The future of Ottawa   (Page 3 of 5)

Wanted: a bold plan to reinvent Canada’s capital

Canada’s capital is about to rechart its future. This fall, the National Capital Commission (NCC) — the steward of federal lands and buildings in the National Capital Region, which includes Ottawa, Gatineau and 11 other municipalities in eastern Ontario and western Quebec — is consulting Canadians across the country about the future of Canada’s capital. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society is collaborating with the NCC on this ambitious public consultation, called Horizon 2067 (in anticipation of Canada’s bicentennial), and all Canadians are being invited to offer their opinions about how Canada’s capital should look in years to come. To get this conversation started, we’ve asked four writers who live in the capital for personal essays offering their own ideas on directions the capital is or could be taking. We hope they inspire you to join the conversation and let your voice be heard.

Bilingualism & multiculturalism

How cultural diversity and bilingualism became mainstream
By Daniel Poliquin

I was born in Ottawa in 1953, and I grew up on a steady diet of dire warnings about the imminent demise of my country. Those gloomy predictions usually came from right-wing radio talk-show hosts or left-wing intellectuals engaged in a mournful search for tenure. Last I checked, the country is as resilient as ever, and the capital city is still around. Even the brimstone-and-fire prophets are still in business. Canada didn’t die; it only changed.

Growing up in Ottawa’s Franco-Ontarian enclave of Sandy Hill, I remember a community life centred around the Sacré-Coeur parish. French was the only language heard at Garneau primary school, the Sacré-Coeur church was filled to standing room only on Sundays, and most kids were safely enrolled in various youth organizations under Catholic tutelage.

When I was 10, I served the eight o’clock Mass every morning with my brother. After school, I delivered the French newspaper Le Droit in our lower-middle-class neighbourhood, where cheap rents in worn-down houses were plentiful, with corner stores on every block selling one-cent candy by the truckload. It was an uneventful, modest life.

The world of my childhood is no more, and I don’t miss it one bit, because intolerance was then an accepted social norm. The province of Ontario did not allow the teaching of math and science in French. The berating or beating of openly gay people was never frowned on. And I recall a family of Dutch immigrants about whom neighbours complained because of the smell of their laundry! Being in a minority was not a happy experience then, which explains why our little ghettos were all the more comfortable.

State-engineered transformations, such as bilingualism and multiculturalism, were at play, intended to usher in an era of fairness for the francophone linguistic minority and make our country more hospitable to newcomers. In 1968, Franco-Ontarian schools were allowed to teach all subjects in French, including math and science. (It did not prevent me from failing both, mind you.) That same year, my class was the only one in the school with two black students: one from Haiti, the other from Jamaica. We all got along fine.

But these modernizing policies were greeted with a lot of anger. The usual forecasters of misery went berserk: bilingualism was going to create mass unemployment for les Anglais in the public service and wreck the Armed Forces and the RCMP. Once peaceful bicultural communities would burn in the flames of discontent. Multiculturalism was going to be even worse. The country would go bankrupt subsidizing Ukrainian folk dancers, while roast beef and Yorkshire pudding would disappear from restaurant menus. The end was near, no doubt.

Naysayers were wrong on just about all counts. Our military and police are as strong as ever, nobody starved to death because of chronic monolingualism, and our twenty-second prime minister is a Toronto-born boy who learned to speak quite passable French as an adult.

Ottawa’s sedate Franco-Ontarian parishes of yesteryear have given way to gentrified neighbourhoods and bustling immigrant communities with an exotic restaurant at every other corner. Bilingualism is no longer the purview of educated French Canadians. The young public servant on the rise today is probably as likely to be the product of a French-immersion school in Cranbrook, B.C., or the offspring of francophone immigrants from a Middle Eastern or Caribbean country. École secondaire publique De La Salle in Ottawa’s Lowertown neighbourhood, once the hotbed of young Franco-Ontarian leaders, now has a student body representing more than 60 nationalities.

The combination of bilingualism and multiculturalism has given birth to a unique phenomenon: newcomers joining the linguistic minority instead of folding into the mainstream. Some modern-day young French-speaking Ottawans may wear a hijab and have brown skin, but few of these newcomers see themselves as Franco-Ontarian, except perhaps when they fill out a scholarship application.

Belonging to the francophone minority used to be a curse. Today and in the future, in more ways than one, it is a ticket to a handsome payoff, be it landing a plum job, establishing social connections or election to political office. Yesterday’s handicaps have become coveted attributes. And topping it all, bland food is out and ethnic food is the new norm — on bilingual menus, s’il vous plaît.

Ottawa-based writer and literary translator Daniel Poliquin is the author of several books, including René Lévesque, part of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians series.