Xref: utzoo can.francais:107 can.politics:2028 Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis From: clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Newsgroups: can.francais,can.politics Subject: Re: Notwithstanding clause -- truly a sad day for Canada Message-ID: <168@ecicrl.UUCP> Date: 28 Dec 88 19:33:05 GMT References: <1988Dec13.133220.28851@lsuc.uucp> <4321@hcr.UUCP> <809@auvax.UUCP> <230@electro.UUCP> <2521@looking.UUCP> <560@cavell.UUCP> <165@ecicrl.UUCP> <8812211552.AA18692@ellesmere.csri.toronto.edu> Reply-To: clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Distribution: can Organization: Elegant Communications Inc. (CRL Division) Lines: 76 In article <8812211552.AA18692@ellesmere.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes: >In article <165@ecicrl.UUCP> clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes: >>Impossible - half the signs in downtown Toronto are Greek or Italian or >>Cantonese or Vietnamese already. >>I even patronize some of stores being advertised. >>Nor do I feel that my "Anglais" culture is leaking. I must admit I was being a little *cute*, but... >Let's show a little imagination here. There's no way "English culture" >could possibly be threatened by any other, for at least the next several >decades. Everybody seems seems to think that English culture in Canada is threatened - eg: CRTC Canadian content rules and all of the howling about the FTA... By this same reasoning, we should then institute a rule that *all* signs in Canada outside of Quebec should be unilingual English. I don't think you'd want that would you? > It's very easy to be tolerant of other languages on signs in >Toronto. It wouldn't be so easy if the other language on the signs had >the same influence compared with ours as English does compared with French. >No, I don't think French is going to vanish in Quebec; after all, it's >survived about 80 years of British occupation, followed by 120 of minority >status in Canada. But would you like to bet on the survival of French in >Canada outside Quebec? compared with the likelihood English will survive >inside Quebec? If I were Quebecois, I'd be concerned too, though I'd be >optimistic. When you consider that in Toronto the traditional "anglo" culture is no longer even 50% of the population you start seeing that the situation in Montreal and Toronto is almost the same. In Montreal the split is francophone-anglophone, in Toronto it's anglophone-everythingelse. The big difference is that in Toronto, most people speak English at least as a second language because it's the closest thing to being common amongst everyone and most of the neighborhoods are reasonably well mixed. In those neighborhoods where the concentrations of other cultures is very high, signs tend to be other than English. Why not in Montreal where few non-French signs would appear in predominantly French neighborhoods anyhow? As you say yourself, French isn't going to disappear - it's survived 200 years already. So what do they need this law now? And you express concern that francophones outside of Quebec need help more than inside - how does this law help them? I'm against giving any group, minority or majority, special rights by law. Because all they do in the end is create classes of citizenry and create divisions between various sub-cultures. Legislating division not unification. Which is the last thing we need. Why do the Quebecois insist on ghettoizing themselves? Most of Canada is defacto multi-cultural, in many cases not by legislation, but by how the country *works*. Why aren't we giving similar rights to Ukrainians? They're a pretty damn large minority. As far as I'm concerned they're a founding ethnic of this country. They've probably been abused worse than the Quebecois. And there are whole areas where the population is almost exclusively Ukrainian. Are they insisting on their own language on everything? No. Insisting upon publicly-funded Ukrainian education? Mostly no. Ditto Chinese, German, Italian, Dutch and many others. Thank god for that. -- Chris Lewis, Markham, Ontario, Canada {uunet!attcan,utgpu,yunexus,utzoo}!lsuc!ecicrl!clewis Ferret Mailing list: ...!lsuc!gate!eci386!ferret-request (or lsuc!gate!eci386!clewis or lsuc!clewis)