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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1221

Part of Session 193: Transcultural networks and neighborhoods (Other abstracts in this session)

The right of origin vs. the right of multiculturalism Maillardville, the neighborhood of discordance in Vancouver Canada

Authors: Vigouroux, Cécile
Submitted by: Vigouroux, Cécile (Simon Fraser University, Canada)

Linguistic debates in Canada have long been articulated along a French/English divide.  The marking of Francophone identity through the French language is intertwined with years of struggle for legal rights, becoming especially prominent after the 1960’s. Language is the key distinguishing feature between Anglophones and Francophones, making it a core political issue and a topic of repeated debates.

In provinces such as British Columbia, where French is a minority language and not officially recognized as one of the languages of the province (1,3% of declared Francophones in 2006, according to Statistic Canada) and where it coexists with other minority languages, some Francophones have framed the debate as a struggle for linguistic legitimacy over other minority groups, based on the right of origin.  In their narrative, Francophones claim of being one of the original founding peoples of Canada and so deserving public recognition through language. They also invoke “equal weight for equal languages,” a call for equal status for French and English based on the fact of federal English-French bilingualism. However, I argue that these arguments quickly clash with issues of funding and practicality, in neighborhoods where the dominant minority language may be a migrant language such as Mandarin or Punjabi thereby creating a highly politicized environment around language.

This presentation aims at exploring tensions around Canadian on-the- ground-multiculturalism and official French-English “on-paper bilingualism.” These tensions are epitomized in Maillardville, a hundred-year old Francophone settlement on the outskirts of Vancouver that began its life as a mill town, populated by Francophones from Quebec. Although it is known as and referred to as a Francophone area, there is today little remaining visual evidence of a Francophone population in the area, aside from a few business signs, French street names, and some typical French Canadian housing architecture that echo an earlier era. Instead, the linguistic landscape of today’s Maillardville reflects the ethnic diversity of Vancouver. Despite this multicultural composition, the myth of the “Francophone village” persists.

The case of Maillardville prompts us to revisit issues of linguistic minorities in light of that of legitimacy. For Francophones in Vancouver, legitimacy is tied to their long history of settlement in the province combined with a federal recognition of their linguistic rights. For other groups, it is performed through daily language practices in the neighbourhood and display of multilingualism on shop windows and in written advertisements. The city’s choice of language (besides English) to communicate with the local community is determined by concerns of practicality based on numbers of speakers and their need. I argue that the “numbers of French speakers” versus “due recognition” is at the heart of the politicization of the French language, and by extension, the Francophone identity, in this part of Canada.