Canada is an English country! The French should just speak English, that’s all. This phrase is uttered by a farmer who meets an hour’s drive from Winnipeg in a traditionally very French-speaking region, as evidenced by the surnames of the villages along the road: Saint-Pierre-Jolys, Montcalm, Saint-Malo, etc.
I happened to meet this farmer in the rural community of Salaberry, which is officially bilingual. A huge plaque was placed on a shed, clearly visible from the street, to celebrate the town’s 125th anniversary. It reads: Salaberry Rural Community, 1883-2008, bilingual community, that’s so good! together together
As I was photographing the faded sign, a man in his 50s turned off the engines of his huge combine a few yards from me and climbed down from his hut to ask rudely what I was doing there. . I replied succinctly: Radio-Canada, a series of reports on the condition of the French in Canada.
As someone told me that morning in a café in Saint-Boniface, a French-speaking part of Winnipeg, that more and more Anglophones appreciate the presence of French and see it as a cultural richness, I had the idea of asking him if he was proud to live in an officially bilingual place.
The answer skyrocketed. First he dropped me the following in English: Canada is an English country and the French should just choose to speak English. That’s all. He then explained to me his frustration at having to pay taxes for services destined for Francophones and Aborigines, given that, according to his version of the story, the French and Aborigines traded together. They followed my Ukrainian ancestors. Why should they preserve their cultures more than mine? he even asked me confidently.
It is true that between 1891 and 1910 the Canadian government recruited Ukrainians by offering them lands to settle on the prairies, so that today more than 180,000 people in Manitoba claim to be of Ukrainian descent.
However, a year before implementing this migration plan, Manitoba had decided to ban the French language entirely and to suppress the teaching of French in Catholic denominational schools, the language of the territory’s first residents.
As early as 1738, explorer Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye (New Window) had found a navigable route to the Red River (Winnipeg). Coureurs des bois, engaged in the fur trade, would follow the route. Over time, many trappers settled there and intermarried with Aboriginal women from the thousands of year old nations of Cree (New Window), Ojibway (New Window) and Saulteaux (New Window).
This is how the Métis identity emerged around the beginning of the 19th century. As early as 1816, the Métis declared themselves a nation. The Métis had an economy, a culture of their own, a spirituality and a language that was the result of a cross between European and indigenous languages, Michif. When Manitoba joined the Canadian Confederation in 1870, the Francophone group, essentially of Métis origin, was in the majority and the resulting province was officially bilingual.
Andrina Turenne is proud of her Métis and francophone roots. She condemns efforts to wipe out French and indigenous languages in her province.
Photo: Radio Canada / Emilie Dubreuil
To be francophone in Manitoba is to resist
According to the latest data released by Statistics Canada, French was the first language of 36,740 Manitobans in 2021, compared to 40,520 in 2016, a decrease of just over 9%.
To be francophone in Manitoba is to resist. We have resisted and are still resisting. For me it is an obligation. As I contemplated the muddy waters of the Rivière aux Rats, I thought back to this phrase Andrina Turenne, a Métis artist, had said when we met earlier in the gardens of the Cercle Molière, the Saint-Boniface theatre, in which plays are performed in French for 100 years.
Andrina Turenne is a singer-songwriter, but is also involved in theatre. In 2021, she took part in the re-enactment of the play L’article 23 et son sequel, a nod to the fact that the provisional government of Louis Riel, leader of the Métis, had negotiated linguistic guarantees enshrined in the Métis constitution were provincial, but not respected. “When I was young, my mother told me that we have to protect our language because it was banned from public spaces for 100 years,” the 41-year-old artist recalls.
First performed in 1985, this play tells of the language crisis of 1980 that erupted after Canada’s Supreme Court decided to restore bilingualism to the province, as Louis Riel had wished when Manitoba was founded.
The tensions of those years were the culmination of a whole history of hatred towards Francophones. Francophones wanted their rights back, explains this woman, who says that among Anglophones, we remember that it would cost the government dearly and that we were complainants. But we, these rights were enshrined in our constitution and they should never have been taken from us.
The Métis culture is a crossroads, a meeting of two cultures. While Andrina, like many francophone Métis, is a vigorous advocate for the French spoken in Manitoba, she is also deeply angered that Aboriginal languages have been all but wiped out.
There was such violence against the language! Legal, social and cultural violence. There must be a national effort so that we can reintroduce the use of these languages, she said. It will be difficult, but don’t be discouraged.
Andrina Turenne fondly remembers a Métis teacher who taught her students her history, including the painful chapter of the assassination of Louis Riel. John A. Macdonald had decided that Riel would be hanged. They murdered the leader. They conquered the territory, they imposed English. There are so many bodies that wanted to wipe us out, but we’re here anyway. It’s important for us to celebrate who we are. We’re still here, which means we’re doing what we can and it’s working.