Bonjour/hi

Having studied French for so long, I really find living in a bilingual city/province/country really interesting.  Where we live it's seriously Anglophone but there is French everywhere you turn.

For example the other day when dropping Little Miss D off at preschool a dad held the gate open for us to and I said "Thank you!".  I then held the gate for the next dad who said "Merci" to me.  The way people can switch between languages is amazing and you often hear examples of accent free bilingualism.

Swimming lessons for the kids are bilingual too.  In Little Miss D's class there was a French speaking boy so the teacher would speak French to him and English to the others.  In Baby A's class it's about half half and the teacher swaps between both languages and we sing in both too.

From what I can glean from of some very complicated language rules (it's called la Loi 101!) French speakers have the right to live their lives completely in French and all services must be available to them in that chosen language.  This is where is begins to get political and very complicated.  In the Francophone areas of Montreal and especially other parts of Quebec, English speakers would have Buckley's chance of finding an English speaking swimming class. 

I really want to find out more about how this came to be that one city (Montreal) remained/became bilingual in such strongly Francophone province and then how that province survives in the rest of Canada.  Canada vs Quebec is a daily topic in the media and this morning a respected professor of philosophy spoke of the Harper government's disdain for Quebec.  I think the feeling is mutual!

Samuel de Champlain - Father of New France

xx

ps - Action Boy's French is coming along which is so lovely to see.