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National Geographic : 1977 Apr
Contents
spanned half a continent. Men of New France set out to build forts in what is now Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, all the way south to New Orleans. Across the tourist-thronged square from the gigantic hostelry called Chat teau Frontenac, a diorama with sound and light dramatizes the approach of doom: the British burning their way along the St. Law rence, taking Quebec City in 1759. A long day's drive away to the east, along the Baie des Chaleurs at the base of the Gasp6 Peninsula, I see a battered hulk: a remnant of one of the ships sent to reinforce the French Army that still hoped to recapture Quebec City in 1760. The convoy met a superior British squadron. It was 56 cannon against 265, and the end of New France. TODAY the Gasp6 coast is an ethnic mo saic, the legacy of French-speaking Aca dians evicted from New Brunswick; of Loyalists who fled the newly separated Unit ed States;* of Irishmen fleeing famine and religious oppression. Some villages are pre ponderantly Anglophone. Around Perc6,I note in the telephone book, live several families named Vibert. Anglophone or Francophone? Their common ancestor Peter Vibert came from the island of Jersey four generations ago. Today Clarence Vibert speaks no French. His cousin Andrew Vibert speaks no English; he pronounces his name Veebear. Andrew's bilingual brother, Normand, ex plains: "Father, who spoke English, learned French to please mother, who didn't. He named the kids Ruth, Arthur, Edith, Mabel...." He'd be out fishing for days at a time, or away for weeks in winter, cutting wood. So the mother's language took over at home. It's a classic way of assimilation. The town of Gasp6 itself has changed in the past fifty years from 80 percent Anglo phone to 80 percent Francophone. The local bishop tells me a predecessor started it. He established a hospital, a teachers' training school, a seminary-employing hundreds of newcomers, all French speakers. Young Anglophones find few good jobs in Gaspe nowadays, I am told. "If a girl speaks only passing French, she can sell patatesfrites, but how could she work for a lawyer? She couldn't type a letter without mistakes." *See "The Loyalists: Americans With a Difference," by Kent Britt, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, April 1975. Montreal at their feet, window washers scale the 49-story Royal Bank Building. High-rise office buildings attest to the city's prominence as a commercial nerve center. This ethnic mosaic of 1.2 million people in cludes only 185,000 whose mother tongue is English. Linguists by law, immigrants unskilled in either English or French attend a class en frangais(right). Law 22,passed in 1974,calls for more businesses and classes to be con ducted in the language spoken by the major ity of Quebec's people. 446
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