Abstract:
As Yves Gauthier and I talked in his comfortable North Montreal farmhouse a French-English dictionary was always handy. His English is near perfect, but occasionally his vocabulary lets him down. He also has an amusing tendency to over-pronounce his h’s, which are silent in French. Yves has honed his skills in English by listening to the English service on CBC radio every morning, not because he is an incurable anglophilc but because he wants to keep tabs on how English Canada is reacting to Quebec’s thirty-year struggle to separate from Canada. Outside his home Yves’ tolerance of English vanishes. He becomes indignant when anglophones (English-speaking Canadians) won’t speak’ French to him. In a province which is eighty-four per cent francophone he argues that this is sheer arrogance. ‘French must be the language of everyday life, education and commerce in Quebec,’ he says ‘otherwise we and our culture will gradually disappear from North America.’
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