Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 770
The question naturally arises as to what extent this large predominance of French people implies the use of the French language. There is very much misunderstanding in regard to the French spoken in Montreal. It happens once in every while that some English visitor, meaning no harm, refers to it as a “patois.” The effect is like throwing a brick into a beehive. There is no point of their nationality on which the French Canadians are so touchy as on their language. Proud and confident of their quite imperfect English, they are sensitive to a degree about their practically perfect French. All the more so as many people, both in Great Britain and the United States, suppose that what is spoken in Montreal is not really French.
The point is one that will stand some explanation. The written French of the books and of the journalism of Montreal, and of the speech of educated French Canadians in Montreal, is just as much French, just as much and just as little, as the speech of the English people is English. We are speaking here, of course, not of Frenchmen who have come out from France, or English people just out from England, but of people born and raised in this country or brought to it in such early childhood as fully to take on its accent. On these terms English Canadians, however well educated, going over to England are never mistaken for English, nor are Irish from Dublin, nor Australians from under the Equator. Which speech is best and which worst, and which worse still, there is no need to discuss. Certainly the English of darkest Ontario sinks low; “current” is pronounced “curnt,” and an orange becomes an “ornge.” On the other hand, there are circles in England where a railway becomes a “wailway,” from which the 4.04 train leaves at “faw faw.”
Such superiority in general as the English language of the “old country” — England, Scotland, and Ireland all three — has over the English spoken in Canada comes from the greater attention paid to voice and its cultivation in the schools. Reading aloud is almost disregarded in public education in Canada, a result of the curse of standardizing matriculation, which omits it because it “doesn’t count.” The result is well-known to anybody who ever asks a McGill student to read aloud from a book to his fellow students in the class and then lets him sit down and allows a public-school boy from England to do it. The poor old school tie has been at least good for the throat.
But this is mere rivalry of language. For the unlucky French Canadian there is no rivalry, nothing but (linguistically) master and servant. He is measured against Paris and there is no appeal. He has had to tolerate as best he could that peculiar arrogance of the old world toward the culture of the new, which, until yesterday, the new world had to bear. Such values are all shifting now and are sliding the same way — Spanish courtesy, German culture, Italian honor, and French generalship — in the wreckage that was Europe. Presently the French Canadian would perhaps rather not be mistaken for a Frenchman.
Percentage of French Population in Montreal (by Wards) and by Enclosed Municipalities
The speech of the French-Canadian habitant and the speech of the Montreal French working class is a different matter. It is not intelligible to English people who have learned French elsewhere and not mixed with French-Canadian working people. French people from France understand it easily enough, just as any of us understand the English of Somerset and very nearly understand the English of Yorkshire.
So much for comprehension. As to the words used, there are in both the spoken and printed French of Montreal, innumerable English words, some taken over without change and some with shifts of spelling or oddities of pronunciation. But so there are, though not so many, in the French spoken in Paris. Most English people know very little of the French language, little more than lies within the circle of an Ollendorff, or other “grammar,” and a few trips across the Channel. Yet they have an easy and arrogant assumption that they know French. When such people come to Montreal and see in the newspapers and hear in speech this peculiar vocabulary of English words they think how different it is from the purity of Paris. They find themselves invited to lunch (longsh), even to luncher, to take a biftek in a bar with a songwidge, to attend a mitting where they meet un gentleman or une flirt, un jocky or un dandy, and so on endlessly — not realizing that all these terms are Parisian French. So, too, a long list of words dealing with railways and transportation, where England led France — railway, express, tramway — and so on, just as the English language bows to the cuisine of France and talks of a soufflé à pâté, a filet mignon, etc. The list of these words is not only endless but includes many words hidden under a new spelling such as boulingrin and rosbif. Others have a shift of pronunciation, very droll to English ears, such as the sporting term outsider, pronounced in French with the accent changed and turned into oot-see-dáre. Naturally in Montreal, and in all French Canada, there appears also a long list of locally accepted English words, names of companies, localities, organizations, etc. Not one could he bothered talking of the Y.M.C.A. to call it anything else; or to translate “le McGill Cricket Club,” or to call the C.P.R. le Say-Pay-Air. There are a lot of words that arise from the workingmen of both races being under one boss: boss itself, and job, and foreman, freight, and switch, shed, winch, and so on. Some combinations are very odd, “saut morisette,” the French-Canadian spelling for “somersault,” the two spellings both missing the mark, like bracketed shots of gunfire. Compare Sainte-Folle for Stanfold, and wind up with Saint-Abroussepoil, which means Sandy Brook Point.
But when allowance is made for all these peculiar factors of the situation the written French of the metropolitan journals of Montreal is just as good French as the English of the English newspapers is good English.
Some French Canadians would go further and say “better.” They like the idea that their language in Canada has retained the original purity of the seventeenth century, the age of Louis XIV, of Racine and Molière, lost in France under later innovation. They like to recall that Father Charlevoix, in his visit to Quebec and Montreal in 1721, said that nowhere was the language spoken with greater purity (plus purement).
