Inuits at the Water Slides
It sounds like the setup to a bad joke: it’s 33° and I’m driving a bus full of sweaty Inuit teens in their bathing suits to a water park in a place called, of all things, Pointe-Calumet.
The day had not started well. I drove up to the address on my paperwork in the leafy West Island suburb of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue to find out that the street was closed. After some pretty awesome driving that nobody got to witness, I finally made my way to my pick up location where a dozen bored Inuits just stared at me.
-C’est vous la gang pour les glissades d’eau? I asked.
-English!, some obnoxious fat eskimo girl barked back.
-Français!, I answered.
-English!
I tell you kids these days. English please, maybe?
I was fuming. I was ready to fight the battle of Oka all over again. I was making plans to get on a plane to Kuujuuak right that day and just spend the day walking around yelling Français! every time someone addressed me in Inuktitut.
Driving down highway 40 all the way to the other side of Montreal to pick up the other half of my group at the Cégep Marie-Victorin it occurred to me that my chances of someone addressing a white boy like me in Inuktitut, even in the North, were probably quite slim. I was tired and cranky. Maybe my usually cheerful AngryFrenchDisposition had not come across well.
I blame the Jews. Two of them: Jon and Benji who had me out drinking until way passed my bedtime the night before.
So anyway, by the time we reach the East End, I’m considerably less pumped. Another dozen Inuits come on the bus but this time no one speaks to me in the world’s great order-giving language.
-Salut!
-Bonjour, Monsieur.
It turns out these kids had literally just landed in Montréal and were spending their first few days away from home. They were all from Nunavik, a series of Inuit villages that line the northern shores of Québec, from Hudson’s Bay to the very tip of the province and back down to Labrador.
Québec’s Inuit villages, contrary to popular belief, are not reservations and the Inuits who live there pay taxes even though they receive precious few government services. One of the many services they don’t get is higher education. The kids on the bus were in Montréal to go to Cégep. Half of them we’re studying in English at John-Abbott College in the West, the other half were going to school in French at le Collège Marie-Victorin.
Language politics are obviously completely different in the North—where, at least until further notice, the first language of most people is neither French nor English—but it still struck me how the French and English Inuits reproduced so many of the south’s social behaviour.
Anglo and Franco-Inuits kept apart, with one group occupying the back of the bus, the other the front. If the Anglo-Inuits spoke or understood any French, they weren’t using it. On the other hand, the French-Inuits all seemed to be able to speak English. Indeed, they often used English when addressing the Anglo Inuits. The Anglo-Inuits were (as the morning’s experience illustrated) loud and testy. The Franco Inuits ate poutine for lunch and their women were hotter.
The Franco Inuits also had their token white boy who was able to speak (what seemed to me) fluent Inuktitut, which is pretty cool.
As the sun came down and the humidex level fell, my white guilt shot up. I had had negative feelings about native kids. Micheal Ignatieff would so hate me.
I needed to redeem myself from the morning’s tense encounter with the first group and to demonstrate what a culturally sensitive person that I really am. I asked the big and beautiful First Nation lady who had yelled to me in English if she could teach me how to say Hello in Inuktitut so I could impress the other kids as they came on the bus. Apparently unaware that we had been fighting, she was glad to teach me.
It turns out that Hello in Inuktitut is Ai, which, with a gringo accent, sounds exactly like English Hi, which left the kids absolutely unimpressed with my linguistic skills.
There is even one of the Franco Inuits who replied with a very dry Bonjour, as if she was annoyed that I assumed she spoke English because she was an Inuit.
“Pretty astute observation there ABP.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Tories+risking+Quebec+with+proposed+Commons+seat+shuffle+Experts/2035373/story.html
Might be sooner than we all think!!
Will be interesting to hear the arguments against electoral reform.
ABP
September 26, 2009 at 9:26 am
@Acajack: Based on what you write, I can’t help but wonder whether Romeo Dallaire may have, without his knowing it, been hampered in Rwanda by his accent.
littlerob
September 26, 2009 at 10:13 am
Are you censoring me again, AFG?
Something has happened to my posts. If you are removing them because you don’t like the content, AFG, please have the decency, courage, and integrity to at least inform your readers that you are doing it.
Tony Kondaks
September 26, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“Are you censoring me again, AFG?”
