January 11, 2017 2 min to read

French-Speaking Hockey Players were banned from speaking French

Category : Complaints, Fake Bilingualism

Recently, the Junior Hockey World Cup was co-hosted by Montreal and Toronto, with both cities hosting the preliminary rounds and Montreal hosting the finals. Sadly, Canada lost the Gold Medal to the Americans after a streak of massive victories.

But what troubles the Québec media today isn’t the results of the championship but rather the revelation made by Julien Gauthier, one of the French-speaking players of Team Canada, that French-speaking players were banned from speaking French amongst themselves.

Let’s pause a second and think about this.

French-speaking players were invited to join Team Canada by Hockey Canada, an officially bilingual organisation which represents an officially bilingual country, but were banned from speaking to each other in one of the two official languages of both the organisation and the country they represent.

The official reason that was given was that it was for “Team-building” so that all of the players would talk the same language, which does make sense.

Except for the fact that when there is even a simple hesitation between using either of the official languages, English is always used.

Canadians from outside of Québec wonder why the Québec nationalists are so touchy when it comes to French and English cohabitation, and why Québec has French predominance laws in commercial displays, and yet, stories about French being banned or discarded from officially bilingual events are common and routine.

It’s no wonder that Gilles Duceppe, former leader of the Bloc Québécois declare that:

One day, there will be two official languages in Canada, English and simultaneous translations

I always try to present both sides of the issue, but in this case, it’s rather difficult to do.

Unlike the Nationalists, however, I do not place the blame in the same place: I do not blame the trainers of Team Canada and I do not blame Hockey Canada.

Instead, I blame the policy of fake bilingualism.

Many bilingual countries are officially bilingual because most citizens are bilingual themselves. Others are bilingual because the population speaks a language and the colonial power speaks another. Finally, some, like Belgium and some African countries have almost artificial borders for historical reasons where multiple different groups of existing people have been joined in a semi-fake country.

The problem with Canada is that we do not fall cleanly in either of the first two categories. Most Canadians outside of Québec and perhaps New Brunswick do not speak French, and Québec is no longer really a colonised area controlled by a foreign power.

That leaves, to nationalists, only the third option. That Canada isn’t really a country, that Québec doesn’t really belong in Canada, and that inevitably, Canada’s days as a coast to coast country are counted.

I am not that pessimistic, but as Québec gets more and more bilingual, and as French speakers in Canada are less and less unilingual, it still makes me wonder: Why isn’t it so less important for English speakers in Canada to learn French than for the opposite?

Why is English still always the default language if Canada is officially bilingual, and why Canada is still officially bilingual if English is always the default language?

Sadly, nationalists have the answer ready: Canada is officially bilingual only for Québec’ sake, knowing full well that dropping French as an official language would force Québec’s separation.

I am not certain I am that cynical yet, but Hockey Canada doesn’t help me see things otherwise.

 

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