It is hard to sustain or refute this claim without getting lost in philology. Charlevoix probably meant by “purity” freedom from alien elements. But the original French of Canada was mixed as between Île de France (Paris), Brittany, Poitou, and so on. Moreover, old French is not necessarily good French any more than English must be good if it can be proved to be old. Compare in the Ontario English of the farmer and laborer the phrase, “You hadn’t ought to go,” this, especially when pronounced, as they do pronounce it, “You hedden’t ought to go,” is enough to bring tears of joy to the failing eyes of a philologian. It is a beautiful old Anglo-Saxon pluperfect subjunctive preserved in the people’s speech a thousand years, like a fly in amber, a toad in a stone, or any other such ecstasy. Except on such ground as this we cannot rejoice over Montreal workingmen still saying icitte for ici.
Similarly the French-Canadian habitants of the countryside using bygone forms of bygone French dialects when they make a number of nouns feminine which at Paris are masculine: une incendie, une honneur, une orage, une (e)squelette, and so on. These only reflect the confusion of the old Latin genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) breaking down into two, like waters in a Canadian rapid divided by a rock. There seems to be no sense in retaining such divergences. Nor the antique dropping of vowels which changed sud to su and œuf to oe; nor the mixed-up use of what grammarians call liaison and hiatus, as when a French-Canadian habitant turns the Parisian cent hommes into cenz’ hommes, avant hier into avanz hier, changes donne-m’en into donne-moi-z-en, or rather not changes, but retains an old form. Compare, on either side of the Atlantic, “Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre. Il reviendra-z-à Paques,” etc.
Such vagaries are for the peasant to use, the philologian to put on a card index, and the Société du Parler Français of Montreal to exterminate at sight. They have no more place in the cultivated speech of Montreal society than “them there” has in a London drawing room.
If one turns from the French spoken in Montreal to the English spoken by the French the case is quite different. Almost all the French people understand English and speak it well enough for the business of the day in shops or factories; understand it to the full satisfaction at movies and at public meetings. All young French Canadians, even below the college class, can read English books if light enough but sink easily among hard sentences and long words. Anyone in Montreal unable to speak English and asking his way in French is probably newly arrived from a locality where French is used. In this “bilingualism,” as far as it goes, the French are immeasurably in advance of the English. Most English people in Montreal cannot follow a French movie or a French speech or buy and sell in French. They don’t need to. The French, conversely, have to.
But one must not exaggerate, as the Montreal French themselves do, the extent of their bilingual grip on English. Real bilingualism is very rare, in Montreal or anywhere. It can only exist where necessity and opportunity combine, and where a native taste and aptitude give a further aid to circumstance. Many Montreal French people speak French with their children at home and send them to the English schools and colleges. Such children, if they continue to mix in both circles, become bilingual to a great extent.
Yet where the French fall short is when they try to write in English, not casual writing but books intended as literature. Here something is wanting, and the something wanting means, in a sense, everything. The English written is all right, the words all right, grammar and sentences, punctuation and paragraphs all right. Everything is correct — but that is all. There is a dead flatness, a dull uniformity of style, nothing of that turn and touch of language that illuminates and attracts. What they succeed in doing would be, of course, utterly beyond the English to do in reverse direction. Yet of the dull biographies and such, written in English by French Canadians, the best one can say is that they convey the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
There is here intended nothing derogatory, no fault implied. People who can write at their very best in each of two languages must have a very low best to write at.
Most of the French in Montreal mispronounce English to a certain extent, offering no injury to an English ear. It is our English habit to throw a heavy accent on the first syllable of all combination words like crow-bar, sheep-skin, etc. The list is legion. A French Canadian, talking English, is detected as such at once by saying crow-bar (both alike), sheep-skin, and so on.
The almost complete social separation of the French and English in Montreal is as extraordinary as it is unfortunate. It seems to have begun very soon after the conquest. A certain number of newcomers, as notably and typically James McGill, mingled with the French and married among them. But most of the British traders who first came up to Montreal from the provinces were, as seen above, very unpopular. Other British people, coming out from home, kept themselves to themselves as soon as there were enough of themselves to keep to. This separation persisted. It was an object of frequent remark a hundred years ago.
The separation no doubt arises from the historical relation of the two races, from the difference of religion (as apart from the later influx of Irish), from the separation of the children at school, and from the fact that British people have an insular difficulty in learning a foreign language. Each race sees too well the faults, too dimly the merits, of the other. The English think that many of the French are priest-ridden; the French think that many of the English are badly in need of a priest. The English think that those of the French who are crooked are crooked in a selfish, petty way, using favoritism for little jobs. The French think that the English, when crooked, are crooked in a big, unselfish way, stealing a million at a time out of a franchise and giving silver cups to golf clubs. Merit, we say, passes unrecognized. All the English admit that, but for the French, Montreal would have had prohibition. But they differ in their degree of gratitude.