Nope. I just removed the “reply to a specific comment” option ’cause Raman asked me to, so maybe your comments went soemewhere else in the thread…
angryfrenchguy
September 26, 2009 at 2:17 pm
midnightjack : «A lire aujourd’hui le merveilleux editorial NON-SIGNE du courageux journal regionnal nomme The Gazette sur le bilinguisme de Madame Arel. On se croirait en 1974…»
I find it especially obnoxious from The Gazette to not make any mention of the fact that HAREL DOESN’T SPEAK ANY CHINESE AND WON’T DEBATE IN THAT LANGUAGE!
Anybody who goes to Chinatown from time to time knows that a number of Montreal citizens of Chinese origin can’t speak proper French OR English.
Isn’t Harel “sending the wrong message” to them by refusing to debate in their language?
How could they possibly trust her after that?
Raman
September 26, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Acajack : «“This is the point you fail to grasp :
Nobody wants Quebec to be “French-only“.
Only that French be respected as the language of the majority, and not be treated as a secondary language.
But that seems too much to ask of people like you.”
In any event, no place in the world is truly X-only when it comes to language.»
You will notice that the debate is very often painted in those terms:
Protecting and promoting French = Exterminating English
That is just a rhetorical tactic that attempts to muddy the water.
Raman
September 26, 2009 at 5:44 pm
“No. Stephen Harper would be a moderate Republican in the US.”
That’s absurd.
Harper supports universal health care, admits that global warming is real, wants to maintain gay marriage and legal abortion, and supported a substantial fiscal stimulus. That would make him a liberal Democrat in the US.
Is it possible that deep down Harper is really an American style right winger and is just doing a good job keeping it under wraps to avoid scaring the Canadian electorate? Yes, I suppose. But that just proves the point that the whole Canadian political spectrum is far to the left of the US one.
dstr
September 26, 2009 at 6:53 pm
“@Acajack: Based on what you write, I can’t help but wonder whether Romeo Dallaire may have, without his knowing it, been hampered in Rwanda by his accent.”
What makes you think that? It’s generally the Belgians that are hated in Rwanda, not us. French-speaking Canada never had any colonies in Africa. ;-))
Acajack
September 26, 2009 at 10:04 pm
“That’s absurd.
Harper supports universal health care, admits that global warming is real, wants to maintain gay marriage and legal abortion, and supported a substantial fiscal stimulus. That would make him a liberal Democrat in the US.
Is it possible that deep down Harper is really an American style right winger and is just doing a good job keeping it under wraps to avoid scaring the Canadian electorate? Yes, I suppose. But that just proves the point that the whole Canadian political spectrum is far to the left of the US one.”
No one is disputing that the political spectrum in the U.S. is more to the right than Canada’s. What is being disputed is the presumption that there can’t be Americans in the Democratic Party that are more to the left than most people in the Conservative Party of Canada.
The political spectrum in Quebec is generally more to the left than that of most of the ROC. But that doesn’t mean that the ADQ is automatically more to the left than the NDP in any province…
Acajack
September 26, 2009 at 10:08 pm
“Micheal Ignatieff would so hate me.”
I hate you. Is that good enough?
billybob2003
September 27, 2009 at 6:48 am
“I can’t help but wonder whether Romeo Dallaire may have, without his knowing it, been hampered in Rwanda by his accent.”
I know one family from Rwanda that was saved from genocide by Québec missionnaries and you can bet your ass Québec French sound like angels signing to them.
A Québec accent gets attention everywhere, sure, but I don’t know anywhere in the world where a Québec accent is looked down upon except in expat Montreal Anglo circles and stuck-up Franco neighborhoods like Outremont.
It’s quite the opposite, actually. My Québec accent has gotten me through borders, out of fines and tons of free beer.
angryfrenchguy
September 27, 2009 at 8:02 am
“But that just proves the point that the whole Canadian political spectrum is far to the left of the US one.”
I don’t know. The only newspaper in North America that printed an editorial praising “ethnic enclaves” as a good and desirable thing this weekend was the Montreal Gazette…
angryfrenchguy
September 27, 2009 at 8:05 am
Just my south of the border perspective on anglo Canadian politics: To me, the political landscapes in the anglo provinces tend often to resemble those in the American states that lie next to them (and vice versa). BC’s strong pro-environment movement is similar to the ones in Washington and Oregon; Manitoba’s left wing tradition has its counterparts in the Democratic Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota and the old Non-Partisan League in North Dakota; Ontario with its auto industry and the politics attendant to it resembles Michigan, and New Brunswick and Maine are similar politically and culturally except for the fact that most of the francos in Maine don’t speak French.
