Once quebec is gone (and it will) the English will be rid of this useless pustule which has been a blight upon the face of an otherwise proud nation.

You are judging an entire population based on one idiot?

Man, the narrow-mindedness of the sovereintists never ceases to astound me.

Québec amd Canada are two totally different nations, that never seem to cooperate,so maybe we`ll both be much better off once you guys finally decide to leave….

http://www.ledevoir.com/2009/08/07/261894.html

Le 5 août Serge Joyal, dans son article du 4 août intitulé «Jacques Cartier, une autre réflexion», laisse entendre que le fait français au Québec aurait survécu grâce à son appartenance au Canada en comparant le Québec avec la Louisiane, où les francophones ont été assimilés.

Donc le Québec, ayant déjà une forte concentration de francophones, aurait résisté à l’assimilation de la même manière s’il s’était joint aux États-Unis plutôt qu’au Canada. Papineau avait raison de vouloir se joindre aux États-Unis parce qu’à l’époque, les États-Unis étaient plus démocratiques que le Canada.

Was at a wedding last weekend in a predominatly french community. Didn’t hear a word of it…10 or 20 years ago the service would have been mostly in french. It’s for the most part gone Acajack. I am not going to prognostinate on whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Just the way it really is.

So why are we (or should) spending huge somes of money on “french only schools” and “colleges” where in fact there is little or no need. To preserve a culture that for the most part no longer exists in these parts. Well, there aren’t that many in any event. The immersion programs are a failure both here and elsewhere in the ROC. I am sure you will disagree and thats your option. The facts, however, speak for themselves.

As I have said before, french in Quebec and likely english in the ROC. Of course, in the ROC, there are no language or sign laws to protect english, are there?

As a child, your friendly neighbourhood Acajack actually went to French immersion school (and English school before that) because there were no French “as a first language” schools for francophones where we lived. (Though this was not in Saskatchewan.)

And yes, French immersion for anglos was set up in our province many years before French schools for francophones were opened.

I think there were 2 outsized reactions of English Canadians to the OLA. Obviously OLA required a clerical-administrative infrastructure to power it and a bilingual “interface” which meant jobs. From that, the « arriérés » got pumped up and concluded they’d be francicized by stealth and pretty soon no decent job wouldn’t require French, and so they circled the wagons. I think the immersion phenomenon was part of the other reaction, which was, gee, if I send Junior to immersion he’ll bag a plum high-paying sinecure in the civil service. Despite their divergence in political correctness, both reactions have in common that they were a) exaggerated and b) self-serving.

I honestly don’t know if immersion can be ranked as a “mass phenomenon” because I don’t know the file. It probably at least merits the ranking of “middle class fad.” But be that as it may, one of the most perverse ironies is that even as these publicly supported immersion schools were springing up like mushrooms all over the place, French Canadians were having to lobby and litigate just to get their own publicly funded schools and autonomous school boards. In Saskatchewan fransaskois kids were reduced to going to immersion schools designed for anglo kids, despite the unsuitability of an L2 curriculum for L1 students. Just another bizzaro monde à l’envers/pays des merveilles aspect to Canada’s language landscape.

… I still thought it was pretty cool to the extent it happened at all though.