Across Canada, Francophones Fade

Aime Gauthier knows the odds against keeping French alive on the Canadian prairie. His wife’s sister and two brothers have largely abandoned their native tongue, even in their homes.

Gauthier and his wife, Lucie, are proud to have reared four French-speaking children, who now send their own children to public schools controlled by the Francophone community.

The Gauthiers also are fluent in English--a necessity in this province, where only 2.3% of the population speaks French. But they cherish the heritage of the French explorers, trappers and missionaries who were the first colonists in this region.

“They have been saying for a long time that we were going to disappear,” Gauthier said. “The more they take things away from us, the more we fight.”

The Gauthiers are part of the larger struggle for cultural survival among French Canadians--outnumbered almost 4 to 1 by English-speaking Canadians. Of the 6.3 million Canadians whose first language is French, only 600,000 live outside Quebec.

Although Canada has two official languages--French and English--it is not a bilingual country. Only about 16% of Canadians can speak both languages well. It is, as many Canadians say, a land of “two solitudes,” two peoples who hardly understand each other.

The Official Languages Act of 1969 commits the Canadian government to offering services in both French and English, where numbers warrant, and to enhancing the vitality of French- and English-speaking communities where they are in the minority.

Under the law, package labels across Canada are in both languages, and government agencies try to have a French-speaker available. Telephone calls in French to health, tax and police agencies in Manitoba--including a branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police--all ended with a French-speaking employee on the line.

But Gauthier said he and other Francophones often resort to English in face-to-face encounters in government offices.

“If you ask for service in French, they treat you like a troublemaker,” he said. “Everybody speaks English, so why do you have to ask for French?”

Victor Goldbloom, commissioner of official languages, says providing services in both languages remains “an elusive goal.”

Minority-language communities feel “more, not less, vulnerable and threatened,” he said.

Across Canada, more than a third of Francophones outside Quebec use English more often than French even in their own homes. In the westernmost provinces--Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia--the figure is 60%.

The right-wing Reform Party, based in the West, where Francophones are few, opposes accommodations to Quebec and questions the cost of providing government services in French nationwide. Reform is now Canada’s main opposition party, holding 60 seats in the 301-seat House of Commons.

The 1996 census data, to be released in December, is expected to document the steady decline of French-speaking communities outside Quebec and of the English-speaking population in Quebec.

Quebec separatists accuse Goldbloom of glossing over the extent of assimilation and contend that French can survive only in an independent Quebec.

In Quebec, where the 5.7 million Francophones account for 83% of the population, provincial law requires that French predominate in business and that immigrants send their children to French-language schools.

The province’s leaders decry parallels drawn between the Anglophone minority in Quebec and tiny French communities in the West. They say those who speak English are more secure because theirs is the dominant language of North America and of global trade.

Quebec officials hesitate to speculate on the impact their province’s independence could have on those who speak French in other parts of Canada. But Gauthier reflects the fears of many non-Quebec Francophones when he says independence “would be a disaster for the rest of us.”

Jacques Michaud, president of the federation of Francophone communities, said French minorities often suffer from a backlash against Quebec’s language policies and its efforts to secede.

“It’s worrisome for the communities in Alberta and British Columbia,” he said of provinces where Francophones make up less than 1% of the population.

Michaud is discouraged that many Canadians see dual languages as a problem rather than a national asset. He also is troubled by budget cuts at the publicly financed Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that threaten French-language radio and television services--a lifeline for isolated settlements.

“If we don’t protect the language, in a couple of generations it will disappear,” he said.

Manitoba’s 25,000 Francophones have regained their rights through lengthy legal battles. The province was bilingual until 1890, when its government made English the only official language. In 1979, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned that law.

In 1993, the court threw out a 1916 act abolishing French-language education in Manitoba and affirmed the French-speaking community’s right to control its own public schools. The Franco-Manitoban School Division now runs 20 institutions that together serve 4,300 students.

In La Broquerie, 35 miles southeast of Winnipeg, about 90% of the 550 residents speak French. Parents support the French-language elementary and high schools, as well as an English-language primary school.

But French is in danger of extinction in many villages with a lower percentage of Francophones.

“You have to be vigilant,” Gauthier said. “If you let it go, it’s so easy to assimilate. You are surrounded by television, radio and newspapers in English.”