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Canada from Eh to Zed

<Swell> ~~ O Canada... ~~ <fade>

Our neighbors to the north have made the news the last couple of days. :eek:

Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter
Quebec's largest school board seeks to make yards, halls and cafeterias French-only zones

The playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias of Quebec's largest school board will soon be French-only zones as authorities move to silence other languages - even during recess.

In a bid to ensure its 110,000 students master French, the Commission scolaire de Montreal has announced a new code of conduct declaring French de rigueur at all times during the school day.

Diane De Courcy, the board's chairwoman, said the approach will be persuasive, not punitive.

"There will be no language police," she said. Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules.

"If they are automatically switching to another language, (the monitor) will gently tap them on the shoulder - not on the head - to tell them, 'Remember, we speak French. It's good for you.'

Vancouver mayor tweets support of legalizing marijuana

Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson has joined four former city mayors in support of legalizing marijuana.

He tweeted Thursday night: “Good to see 4 Vancouver ex-mayors calling for end of cannabis prohibition. I agree, we need to be smart and tax/regulate.”

Former Vancouver mayors Larry Campbell, Mike Harcourt, Sam Sullivan and Philip Owen all signed an open letter to politicians in B.C. on Wednesday claiming a change in the law will reduce gang slayings on public streets.

Ex-N.Y. Mafia Boss Found Dead by River in Canada

The body of an alleged Mafia boss, who U.S. authorities said once led New York's notorious Bonanno crime family, was fished out from a river north of Montreal on Thursday.

Reports identified the body as Salvatore Montagna, although police wouldn't immediately confirm or deny the identity.

The FBI once called him the acting boss of the Bonanno crime family — prompting one of New York's tabloids to call him the "Bambino Boss" because of his rise to power in his mid-30s. Nicknamed "Sal The Iron Worker," he owned and operated a successful steel business in the U.S.

Montagna's death is the latest in a series of Mafia-related killings and disappearances over the last two years. He was considered a contender to take over the decimated Rizzuto family.​
More on each story at the links in the individual headlines.
 
Sir_Winston54 said:

Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter
Quebec's largest school board seeks to make yards, halls and cafeterias French-only zones

The playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias of Quebec's largest school board will soon be French-only zones as authorities move to silence other languages - even during recess.

In a bid to ensure its 110,000 students master French, the Commission scolaire de Montreal has announced a new code of conduct declaring French de rigueur at all times during the school day.

Diane De Courcy, the board's chairwoman, said the approach will be persuasive, not punitive.

"There will be no language police," she said. Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules.

"If they are automatically switching to another language, (the monitor) will gently tap them on the shoulder - not on the head - to tell them, 'Remember, we speak French. It's good for you.'
Click to expand...

I'm PixieSprite from the Maritimes! *waves* As a francophone, from grade primary to 12 I attended a public school where French was the only acceptable spoken language, outside of English class of course. And this was in Nova Scotia.
 
PixieSprite said:
I'm PixieSprite from the Maritimes! *waves* As a francophone, from grade primary to 12 I attended a public school where French was the only acceptable spoken language, outside of English class of course. And this was in Nova Scotia.
Click to expand...

Yeah my kids are in French Immersion and that is pretty standard (though they tighten up as the kids get older since in French Immersion they don't know French when they start the program.
 
French was mandatory for us from grade 3 on. You had to take Grade 12 French if you wanted to go to university. I hated it. Sad but true. I'm from the west coast. I had Chinese and Indian people all around me and zero francophones. I couldn't speak to my neighbours but I was forced to learn a language I never used. I was angry at being forced into it.

Not the best attitude for learning a language.

I started learning Spanish when I was in my late twenties and traveled frequently to Mexico. I picked it up quickly because I had LOTS of motivation to learn and lots of opportunities to converse with native speakers.

What a difference.

You can't force bilingualism. A lofty goal but unrealistic. My French still sucks. Sorry.
 
We are losing what has defined us as Canadian since we first started out as a nation. With the advent of personal computers, a lot of us don't have the brains to change the language default from the standard "English-US" to "English-Canada". And so kids are growing up spelling honour without the "u" and saying zee instead zed. Obviously, there's more to it then just some words being written differently... And unfortunately the culprit is called apathy.

French was an integral building block to forming the Canada we are today.

If there needs to be some monitoring to ensure kids speak the language and don't fall into was is easiest or laziest, then so be it! Do I feel sorry for them because the poor schmoopies feel "forced"? Hell no! Learn some history about your country, develop some pride in who you are and realise that being able to speak and read more than one language is a huge bonus, instead of thinking it's all one big inconvenience.

Maybe if we were a little prouder in who we are and where we come from, we wouldn't take all of what we are losing for granted.

