebec-Rest of Canada relations.
I think the real solution would have been for me to find a French girlfriend. That might have sped up my learning curve. But I did not and eventually moved back to Ontario. It just seemed to be where I belonged.
In many ways I miss Montreal, the beauty of the place, the lifestyle you can live, the low cost of living, the short commutes, the nightlife and restaurants. It’s a whole different economy, where people always seemed to have money left over for things other than mortgage or car payments and the next tank of gas.
But then part of me does not miss it because it was a hard place to live if you were a so-called anglophone (English speaker), allophone (neither English nor French is your first language) or francophone.
Every single day you could end up in some situation where you have trouble communicating, where you end up feeling offended or you offended someone else.
Unless you’ve grown up there or are completely fluent in both of the official languages, it can wear you down after a while.
People would phone in to talk radio shows or write letters to the editor or form political parties or threaten to separate just to protest how badly they felt they’d been treated because of the language they spoke or did not speak. It simply never ended.
Still, living that experience is part of why I so admire the many people who have moved to places such as Markham from all over the world, many of them without the best of English skills, but with the courage to try and start a new life here anyway, and to improve their English as they go, always knowing their kids will grasp the language better than they ever will.
It must be hard for them here, trying to get through life when day-to-day communications are not simple. This is why communities tend to stick together, in the same way there is a mostly French side of Montreal and a mostly English side. It’s just familiarity, ease of communication, being with people who speak your language.
Some may become fluent in their second language some day, while others — like me, or Stephane Dion, will always struggle.
If the “green shift” or all the talk of new taxes at a time of economic uncertainty are what sink him, so be it. But I think it will be a step backward if he is rejected because he struggles in one language or the other. Frankly, it’s a very Canadian problem and he’s not alone.