The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Where Do the Two Solitudes Stand in Canada?

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

An unprecedented effort to bridge Canada's linguistic divide, Ontario's two public broadcasters, TVO Media Education Group (TVO) and TFO, present a joint bilingual special aimed at bringing together the country's anglophone and francophone communities. Inspired by Hugh MacLennan's iconic novel "Two Solitudes," which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, this bold initiative promises a unique experience in Canada's media landscape. Hosted by TVO's Steve Paikin and TFO's Sandra Padovani. WIth guests: Tasha Kheiriddin, national political columnist for Postmedia, commentator in both anglophone and francophone media, and speaker; Yann Martel, philosopher and francophone who writes in English, best known for his award-winning novel, "Life of Pi;" Stéphanie Chouinard, political science associate professor at the Royal Military College of Kingston. She does research in the fields of language rights, minority and Indigenous rights, and law and politics; Serge Dupuis, expert in the social, political, and intellectual history of francophone minorities in North America and associate member of the Chaire pour le développement de la culture d'expression française en Amérique du Nord (CEFAN) at Université Laval.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your 2-point TVO. Tonight we bring you a special presentation of the agenda with our friends from TFO, Ontario's French language TV network. I'm joined by TFO parliamentary journalist Sandra Pettivati and four guests for a program in both official languages,

French and English, on our two solitudes. That's next on the Agenda. Good evening everyone. As Canadians, we live in a country that is supposed to be officially bilingual. But if you watch television, listen to the radio, or engage on social media, you'd never know it. Indeed, Steve, English and French Canada coexist in separate bubbles without speaking too much. Even if most French speakers speak English and many English speakers have learned French, in reality, we hardly never mix the two.

We're going to change that. Tonight, we have a one-hour special program where French and English will be spoken interchangeably with all of our guests. We are broadcasting simultaneously on both TVO and TFO, here at the William G. Davis Studio in Midtown Toronto. Yours truly will handle the English language hosting duties. Sandra Parravani will do the same in French. And subtitles are translating the conversation

so those who are not bilingual can understand everything. Sandra, bienvenue. Thank you so much, Steve. It's a great pleasure to share this show with you. Same here, we're very happy to be here. Thank you so much for having us. I'm going to do mostly in English, but I want to practice my French a little bit, okay?

No problem. And then we'll tackle the French. That's a problem. Yes, indeed. Now, I notice over my shoulder there is a flag for Franco-Ontarians. Maybe you should explain it. Explain a little bit the meaning of this flag. The meaning of this flag. The meaning of this flag on the screen. Oh my God, that was very difficult.

It was perfect, Steve. Well, thank you so much for this gesture. It's actually the Franco-Ontarian flag, as you said, and this is the 50th anniversary this year in 2025. And I wanted to add that every province and territories have their own Franco flag. So I think that's pretty interesting. Je voudrais que mon français était assez bien que votre anglais. Vous êtes incroyable. No, no, no. It took years and I'm still learning, so no, no. J'ai besoin beaucoup de quoi? Pratique.

Pratique. Parfait. Practice pratique. Okay. Allons-y. Shall we? Practice. Practice. Perfect. Practice, practice. Okay. Let's go. Shall we? Okay. It's your turn, madam. Okay.

80 years ago, Canadians discovered the concept of two solitudes. English and French living in the same country, but with little or no interaction. Unfortunately, 80 years later, too many of us still live in these separate solitudes. An opportunity to miss, to, to know each other better, and to enjoy the culture and customs of each one. We won't solve a problem that has been more than a century in the making in one hour.

But we can try to make a point and start a bilingual conversation in an officially bilingual country. So we will. And to take part in this conversation, we welcome with us Stéphanie Schreinar, Professor of Political Science at the Royal College of Military Studies at Kingston and Queen's University. Serge Dupuis, Associate Member of the Chair for the Development of Research on French-Speaking Culture in North America at Université Laval in Quebec City. Tasha Carradine, Political Chronicus Politico National Post. And Jan Martel, Booker Prize winner

and author of numerous books, including the mammoth bestseller, Life of Pi. Welcome, bienvenue à tous parmi nous. It is great to have you all here in our studio in Midtown Toronto for a program that, well, let's see how this goes. We've never tried anything like this before, so we're going to plunge forward.

For starters, we want to understand the two solitudes of the country and how that is relevant to your particular backgrounds. Stephanie, why don't you start us off? Sure. So I grew up in the Labrador as a Francophone. My two parents are Francophone, the Labrador being very majorly English-speaking. Obviously, I finished my secondary school in English and then went back to French in high school. Today, I've become a proud Franco-Ontarian for a little over ten years. Yann? It's a bit of a coincidence. My parents are Quebecers, but they mostly lived abroad.

They were diplomats. So I started going to school in Alaska, then in British Columbia, Ottawa, Costa Rica. There were few or no French schools, so I was admitted to school in English. I spoke French with my parents at home, but I did all my schoolwork in English. So even in France, I lived 10 years in France for the first time, even there I went to school in English.

So I did all my schoolwork in English, but I spoke French at home, and I lived 10 years in France and 10 years in Montreal. So it's a bit of the individual journey of my life, like Stephanie, actually, who made me bilingual. Tasha, your last name doesn't sound French or English, so how do you fit into this? I am a Montrealer from Iran.

That is, I come from Montreal. I'm a Montrealer by France. I come from Montreal. I'm a Montrealer by birth. My parents are from Germany, and so both of them met in Toronto before moving, actually, to Montreal, raised me in both languages because they wanted me to be bilingual. I learned French at the age of 4, from my religious sisters who lived next door to us.