@Acajack—I wondered it because I thought perhaps the Rwandans might have had a hard time taking seriously someone who could have uttered the French equivalent of “Now look hyuh, whah cain’t y’all jes git along?”
I don’t know how it is in Rwanda, but I have heard that Congolese often react especially poorly to the Dutch-accented French spoken by Flemings, and to Flemings generally.
littlerob
September 27, 2009 at 8:24 am
@AFG—No disrespect intended to North American French. My comment about General Dallaire was in the context of Acajack’s comment about QC French being the equivalent in the Francophonie of a Southern American accent (which is indeed looked down upon in much of the English speaking world); see my post just above this one.
I mysulf noormally speak a kind of English that mehwst of the rust of the people in Noorth Amurrica look daywn awn. But I ain’t gonna cheenge the wuhyy I talk jist to please a few ahmateur linguists.
littlerob
September 27, 2009 at 9:18 am
No sweat Littlerob, I understood you didn’t mean it disrepectfully.
The experience of Québec-bashing has always made me very skeptical about all the thought crimes attributed to southerners and rural Americans. I’ve spent my entire life listening to my unilingual English-speaking family members lecture the South, Québec and the World on multiculturalism from their all-white semi-gated communities in Ohio and New England villas.
angryfrenchguy
September 27, 2009 at 10:35 am
can’t help but wonder whether Romeo Dallaire may have, without his knowing it, been hampered in Rwanda by his accent.
Not sure he was hampered at all. He was there to hand the country over to the FPR and that’s what he and his bosses did, with all the attendant carnage. Actually virulently anti-France Canadian federalist francophones were strategically invaluable to the U.S./UK agenda of promoting the FPR to power and supporting their bloody expansionism in the Congo:
Pourquoi tant de Canadiens francophones ont-ils joué des rôles importants au Rwanda ? Parce que les États-Unis avaient besoin de francophones de service – qui n’étaient pas des Français – pour saper l’influence de la France dans la région et ouvrir la voie à l’influence anglophone de pays comme l’Ouganda et ses parrains impérialistes, l’Angleterre et les États-Unis.
http://archives.lautjournal.info/autjourarchives.asp?article=1419&noj=219
Next the that the accent stuff must have been small potatoes.
James
September 27, 2009 at 1:01 pm
“we tend to be a little slicker about it up here”
some may allo, but you get no points for subtlety in that particular dept. Désolé.
James
September 27, 2009 at 1:02 pm
James:
> some may allo, but you get no points for subtlety in that particular dept.
You know James, that was actually littlerob speaking, and he’s right: racism does exist in the northern United States as well (littlerob is in Pennsylvania, I believe?), but from what I’ve heard they just hide it better. A Southerner may talk about niggers, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like them, while a Northerner may be very polite to black people or immigrants and still discriminate against them.
AFG:
> The experience of Québec-bashing has always made me very skeptical
> about all the thought crimes attributed to southerners and rural Americans.
Same here. It’s possible that, in a similar manner to the Northern/Southern distinction I described earlier in this post, Quebecers are just not very politically correct and tend to say what they think, while other Canadians may think the same but make sure they can deny it. It’s worth noting that one of the first words English Canadians use to describe themselves as a people is to say they’re “nice”. It’s possible that they play this niceness to a certain level.
Obelix
September 27, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Obelix,
Thanks for the reading lesson but I know who said it and it’s set off in quotation marks by allo here:
http://angryfrenchguy.com/2009/09/20/inuits-at-the-water-slides/comment-page-4/#comment-10818
And it is to that which I was responding. I’ve often heard that English Canadians and “northerners” are more subtle about it, but allo isn’t. That was my point.
James
September 27, 2009 at 2:28 pm
”No disrespect intended to North American French. My comment about General Dallaire was in the context of Acajack’s comment about QC French being the equivalent in the Francophonie of a Southern American accent (which is indeed looked down upon in much of the English speaking world); see my post just above this one.
