The owner of a Verdun depanneur had his store vanadalized after a series of events resulting from his inability or unwillingness to speak French.
CTV is reporting (HERE) that Anthony Williams, owner of a convenience store east of Montreal, has seen a drop in his business after a confrontation with a customer last week because he wasn't serving customers en français.
That apparently led to a call from a radio station, not identifying it as such, in which Mr. Williams went into quite a long rant about welfare cases doing nothing but smoking and drinking beer. That rant was broadcast. The business owner claims in the article that he'd been receiving as many of 50 harassing phone calls a day about his serving customers in English, and didn't know he was speaking to a radio station.
As for the vandalism, it was reportedly dog feces smeared on the a store window. Thankfully it wasn't worse, like those idiots in Vancouver. I am not condoning any act of vandalism no matter how minor. I'm merely making the point that at least no property damage was done. Obviously the person responsible for the vandalism is either or child or has the mentality of one.
But the point that needs to be made here, is that any retail business operating in a predominately French area, of a province with French as its only official language....they really should serve French speaking customers in the frickin French language. Duh!!!!
Imagine a convenience store setting up shop just outside of Toronto, say in Oshawa, with an owner/operator who only spoke Chinese. How long do you think the place would stay in business?
Hopefully the residents wouldn't stoop to harassing phone calls and vandalism, but I bet there'd be precious few customers coming in for smokes if they had to ask for them in Mandarin.
Canada's Québecois have been recognized as a nation by the Harper government. Given that status and the pride Quebecers have in their culture and language, this kind of reaction is perhaps easier to understand, although vandalism and harassment should never be condoned.
But French speaking Quebecers also understand the fragility of their language, given that they are but a small island in a sea of English, and unfortunately some over do go over the top.
The solution is simple, shop somewhere else, $$$ is the language all business speaks.
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2 comments:
"Imagine a convenience store setting up shop just outside of Toronto, say in Oshawa, with an owner/operator who only spoke Chinese. How long do you think the place would stay in business?"
Hi there, while googling for this story, I came across your blog. Hope you don't mind some feedback.
Your quote above is particularly amusing because it has quite a flawed comparison.
01. Oshawa is quite far outside of Toronto - the largest city in Ontario. This convenient store is not located outside of the city-centre of Montreal but in it.
02. Toronto is home to many convenience stores where the owners do not speak a word of English. The stores thrive. This sustained economic success is partly because of the larger more diverse and multilingual population. I'm not sure how Toronto got the label for being English-only, because I've often had to sign language my way through business transactions in small towns. This directly answers your following question: "I bet there'd be precious few customers coming in for smokes if they had to ask for them in Mandarin."
03. The owner is of Nigerian descent, so he does indeed, speak one of the two main languages of Canada. Quebec is, indeed a Francophone province, but it exists within a federally, bilingual state and as such it cannot ignore this linguistic reality. Being "recognized as a nation" by a transient government party is not the same as being a sovereign state.
04. "French speaking Quebecers also understand the fragility of their language". The French language has sustained itself for more than 500 years in Canada and, in fact, has many linguistic pockets outside of Quebec that are often ignored and unsupported. There is no union among the balkanized Francophone regions of Canada, which is what truly undermines their strength as a "linguistic people". Moreover, current scholars are quick to point out that the most recent and pressing threat to the French language is not from these isolated cases of monolingual Anglophones but Francophones themselves who have allowed Anglophone culture and language to eclipse their language, embedding it with lexical items and syntactic changes that are completely foreign to French.
It's a pity that so many Quebeckers, Francophone and Anglophone alike, allow themselves to pulled into these tiresome and ceaseless debates about language.
At any rate, I suggest reading an article by the scholar Leigh Oakes regarding language issues in Canada.
Cheers then.
Thank you for reading, okay...let's go point by point.
Oshawa is about 30/40 minutes to the east of Toronto...your point is somewhat valid however I will point out that Verdun was a suburb of Mont pre amalgamation and is majority French speaking.
If you're on Montreal's west island there are many deps where English is the langue du jour. The downtowns of Toronto and Montreal are very multi-cultural, Verdun much less so.
Your 3rd point...with respect to the owner speaking one of Canada's official language, but not that of Quebec. Would you advise a convenience store owner in Ontario that speaking French is good enough? After all, its one of Canada's official languages if not Ontario's.
The only area in Canada where I know French to be widely spoken is on the Acadian penninsula of NB. Yes there are other pockets in places like Manitoba, Northern Ontario...even Newfoundland. But in my experience these groups have been so marginalized that everyone I've ever met from these communities is very capable in the English language.
As for the influence of English on the French language, that's inevitable, on peut pas l'éviter (a french word used in English). Language is not static and to survive it must adapt...quant à moi c'est good ça.
As for your reading suggestion, I will gladly give the good scholar a read...I'm sure she has her opinions just as I have mine.
If you're going to set up a retaill business in a primarily French speaking area...learn the freaking language, d'uh, its common sense.
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