A Franco-American in Montréal

AUGUST 2012 Several months ago, I had a date with a woman who knew before meeting me that I was Franco-American--French Canadian from the province of Quebec, but born and raised the United States. This woman was an Anglophone--a Canadian whose first language is English. On our date, a vegetarian restaurant downtown Montreal, and at her prompting, I told her about moving to Quebec nearly three years ago to discover my heritage. About growing up Maine with Frenchspeaking parents and grandparents, about eating cretons, tourtiere, and ragout on holidays, going to French-Catholic schools and Franco-American festivals--and having no clue why any of this was my reality, but having no context to know differently, either. That's so interesting, the woman said. She had dark eyes and eyebrows. I like dark eyes and eyebrows. I stirred my soup, potage de legumes, and looked at her again. Her face was steady, calming. An open field where I might find peace after a stressful few years. And so, I told her that I was trying to learn French fluently, finally, to know my parents better, to communicate with them their first language. To ask questions of the people my grandmother's birthplace, a small farming village rural Quebec, and thereby piece together my family's history, my own identity. A moment later, my lofty confessions still vibrating the air between us, this woman told me that she disliked the French Canadians Quebec--often referred to simply as the Quebecois--was resentful of the French-aptitude tests the Quebec government made her take before she was allowed to operate the business she owned (They purposefully make it hard for you!), that she'd lost all interest learning or speaking French, and that even when a room full of French speakers, she spoke English. When I was sixteen, I told a friend that I was self-conscious about how big my eyes were. In response, he told me that a mutual friend of ours had recently put two basketballs front of his eyes and said, Hey, look. I'm Jane. The two moments I've just described feel similar. I've had many moments like this Montreal. When I asked my date why, then, she liked Montreal so much, she told me, simply, that Montreal should be bilingual. This is an unnecessary thing to wish for, since English is omnipresent Montreal, the de facto language for conspicuous multitudes throughout the city. If you want to live a French context, you must be intentional about your choice of neighborhood. The Plateau, for example, where I live, is known to be Francophone, but even so, I must often be explicit about my wish to interact French. As such, I sometimes feel as though Anglophones, like my date, object to a phantom French Canadian, some idea rather than reality. They object to the idea--the possibility, perhaps--that Montreal should be French, not English, and the reality that language laws (somewhat) enforce the presence of the French language here. And they do not like the idea that French Canadians, lurking the depths of the province, might feel these conditions are justified. Let me tell you what I imagined Canada to be like before I moved here: When she was high school, my mother worked as a candy striper at a hospital founded by Quebecois nuns our Franco-American hometown. The nuns recruited her to study nursing at their hospital Montreal, the Hotel-Dieu, the Johns Hopkins of its day. In the early-to mid-1950s, my mother lived, studied, and worked a French that was a more sophisticated cousin of the French she'd been born into and surrounded by Maine. Her teachers and friends at the Hotel-Dieu called her la petite americaine. I grew up hearing about my mother's time in Canada. The nuns, her curfew, eating lunch with young women with names like her own--Ghislaine, Fuce, Fleurette--and running through an underground tunnel to get to practicum twenty minutes later. …

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