Word: quebecers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...separatism? Why now? For the Parti Québécois, the answer is simple logic: a people with a common language, customs and culture should "naturally" form a nation-state. That conviction has been nourished by a sudden, popular expansion of French pride, in which Quebec became, if not a political state, most certainly a state of mind. It is summarized in a provincial-government slogan: "De plus en plus en Québec, c 'est en français que ça se passe " (More and more in Quebec, it's in French that things are happening). Quebec has sprouted dozens...
...real reasons behind separatist feeling in Quebec are more complicated than that. The rapid industrialization of the province has brought unprecedented mobility to Quebecois?and with it, uncertainty about whether their unique way of life can possibly last. The Quebecois birth rate, once the highest in Canada, has become the lowest: 15 per 1,000 people. The French-speaking proportion of Canada's population has dropped from 27% to 25% and is likely to decrease further. Since 1946, nearly 378,000 immigrants, mostly Greeks and Italians, have come to Montreal. In nine cases out of ten, the newcomers learned English...
Many Quebeckers fear the compelling force of North America's predominant language and culture. When French-speaking sons and daughters of the province learn English?as they frequently must to gain jobs or advance in them ?they begin to be weaned from their native language. Outside Quebec, Canada's scattered French-speaking minority regularly loses a large part of its younger generation to English-speaking North America. Says Quebecois Poet Fernand Ouellette: "In a milieu of bilingualism, there is no coexistence, there is only a continuous aggression of the language of the majority." Quebecois are particularly bitter because little...
...Québécois solution to the language issue has been to preserve French by restricting the use of English. A draconian law known as Bill 101, approved by the legislative assembly last August, makes French the only "official" language in Quebec.* Under its terms, all business with the provincial government must be conducted in French. All professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, must display "appropriate" fluency in order to practice in Quebec. Corporations will be monitored by a government board to ensure that French becomes the "language of work." To pacify English-speaking Big Business, the Quebec government has promised...
...says Quebec's Cultural Affairs Minister Camille Laurin, is "to make Quebec as French as Ontario is English." It is also a de facto move toward separation...