Return of Language Police Angers Montreal’s English Speakers

Quebec’s language police are returning. For many English speakers in Montreal, it’s one more ominous signal that the time has come to leave--or fight back.

Some are organizing protests and threatening civil disobedience to challenge laws giving preeminence to French, the language of four-fifths of Quebec’s 7 million residents.

But other Anglophones are leaving--particularly since the province’s separatist government announced June 10 that it is reviving the so-called language police to enforce the French-oriented laws.

Quebec’s English speakers were rattled in October when their province almost split from Canada. Separatists won 49.4% of the votes in a secession referendum and vowed to try again within two or three years, prolonging the political uncertainty that is hurting Quebec’s economy.

For a brief spell this winter, after Lucien Bouchard became premier of the separatist provincial government, it appeared that there might be a truce in Quebec’s long-running language war. Bouchard met with leaders of the Anglophone community and insisted his immediate priority was economic reform, not independence.

But hard-liners in Bouchard’s Parti Quebecois pressed hard for tougher language enforcement, claiming that English was making dangerous inroads in Montreal. The government finally acceded, announcing the reestablishment of the Commission for the Protection of the French Language.

This agency, reviled by Anglophones as the “tongue troopers,” had been abolished by the previous Liberal Party government in 1993. In its heyday, the agency deployed inspectors armed with tape measures to check whether commercial signs met a requirement that the French lettering be twice as big as the English.

The revived agency, with a staff of about 20, will have the power to levy fines as high as 7,000 Canadian dollars, or about $5,150. It will receive a large chunk of the $3.7 million that the cash-strapped government is allocating for additional language-law enforcement.

There are no firm figures on how many English speakers have left Quebec since last fall’s referendum, although there has been speculation in the press that the exodus over the next year or so could approach the 100,000-200,000 who left in the four years after the Parti Quebecois took power in 1976.

The barometer of sentiment is the high number of houses for sale in Anglophone neighborhoods.

At the Re/Max real estate agency in Westmount, a mostly English-speaking enclave near central Montreal, Esti Jedeiken shows a visitor what she calls the “doom and gloom file.”

Her documents show that original asking prices have been lowered on more than 200 of the about 300 houses on sale in the neighborhood of 4,000 single-family and two-family homes. Buyers are scarce, though houses sell for up to 50% less than the equivalent home in Toronto.

“There’s so much angst here, it’s unbelievable,” Jedeiken said. “Even among those who are staying, there’s frustration--a sense of, ‘What’s next?’ ”

A majority of Anglophones younger than 40 speak at least some French even if they go to English-language schools, but many feel scorned and discriminated against by French speakers. And although there are Anglophones who are comfortable in Quebec and committed to staying, few endorse steps like the return of the language police.

Even among French speakers, the government’s decision has roused some dismay.

“In a single move, the Bouchard government demolished the fragile bridge it had started to build,” wrote Lysiane Gagnon, columnist for the newspaper La Presse.

In Montreal, one of the world’s most thoroughly bilingual cities, a hodgepodge of styles await the sign inspectors. French is by far the dominant language of signs, but a few stores have all-English signs, others are scrupulously bilingual, and some use fractured franglais.

“Special pour le lunch,” says a sign at a Dunkin’ Donuts outlet.

George Alevisatos runs a Westmount catering firm called By George--and wrangled with the old language police over that name and use of the word “catering” on his sign. He thought the language war had subsided and is depressed by the decision to reinstitute the language monitors.

“I’m just tired of it,” he said. “The language thing is just a pretext for power. It’s the only emotional issue they [the Parti Quebecois] have to play on.”

The government has no apologies for toughening its defense of French. Along with sign inspection, it will intensify checks of package labels and restaurant menus, and require all computer software to be available in French unless no French version exists anywhere in the world.

“We want to enter the 21st century in French,” said Louise Beaudoin, the Cabinet minister who oversees language legislation. “We have to act so that the information highway isn’t all in English.”

Software retailers are aghast.

“If anybody from the government comes into my store, I will physically throw them out,” said Simon Elkrief, president of Microserve Inc. “This has become Communist Quebec.”

Another angry Anglophone is Howard Galganov, an advertising executive who founded the militant Quebec Political Action Committee.

In April, he organized a protest by more than 2,000 English-rights demonstrators at a suburban shopping center, demanding bilingual signs on local branches of nationwide retail chains.

He was among the speakers at a June rally in Ottawa attended by 7,000 people urging the federal government to take bolder action in support of national unity.

Galganov said that during the Parti Quebecois convention in November, he will open a retail store displaying equally large French and English signs in defiance of the language laws.

“Is Lucien Bouchard prepared to be Quebec’s first premier to create Quebec’s first political prisoner over language?” Galganov asked.

Alliance Quebec, an English-rights group, commissioned a poll in May; it said that 60% of Anglophone Quebeckers would leave if the province separated from Canada. Many Anglophones, especially those under 40, aren’t waiting.

Jedeiken’s 18-year-old daughter, Miri, said she and many friends are heading away from Quebec for university and don’t plan to return, because jobs for Anglophones are increasingly scarce.

“We’re all angry,” said Miri, who speaks French fluently but says her accent immediately identifies her as an Anglophone. “We’ve grown up here like any other French kids, but we’re not treated the same.

“It’s sad,” she added. “I love Montreal. It’s such a great city.”