Week 14: Language

 Language

Canada may officially be a bilingual country, but the only bilingual province is New Brunswick.  French is the only official language in Quebec, while the rest of county is officially English.

My late father-in-law, Kenneth Joseph Eric Legere, was very proud of his Acadien heritage.  He was born and raised in Port Elgin, New Brunswick.  Being from a French family, he would have grown up speaking French at home and with relatives, but undoubtedly had to speak English at school.  As a young man, in the 1950s, he moved to Ontario for employment opportunities.  He met and married an Ontario girl and their sons were born in Ontario.

As a young boy, my husband can remember speaking French with his father and English with his mother in the family home.  But at some point in the mid-1960s, Ken decided to only allow English to be spoken.  He felt that his employment opportunities were hindered by his French accent and did want his sons to suffer the same.  

Of course in hindsight, that decision was a determent as within a few years, Canada officially became bilingual and there were more opportunities for people fluent in both languages.  A few years ago, my husband was working retail in Ottawa and made some attempt at resurrecting his French but was not able to become fluent in it.  

My husband and his first wife chose to not put their children into French immersion when they started school in the 1990s.  Likely because it was not as common at that point as it is now.  I do not believe it has been a hindrance for them work-wise.  However, my stepdaughter has encountered assumptions that she would be bilingual because of her surname.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 22: Reunion

Image
 REUNION I have been fortunate to have grown up in a family that valued family gatherings.  As a child, I did resent having to travel 4 hours (each way) every holiday weekend back to my grandparents.  However, as my interest in genealogy and family history developed, I appreciate having grown up knowing not just my aunts, uncles and first cousins, but the aunts, uncles and first cousins of both of my parents.  My parents were from the same small community in Simcoe County, Ontario and both families lived in that area for several generations.   Before my time, the Allens (my fathers side) had started an annual family reunion at a provincial park near Barrie Ontario.  It was established as the descendants of my great-grandparents: William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland.  My grandfather, Henry "Harry" Woodland Allen was the youngest of 12, so there were many many descendants as Harry as well as many of his siblings had large families themselves....
Read more

Week 10: Siblings

Image
 SIBLINGS My interest in genealogy stems from the closeness I witnessed all my life of my father and his siblings.  As I got older, I realized that that closeness would have been a result of the closeness their father had with his siblings. My grandfather, Henry "Harry" Woodland Allen (born June 27, 1897) was the youngest of 12 children of William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland.  On the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary, the large extended families of William and Mary Jane gathered to celebrate the milestone at a local public park.  I do not know if that was the start of the family reunion or not, but the children of that couple established an annual Allen Family Reunion, held at a Provincial Park near Barrie Ontario.  These reunions have fizzled out, but I do remember attending some during my childhood in the 1960s.  The reunions were scheduled for the last Saturday in August.  We travelled from Kingston to Brentwood every holiday weeke...
Read more

Week 24: Artistic

Image
 ARTISTIC I have made mention before of the needlework crafts done by my mother, Eveleen "Sis" Allen (nee Schell).  As a young girl she learned the usual knitting and crotchet as well as tatting from relatives.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember if it was her paternal grandmother, Mary Schell (nee Deadman), who lived with them (the woman was quite ill her last few years of life) or one of her many aunts that frequently visited.  Some of the lessons may have come from her mother, Irene Schell (nee Bates) but for most of my mother's childhood her mother was busy helping on the family farm as well as providing room and board for one of the local teachers.  Mom used to say that she and her sister Lena were rarely given cooking lessons by their mother as the woman would be rushing to get the meal done and did not have time to teach her daughters.  So I suspect there was similar limited time for teaching needlework. Growing up, I would see my mother knitting and c...
Read more