A matryoshka is a traditional Russian doll. Once taken apart, it unveils another, smaller doll inside; the process continues until the smallest one, usually no bigger than a fingertip, surfaces. McGill is a matryoshka doll, surrounded by Montreal’s multilingual fabric, which is an enclave within French-speaking Quebec. The last layer of this linguistic mayhem is the English-dominated landscape of North America. Both the first and last layers of this doll are the English language.
Perhaps this realization prompted the 1970s Quebecois to resist what they saw as a danger to their cultural identity. Half a century later, even though FLQ bombs no longer explode on Montreal streets, their echoes still reverberate throughout the province. The preservation of the French language is a rational fear among Quebecois, and the cultural and legislative resistance against the encroachment of the English language stems from legitimate concerns. To understand this issue better, we must explore the linguistic structure of Quebec.
Before diving into the argument itself, two points must be addressed. First, the entire French vs. English debate occurs on Indigenous land that, for millennia—until the 17th century—happily avoided history’s worst inter-European beef (or boeuf, as one might say). While the colonizers may not have agreed on the best word for fermented milk in solid form, they quickly reached a consensus on eradicating local populations and their cultures. This debate, therefore, unfolds atop the grave of the native languages. With that established, let’s move on to the second point: Montreal’s plurilingualism.
Montreal is Canada’s second-largest metropolis. Initially a French trade outpost, it transitioned into a bustling bilingual city, with the majority language alternating between French and English following Quebec’s incorporation into Canada. Given this history, Montreal cannot be treated as representative of the rest of Quebec. My conversation with Prof. Mehdi Babaei, an expert on Quebec’s sociolinguistics, supports this view. He suggests that Montreal is not a battleground between two dominant languages but a plurilingual metropolis. Thus, claiming it as either Francophone or Anglophone is simply incorrect. A theoretical solution for Montreal could involve an administrative separation from Quebec into a metropolitan region with two official languages. Brussels, the Belgian capital, exemplifies how this might work. Belgium is similarly divided by the linguistic lines, with French and Dutch-speaking regions respectively. To avoid tension between these groups, the capital is officially bilingual, with signs and government services being available in both. Montreal could greatly benefit from a similar solution.
As previously mentioned, Quebec is a land of linguistic enclaves. Some are as small as the few blocks that make up Milton Park, while others spread across rural communities like those in Outaouais. If someone spends their entire time in the province confined to such linguistic echo chambers, misunderstandings are inevitable. The Quebec government and people’s growing hostility toward English—if it can even be called that—results from barriers created by these linguistic divisions.
An argument could be made that this is fair game, as the Quebecois themselves create these barriers. More often than not, French speakers tend to be less than inclusive. Anybody who has entered Longueuil wearing a McGill hoodie can attest to this. However, this argument falls apart when considering the institutional and federal domination of English. All those concrete blocks in downtown Montreal once employed mostly English speakers, especially higher up in the corporate ladder. The historical experiences of inequality that the French-speaking Quebecers faced can explain their hostile attitude. You cannot expect people to tolerate their future career being determined by skills in a language that they treat as foreign. Symbolic of this frustration is Bill 101, a legislation devised to separate the French language, and give it official status in Quebec.
Quebec’s English-speaking population has been declining since the 1970s. While Bill 101 likely didn’t cause a biblical exodus of Anglophones, this shift correlates with a larger economic pivot toward Canada’s western provinces. However, the bill helped secure Quebec’s identity against another unforeseen challenge: globalization. The measures introduced by Bill 101 could help Quebec avoid the fate of cities like Bangkok, Amsterdam, or Lisbon, where an influx of temporary inhabitants, such as digital nomads or international students, exist in parallel to the local culture. The issue is not migration per se, but multiple, local policy issues within each of the respective cities. Still, the strain on local citizens is real. A society within society does not help the issue.
What might seem like anti-English paranoia could instead be seen as adapting the laws that made Montreal such a livable city to modern challenges. Of course, there are limits to this. Both past and present governments have exploited these issues to stoke nationalist sentiments and boost their popularity. Some legislation can only be described as nationalist paranoia. However, when properly implemented, such immigration policy measures could make Quebec a shining example of multilingual experience. As Babaei adds, “The government, rather than francizing newcomers, should make them Francophiles.”
I close this article by stating that I am neither from Quebec nor Canada. My opinion on the subject should therefore be taken with a grain of salt, and I invite you to challenge it. However, my short time in Montreal has taught me a lot. Primarily, that nationalists will always find an enemy to rally people against instead of addressing real issues. Secondly, I was reminded of an assumption prevalent in Europe: the existing tendency among some English-speakers to exhibit resistance to local languages. Perhaps this stems from the dominance of English in media, the internet, and academia. Who knows? However, seeing people complain that they cannot find a job in Quebec without French always sparks my imagination. I picture a French speaker pulling the same trick but with English—in the offices of Toronto, New York, or London. The ability to contest and discuss this says much about the privileged status that English holds in our society.
