Jul 01, 2009 04:30 AM

Chantal Hébert

MONTREAL

Raising young children in Toronto in the early eighties, we hooked
them on Passe-Partout, Télé-Québec's popular preschool program, and
restricted television access to the length of the half-hour daily
episodes.

The only language spoken at home was French, and both kids were home-
schooled to read in their mother tongue long before they could
decipher a word of English. That was part and parcel of bulletproofing
our kids for the inevitable day when they ventured into the largely
English-speaking Ontario world.

A few years later, a move to Ottawa, a city where French has a greater
presence, brought some relaxation to the parental rules, and we mostly
let down our guard when Montreal became our home a decade after that.

Mostly, but not completely. In the age of video games and the
Internet, raising children who are as competent as they should be in
French is a challenge, even in Canada's French-speaking metropolis.

Rationing English in favour of French paid off. Our adult sons switch
effortlessly from one language to the other, and they have to think
twice when they are asked whether the movie they are watching or the
book they are reading is in French or English.

In most regions of Canada, English-speaking parents have to work at
ensuring their children acquire and maintain second-language skills in
French, but it is a rare francophone who, having set out to master
English, has not been up to the task.

Indeed, English is generally so pervasive that francophone families
often have to guard their kids against "franglais," a mix of both
languages that does not stand its speakers in good stead on either
side of the language divide.

A recent poll found that 90 per cent of francophone Quebecers worry
about the status of the French language in Montreal. The opposite
would have been a surprise. The notion that vigilance is essential if
French is to continue to be a vibrant presence in North America has
been bred in the bone of successive francophone generations. It is
also borne out by the demographic realities.

In many ways, Montreal is a linguistic success story. Home to the
highest proportion of trilingual Canadians, its daily life is far more
bilingual than Ottawa's, the capital of a country that purports to
have two official languages.

Almost half of Montrealers speak a language other than French at home
and the number is growing. But while the power of attraction of
English ensures that it is the common language of multicultural
Toronto, French would hardly be as dominant as it is in Montreal
without some legislative assistance. Over the past three decades, the
obligation for newcomers to the province to have their children
educated in the French school system has ensured they no longer
massively bypass French on the way to adopting English as their sole
default official language.

The federal Official Languages Act has also turned proficiency in
French into a professional asset rather than a cultural pursuit. Over
that same period, concern over the shrinking place of French in an
increasingly English-speaking wired universe had spread to the whole
of the Francophonie. The attraction of English has increased while the
influence of many other languages has decreased.

As the debate over the future of the planet's linguistic diversity has
become global, the limits of local legislative solutions have become
obvious. That is why even as Quebecers fret over the place of French
in the Montreal of tomorrow, most do not want to reopen the Pandora's
box of the language laws.

Have a good Canada Day!