Nor does intermarriage help. There is very little of it; it is discouraged, generally speaking, on both sides, yet not discouraged enough to make it romantic and attractive. There is no civil marriage in Montreal (law of Quebec Province); marriage is only by the clergy, and for mixed marriages the Roman Catholic Church refuses to recognize the status of Protestant ministers. An example of this relative rarity of intermarriage is seen in a family history book recently printed (for personal circulation only) by one of the best-known families of Montreal, too well known to mention. The book traces the descent of all the family and its intermarriages since its ancestor arrived in Montreal soon after the conquest. The index of the names of the family includes in all five hundred names, of which one hundred names are those of the family itself, while the other four hundred represent intermarriage and collaterals. Of all these less than a dozen can be definitely distinguished as French.
A certain small number of French families are exceptions to what has been said. French boys are sometimes sent to English boarding schools, for the sake of their traditional form of education — full of open air, exercise, and independence, with study doggedly accepted under threat of punishment. Some French people admire this type of education; most don’t. Most of all, French boys have always been sent from Montreal to the Royal Military College at Kingston, a grand old institution, with a sound outlook in all directions, military glory for the French cadets, hard work for the Scots, and Rugby football for the English. The heads of some French families, also, have been business associates with the English in a large way, and have grown too rich to live anywhere else than among the English.
Out of these exceptions is made a considerable group of French who spend most of their time with the English — a group that looks large in a small circle but almost like nothing in the whole ambit of the city. Even at that, these praiseworthy exceptions are often called “anglifiés” by their fellow French. In the French language to be “anglifié” means something about as rotten as “Frenchified” does in English . . .
A visible sign of the separation is seen in the peculiar duality of all social and charitable organizations. The St. James’s Club of Montreal, its oldest and largest, situated on the English side, has as its opposite number, a mile east, the Club St. Denis. The University Club, situated, as has been seen, on the site of Hochelaga, corresponds to the Cercle Universitaire, a mile and a half away, dispossessed by the everlasting English of what should in fairness be its own bones and pipes and tomahawks. Even the softer bond of innocence and union of the Junior League could not encircle the Ligue de la Jeunesse Féminine. The Boy Scouts must face, or scoot away from, the Scouts Catholiques. The Board of Trade is not the Chambre de Commerce, and money given to the Federated Charities is distinct from any contribution to the Fédération des Œuvres de Charité. The Deaf and Dumb hear nothing of the Sounds-Muets. The blind grope their separate ways. There are two ways of being “incurable” in Montreal, two forms of “isolation” and of “insanity,” and at least three methods of “maternity” — in French, in English, and in Hebrew.
Certain things, of course, are overwhelmingly French or English (British) by national habit and inclination. Nearly all the golf clubs are British, since the Royal Montreal Golf Club was one of the first founded by the Scots in America (1873). But Laval sur le Lac is French. The curling clubs, as far as can be seen through the mist at their Saturday luncheons, are either Scotch or full of Scotch. The great luncheon clubs and service clubs downtown which carry on the Indian tradition of oratory are, of necessity, English-speaking, owing to the rarity in North America of guest speakers to talk in French.
A real exception is the Alliance Française, half French, half English, made up of people who can understand French and people who wish they could. Another exception is the Montreal Stock Exchange, knowing only English, and snappy at that, on its “floor,” but whose transactions are all translated into terms of French exchange in the Montreal French press.
A happy exception, productive of much good, is seen in the case of the Bar of Montreal. This has to be bilingual — judges, juries, lawyers, jailers, and all. Both criminals and litigants are far too open-minded to confine their activities to their own people. A Roman Catholic would just as soon murder a Protestant as a Roman Catholic, indeed sooner. Real estate has no religion and property no proper speech. Witnesses see with two eyes but testify with one tongue. Hence the English judges and lawyers (at the bar) in Montreal must and do talk French, from which results, as between English and French lawyers in Montreal, a more complete good will (as far as lawyers dare entertain such) than between any other two classes.
Education, the most vital function, we are told, of civilized society, the only hope, it is often thought, for a united people with a common patriotism, is separated in Montreal as completely as with the crosscut of a sword. People are so used to this in Montreal that they do not commonly realize its full significance. Elsewhere it would seem appalling, like Turks and Christians, Moslems and Hindus. “Education in the province of Quebec,” writes Dr. Percival, the Protestant Director, “is unlike that in any part of the world,” The Roman Catholics have one set of schools, the Protestants another, a Protestant Committee and a Roman Catholic Committee as the head authorities (at Quebec), and everything divided below, school boards, curriculums, matriculation, degrees, etc. There is a Protestant Board of School Commissioners for Montreal, as distinct from the Roman Catholic, other boards for other municipalities on the island, a Central School Board with a (slight) supervision over all Protestant boards, and all utterly distinct from the Roman Catholics. All schools are nominally clerical; a Turk is a Protestant; so is a Jew. There are so few Protestant French that, apart from the Irish, “Protestant” means English-speaking and “Roman Catholic” means French.
There are in Montreal 227 Roman Catholic public schools with 118,000 pupils; for Protestants, 47 schools with 29,000 pupils. For all French pupils the language of instruction is French, that is, they learn arithmetic in French, a thing either done in infancy or never completely done. English children learn in English. Each language is also taught in the schools of the other, and very well taught, as a school subject. Montreal schools use the direct method of teaching, not the wretched grammar and translation of Ontario, New York, and such backward localities, but the natural way of teaching, naming things, not translating names, calling a spade une pelle.