I mysulf noormally speak a kind of English that mehwst of the rust of the people in Noorth Amurrica look daywn awn. But I ain’t gonna cheenge the wuhyy I talk jist to please a few ahmateur linguists.”
I get it but generally francophone Canadians that are educated can and will ratchet up their French when they are in an international setting. The accent never goes away but certainly there is no problem in communicating.
French actually has much more defined “levels of language“ compared to English. For example, there is a huge discrepancy between how people speak and how they write – much more than in English where spoken and written language are much closer. Different levels of language also apply in French according to which situation you are in: social, business, academic, etc. The differences are not so pronounced in European French as they are here, but they exist over there as well.
Some lower class Québécois are unable to ratchet up their French to a higher level, but I have heard Dallaire interviewed often enough to know that he has this capacity (as do most of his compatriots of his social class).
An interesting factoid in the Belgian/Flemish context that has been raised is that Dallaire’s mother is Dutch.
Acajack
September 27, 2009 at 8:45 pm
@James: If you believe that Secretary Albright could have engineered the FPR’s takeover of power in Rwanda, I must respectfully disagree. To have had the prescience and the ability to pull off such a coup would have been completely out of character for someone possessing her extraordinary level of incompetence.
littlerob
September 27, 2009 at 8:54 pm
littlerob,
you will get no objection from me that Madeline Albright enjoys a bloated reputation for statecraft. However, that has nothing to do with my point. The FPR’s war of aggression against Rwanda (and by extension Congo) with crucial US/UK financial and logistical support long predated her tenure as Sec/State, and has continued long after her departure.
James
September 27, 2009 at 9:15 pm
@Acajack: I was not aware that Dallaire cultivated the ability to “code-switch,” although I have read that other Québécois, such as the late René Lévesque, were/are masters at it.
Code switching goes on in English, too, of course. I have a source who tells me that George W. Bush’s natural accent closely resembles his father’s and that the Texas accent he uses in public discourse is an affectation. I have an old buddy from high school who is a southern-born white; he still had a good bit of his accent when we were kids but he has since made a conscious effort to speak General American.
littlerob
September 27, 2009 at 9:33 pm
“I was not aware that Dallaire cultivated the ability to “code-switch,” although I have read that other Québécois, such as the late René Lévesque, were/are masters at it.
Code switching goes on in English, too, of course. I have a source who tells me that George W. Bush’s natural accent closely resembles his father’s and that the Texas accent he uses in public discourse is an affectation. I have an old buddy from high school who is a southern-born white; he still had a good bit of his accent when we were kids but he has since made a conscious effort to speak General American.”
I always thought that code-switching was limited to intermixing two different languages, like in Franglais or Spanglish, but littlerob has made me look into it more, and it looks like it also can involve moving between different varieties of a single language. Interesting.
Acajack
September 28, 2009 at 8:26 am
Obélix re: niceness
I have a bit of an issue with people who lay claim to a fundamental human quality like “niceness” as an over-arching character trait for their nationality. It’s as if a people defined themselves as being “smart”. Well, who’s to say that you people are smarter than anyone else, or that being smart defines your group more than another group?
I’ve heard this “Canadians are nice(r)” thing a million times. But are (English-)Canadians really that much nicer than other peoples of the world that it should define their identity? I even heard Jean Chrétien, with a straight face, tell the host of ABC’s Good Morning America that what distinguished Canadians from Americans was that Canadians were nicer and more compassionate! He was so drunk on the Canadian moral superiority kool-aid that he never even realized how insulting that statement was.
As someone born, raised and educated in the ROC, I bought into this niceness myth for a long time, but it’s hard to maintain the illusion when every once in a while you run into to the odd jerk with a Canadian flag bumper sticker on his car. Sure, there are lots of nice Canadians, but there are lots of nice Americans, nice Swedes, nice Chinese, nice Zimbabweans, etc.
Niceness is a basic character trait that billions of humans have. You don’t have to live within a 2 km radius of a Tim Hortons in order to be nice.
Acajack
September 28, 2009 at 8:36 am
> I’ve heard this “Canadians are nice(r)” thing a million times. But are (English-)
> Canadians really that much nicer than other peoples of the world that it should
> define their identity? I even heard Jean Chrétien, with a straight face, tell the
> host of ABC’s Good Morning America that what distinguished Canadians from
> Americans was that Canadians were nicer and more compassionate!
