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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.travel
Subject: Re: Quebec
Message-ID: <7161@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Mar-84 11:49:04 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.7161
Posted: Fri Mar  2 11:49:04 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 10:41:42 EST
References: <185@hou2g.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 21

It is not always obvious that people in Quebec city are "pretending" not to
know english.  This is the often the case in Montreal, where there is a large
english population and most of the french people end up knowing some english
because of their influence.  If they refuse to speak english, it is for
political reasons.  Things are different in Quebec.  Quebec city is a french
city as french as toronto or vancouver are english, and people there have the
same good reasons (I dont know what) not to learn english as the english have
not to learn french in other parts of the country, laziness.. who knows.

Anyway, 1976 was a very tense year with the PQ coming to power and talk of the
referendum already starting.  French people were much more defensive about
their language than they are now.  With the current language laws, french people
do not feel as victimised about their language as they used to.  Since it is now
the english who are victimised in their place, they feel they are not as much on
the defensive, and are nicer in general to "anglos".  I think that if you were
to go to Quebec now, you would notice quite a difference.  However, if you go to
some french parts, people might still refuse to speak english, simply because 
they do not know it.

				Sophie Quigley
				watmath!saquigley