Last year, my oldest daughter, Dahlia, dared me to take her to Paris, suggesting we leave her three younger sisters behind. After years of resisting, she'd developed an interest in learning French, which surprised me. It also got me thinking about my own conflicted feelings toward the French language. I was born and raised in Montréal and, although my mother likes to call me a Québécoise, no French-Canadian ever would. My parents were immigrants to Canada — my father from South Africa, my mother from India (by way of Australia) — who didn't speak French. They settled on the West Island of Montréal, where mostly Anglophones lived. I spoke only English until fourth grade, when my parents put me into a French immersion program, which I attended through high school. I learned math and economics in French; I even began dreaming in French. My diaries from those high school years are littered with French phrases and slang, a jumble of sentences in two languages. In eleventh grade, I remember listening to my teacher and thinking, Is he speaking in French or English? I had become so immersed in both languages that my brain didn't need to translate from French to English anymore. I could absorb my second language like it was my first — and I loved it. But there were also complications. When I was coming of age in the '80s and '90s, the province of Québec was waging a war against the English language. The Québec separatist movement started gaining momentum in the early 1970s. In 1977, when I was 4 years old, the National Assembly passed Bill 101, defining French as the official language of Québec. The law slowly transformed the multicultural, immigrant-filled city. Street signs in Montréal were changed — St. Lawrence Street became Rue St. Laurent. Commercial signs had to be in French, or at the very least the French sign had to be bigger than the English one or the business owner would be fined. If you called a library, even an English-language one, or a store with an English-speaking owner, they were obliged to say "Bonjour, Hello"— always the French greeting first. Houses went up for sale all over our neighborhood, as thousands of Anglophones left Montréal. As one of those who stayed, I felt judged. Once, when walking around speaking English with my friends, I heard rude comments like "En…
Last year, my oldest daughter, Dahlia, dared me to take her to Paris, suggesting we leave her three younger sisters behind. After years of resisting, she'd developed an interest in learning French, which surprised me. It also got me thinking about my own conflicted feelings toward the French language. I was born and raised in Montréal and, although my mother likes to call me a Québécoise, no French-Canadian ever would. My parents were immigrants to Canada — my father from South Africa, my mother from India (by way of Australia) — who didn't speak French. They settled on the West Island of Montréal, where mostly Anglophones lived. I spoke only English until fourth grade, when my parents put me into a French immersion program, which I attended through high school. I learned math and economics in French; I even began dreaming in French. My diaries from those high school years are littered with French phrases and slang, a jumble of sentences in two languages. In eleventh grade, I remember listening to my teacher and thinking, Is he speaking in French or English? I had become so immersed in both languages that my brain didn't need to translate from French to English anymore. I could absorb my second language like it was my first — and I loved it. But there were also complications. When I was coming of age in the '80s and '90s, the province of Québec was waging a war against the English language. The Québec separatist movement started gaining momentum in the early 1970s. In 1977, when I was 4 years old, the National Assembly passed Bill 101, defining French as the official language of Québec. The law slowly transformed the multicultural, immigrant-filled city. Street signs in Montréal were changed — St. Lawrence Street became Rue St. Laurent. Commercial signs had to be in French, or at the very least the French sign had to be bigger than the English one or the business owner would be fined. If you called a library, even an English-language one, or a store with an English-speaking owner, they were obliged to say "Bonjour, Hello"— always the French greeting first. Houses went up for sale all over our neighborhood, as thousands of Anglophones left Montréal. As one of those who stayed, I felt judged. Once, when walking around speaking English with my friends, I heard rude comments like "En…