Ottawa is moving towards becoming officially bilingual. But wait—wasn’t it already bilingual anyway? At least, that’s what mayor Jim Watson says.
The street signs may be in English and French, but the City of Ottawa isn’t officially a bilingual capital. The organization Bilingual Ottawa is now asking city councillors to change the City of Ottawa Act to declare the city officially bilingual. This may be quite shocking, but being bilingual shouldn’t be an option: it should be a requirement.
Canada recognizes its national languages as French and English, but is known worldwide for its Anglophone cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver. Even Montreal, the most populous city in Quebec, is very Anglophone. Ottawa itself is on the border of Quebec and Ontario to show that the capital represents both French and English Canada. Yet, the city itself exists in Ontario, and a Carleton student going to Gatineau for booze can get away with not speaking French.
Across the country, French schooling is mediocre. Even after doing French Immersion, very few Anglophones are able to speak French fluently. Anglophones don’t need to know a word of French to navigate Canada. The touristy areas of Quebec like Quebec City and Montreal have enough English that you would manage perfectly fine without French, but would a Francophone be able to navigate Toronto without knowing any English? Probably not.
A lot of the resistance to learning French comes from the language being dependent on the accent. With English, vowel sounds matter a lot less, so you can understand what someone is saying as long as the consonants are right. With French, it’s the other way around. Vowel sounds change the meaning of common words, and a lot of these vowel sounds are difficult for Anglophone speakers to make without a lot of practice. You don’t want to speak a language if people just laugh at you when you do, and that’s why many people don’t bother trying to learn French.
Incentives to learn French reflect the fact that the city is not truly bilingual. For example, the University of Ottawa actually has lower tuition for students who study in French—that speaks volumes about how French is treated even in Canada’s capital city. If French was regarded on the same level as English, students wouldn’t have to be bribed to learn it; instead they would already have had French incorporated throughout their daily lives for years, so that learning it came as naturally as they learned English.
Language connects greatly to culture. Look around Ottawa: it’s a bit multicultural, but there really isn’t much French. Quebecois director Xavier Dolan has won several awards for his films at the Cannes Film Festival, yet there isn’t much talk of him in Anglophone areas. How many times do French films appear in Ottawa cinemas? Yet in Ottawa an English, North American culture continues to permeate the streets.
Street signs are one thing, but French must also exist in day-to-day life if it’s to truly be an official language of the city. Currently, there is a very sharp line between French and English as opposed to fluidity between the two. It’s shocking that it’s taken this long to come to this decision. Making something official does not guarantee that there will suddenly be an influx in French in the city, but it is a step towards reconciliation with Quebec as the French culture is brought further into English Canada.