So if a school board in Québec wants to enforce the French language in it's french schools, I really don't see where the head scratching is coming from on this one.
 
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^^^^^^what Minalick said.

Both of mine went/are going through Immersion, and I wouldnt have it any other way. Granted, since the school isn't unilingual they can't go around implementing such a program at recess, but I went to an all French elementary school here in Ontario and they sure did!

"On parle en francais seulement, Mademoiselle!"
 
This is a hot button for me so I'll only make this comment, then I'm walking away from the conversation.

I find it interesting that in our officially bilingual country that it's ok, even legal in Quebec, to enforce a French only policy but not okay to have an English only policy. Being a bilingual country sure helped the Francophones take over our Federal government at different stages of our history.
 
I love languages. But I know that there's more to learning a second language than rote memorization and a few hours of study per week. (Which is how we learned it back in the day).

Language must be used, and necessary.

I agree that having a second or third language is a huge boon. However, how those languages are acquired is very important. I would love to be able to speak French well. But then, who would I speak with out here?

East and west are very different places, no matter how our country was founded, that's reality.
 
Keroin said:
I love languages. But I know that there's more to learning a second language than rote memorization and a few hours of study per week. (Which is how we learned it back in the day).

Language must be used, and necessary.

I agree that having a second or third language is a huge boon. However, how those languages are acquired is very important. I would love to be able to speak French well. But then, who would I speak with out here?

East and west are very different places, no matter how our country was founded, that's reality.
Click to expand...
When I was ten, my father was reassigned to an army base in Italy. We got to go with him since it was a scheduled three-year deployment. I picked up Italian like a Bounty paper towel soaking up a spill and became fluent in both the colloquial spoken Italian and the classroom (required) *correct grammar* Italian, and even thought and dreamed in Italian at times.

Two years later, the army decided they needed my father more in Germany. German, of course, was required in school. However, since his assignment there was only supposed to be for less than a year (April until the following January) (thank the heavens!), my brother and I managed to convince school administrators that we had already met our foreign language requirement and would not benefit from less than a full school year of German, which quite likely might not be offered in our schools when we moved back to the states in mid-year. We did pick up a *little* colloquial German, from school friends and outings on "the economy" (the military term for dealings with civilians when stationed outside CONUS); however, we were never really comfortable with even that little.

Bi- or multi-lingualism is a marvelous thing. It opens doors that one might never even approach otherwise. BUT... to *force* it on people who don't want it, may never get the opportunity to use it in "real life," and have other priorities, I believe, is wrong. Should kids in the eastern half of Canada have formal exposure to French, both colloquial and classic? Yes, I believe so. Should kids in western Canada, where French is almost unknown in daily life, be *forced* to have that same formal exposure/training? I don't think so. It's illogical. Require them to have *some* second language exposure and/or training? Yes.

If nothing else, studying and becoming reasonably familiar and comfortable with understanding/speaking/reading/writing another language seems to open a number of synapses in other learning areas, as well as improved performance in their native language. To give children the opportunity to better develop their minds seems to be ... (wait for it... sorry for the pun... ) a no-brainer.

That's *my* $0.02 (US, not Canadian! ;) ) worth. YMMV.
 
I grew up speaking mostly French and did all my primary schooling in French. Like most of my cousins, I married an anglophone. I however had the double whammy of moving to a part of the province where most of the media is English, the French section at the library consists of 1 1/2 shelves and 98% of our friends are English speaking.
Enrolling my kids in a "real" French school would have meant a 40 minute bus ride from the tender age of 4 so I opted for French immersion.
I try to speak to them in French, I really do but being as bilingual as I am, I switch between French and English without realizing it.
It has made for confusing visits to my relatives for my husband who is involved in the conversation until suddenly weare all talking in French and he is left by the wayside until we figure out why he got so quiet all of a sudden.
I digress. The point I was trying to make is that with so many English influences for French Canadians living outside the Province of Quebec, it's very hard to preserve the language and culture. It might seem extreme to some but Quebec's approach is necessary if French is to be preserved in at least one part of Canada.
ruby
 
Keroin said:
Well, it looks like a garbage can, perhaps on a playground?
Click to expand...
Yes, I think it's for a community park and they call them dust bins. For some reason, I've only found them on sale by companies based in India.

There are other animals too, but it seems the penguin is a favorite. There are a couple different kinds with the open mouth and the "use me" sign on front. It's so suggestive, but I guess we just have a dirty mind?
 
sfla said:
I miss my home country today.
Click to expand...

Awww. As someone who's lived far from home on numerous occasions, I know how that feels.

Anything in particular you miss or just the general awesome Canuckness?
 
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