You’re right, that is quite arrogant and insulting. I can accept that there are differences between the values of different peoples. For example, some peoples are known for helping strangers and being marvelous hosts. This is possible, although of course these values will be found of people from all nationalities. But how do you define “niceness”, and in what way would it be a quintessential Canadian quality? And who even came up with this idea that (English) Canadians are so nice?
Anecdote time: I was in a youth hostel in Poznan, Poland this summer. I met this lady from Vancouver Island, BC, and her, and some other guy who was from the US, and I, started talking about politics and national identities. She was positively gushing about how nice Canadians are. Honestly, she must have said so at least five times and with such a proud look on her face; it was striking. As for the American guy, it turns out he was a Catholic seminary student, and had a way of turning every discussion to the subject of abortion, which he of course opposed. (Why is it always the men who’re obsessed with abortion?) I felt like I was surrounded by national stereotypes: the Canadian woman who’s incredibly proud of how “nice” Canadians are, and the American religious nut. I thought of going, “oué, m’aller nous chercher une hostique de bonne caisse de 24 pis on va faire un tabarnac de party, dat’s it dat’s all!” to complete the trifecta, but I decided against it, especially since I had work to do.
What’s strange is that you’d expect travellers, especially those who stay in hostels, to have a more sophisticated view of their national identity, having met people from many different countries and seeing firsthand what unites us and what separates us. You’d expect them not to be stereotypes. And to be fair, the lady was quite intelligent and knew a fair amount. But on this, I feel confident saying she was somewhat blinded by belief.
Obelix
September 29, 2009 at 1:29 am
Nice though anglo Canadians may be, they still often find it necessary to put Canadian flags on their backpacks and suitcases when they go abroad so that locals will better be able to tell them apart from us rude, obnoxious, and not nice Americans.
http;//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtVrDPhHBg (Molson’s Joe the Canadian rant)
@Obelix: I can assure you that there are plenty of women here who are just as obsessed with the abortion issue as the young man you met. I do not recommend pursuing the issue with such people. If the subject of abortion comes up, I usually just say that I am never going to have one.
littlerob
September 29, 2009 at 6:45 am
Hi!
I’m a young french inuit here.. (actually I’m metis)
I just discovered your blog today.. I’ve been interested in the Quebec sovereignty movement for the past 2 years (more so in the past year).. I always had a slight curiosity about it because I have a few very opinionated separatists on the french side of my family. Also studying in the US during the 2009 elections made me realize I knew much more about american politics than what was going on in my own country! Nowadays I’m a souverainiste 110%!
Anyway I’ve been reading your blog nonstop for the past 2 hours at least! I’ve become a big fan… But I have to admit that when I came across this entry my heart dropped… and when I started reading it I was not really pleased… But I decided to give it a fair chance and read it to the end. And I’m glad I did! Its a wonderful piece and I’ve already sent it to a few friends up north!
I think that when dealing with the natives of quebec its difficult, it can’t be black and white. I think that french people can and should feel a sense of understanding for the inuit. We (I’m speaking as a quebecois) have a sense of pride and patriotism that we (now I’m speaking for the inuit) do not have, instead a lot of us just feel lost and ashamed.
My heart goes out to both cultures and I personally feel very protective and proud of both!
(sorry I’m still working on my english french is my first language)
gay, native, french separatist… what are the chances?! haha
Keep up the awesome work angryfrenchguy!
alex kotori
January 10, 2010 at 4:42 am
Salut Alex. Pour moi c’est clair : les Québécois doivent avoir une attitude ouverte envers les Inuits et les Autochtones. C’est très motivant de savoir que les Inuits du Nord du Québec ont gardé leur langue. C’est rare en Amérique du Nord, quoi que relativement fréquent an Québec. (Les Attikameks, Innus, Naskapis, etc, parlent encore leurs langues à la maison.) J’espère que tu as la chance d’apprendre l’Inuktitut.
Je suis fier d’être Québécois, je veux la souveraineté pour mon peuple et pour les autres peuples!
The Native Americans in Québec (and elsewhere) will regain their pride by using their languages and valorising their cultures.
Young gay French separatists, now gathering on this blog. What are the chances indeed? xD
Québecautochtone
December 13, 2011 at 6:46 am