When my mother came back to work, I did my high school in both languages, also in French, at junior school and senior school, as it was called in Quebec, in English, at Collège-André-Beuf after that, and at McGill in both, and I practiced law and French in Quebec. And now I am living in Toronto

and talking with you. How do you say in French, I am so jealous? Ah, je suis jaloux! Ah, je suis jaloux! Je suis jaloux, exactement, je suis jaloux. Serge, à votre tour. Je suis né à Sudbury, j'ai grandi là aussi. J'ai toujours une connaissance ou compris les deux langues, mais on parlait français chez nous.

J'ai un grand-père puis des membres de la parenté qui sont anglophones, d'autres membres de la parenté qui sont francophones. Donc j'ai fait ma scolarité essentiellement en français, but I also did my PhD in English at the University of Waterloo in history. So I always took English and have read English and have kept up, tried to keep up in both languages. I've been living in Quebec City for 11 years now, so my English is rusty.

Sounds pretty good to me. While you have the floor, Serge, I would like you to weigh in on this. This is a book called Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan. Many of us have read this when we were either in university or high school. And it really does, I mean it goes back to the 1940s and paints a picture of what Canada was like entre les deux langues back then. Give us the background on this. A lot of prejudice in that book.

We're reading it recently. I found that there were a lot of preconceptions about what French Canadians were. They were bad with money. They didn't think independently outside of the church. And there were also certain stigmatization of Anglophones to the fact that they were materialists and that they held too much to British traditions and that type of thing. I didn't know that much the book. I know of the concept of two solitudes.

And I'd say in the past and still today, it does correspond to one reality. The fact that Canada has 70% of the population that is either unilingual francophone or unilingual anglophone, which means that the bilingual population, French-English bilingual that is, is very much in the minority. Now we have people who speak second or third languages or other languages, indigenous languages. There's a large trilingual population

in the area of Montreal, for example. But French English bilingual population is only about 18% in Canada. But in those days, it was about 10%. So we have gained ground on that front. So the point is, much of the country can't speak to much of the country. That's right. It's a shame.

Yeah. Serge, on this question you just addressed a little bit, how has bilingualism evolved today? More positively, more up, more down? The bi-lingus, the style, actually, around The bilingualism is actually going up around 18%. It's at this rate since the beginning of the 21st century. So, in terms of statistics, it changes by a few tenths of a percentage, but in the end, it doesn't change much.

So, the bilingual population grows at the same time as the population, in general, grows. That being said, bilingualismism is growing in some regions more than in others. It is growing the most in Quebec, especially with the help of Francophones, Alophones and Anglophones. Quebec today is the most bilingual province in Canada,

whereas the bilingualism rate is slightly receding in Ontario and is maintaining at the New Brunswick level. Stephanie, I presume we are doing a lot better since two solitudes were written. What improvements have you seen? Well, I'd like to think that there are fewer prejudices against one another. We're still in a certain element of the two solitudes, but I think that the general knowledge we have about one another is not the one from 80 years ago.

We learned to get along a little better. Obviously, the place of religion, which was very important 80 years ago, is very different in Canadian society today, especially within the Francophone population, which 80 years ago was very, very, very predominantly Catholic, Protestant. In Quebec, but also outside of Quebec, obviously, religion is much less present in everyday life today. Yann, you're from a different part of the country. What progress have you seen over the years in terms of the two solitudes?

Well, I'd say in Saskatchewan, a fairly small province, I'd say bilingualism is not maintaining itself, I'd say. It's very hard to speak a minority language. You really have to want to speak it to keep it alive. So I'd say francophones in Saskatchewan are diminishing in numbers. It's very hard to keep it up. In Quebec, I can see it maintaining itself, I guess,

because there's a real will to do it. Certainly not in Saskatchewan. To go off what Stephanie was saying, I would make the point that there's two things. There's languages and there's cultures. You know, cultures mix very easily. You know, food's an example now. We eat foods from all around the world without thinking about it.

You know, broccoli is Italian, but no one says, broccoli, because in Italy, we just eat broccoli. So cultures mix very easily. Languages don't, because you either get it or you don't. And if you don't speak a language, it's a barrier. It's a wall. And that gets in the way. So I'd say we're doing well in Canada

in terms of being multicultural, with new immigrants and all that. All these things mix in a beautiful way. When I come to Toronto, I'm amazed at the mixture of people I see and the mixture of cultures. But languages, it's hard. You either do one or the other. There is no bilingualism.

You do either one thing in one language or in the other. Well, let me push back a bit on that with Tasha. I'm sure you've been to lots of places in the world. I mean, you think of Switzerland, for example, where they have multiple languages, and people go back and forth with seeming facility all the time. We don't really have that here.

Have we failed to achieve something by not being able to do that? Well, I think part of it is utility because in Europe you have to speak more than one language because everything is close. You may go to other countries. There's opportunities and for your children also you make an effort because you want them to have those opportunities. So they will speak. My parents spoke three languages, German, French, and English when they came here.

They had learned that in school. So it was already then. That was the standard. And I think in Canada we have bilingualism, I agree, in parts of the country more because, again, it's utility. You're gonna have less bilingualism where you are not gonna use it in a daily basis for either work or school or play. And that's part of the issue is that we have been settled as a country by numerous cultures from all over the world and continue to accept new immigrants. And when they come they may have a choice they may say well I'm gonna learn one of the two languages right which makes sense for me am I gonna learn French if I live in downtown Toronto I'm which

used to learn English maybe if I live in downtown Toronto? I'm going to choose to learn English maybe. If I live in Quebec, I better learn French. So over time, people may pick one or the other and then they cannot fully engage in conversation or in culture because language and culture, I think, actually are very connected to appreciate the culture. Can I add a couple of things to this? Si vous plait. First of all, we tend to forget about this because we're talking about the two solitudes in the Canadian context, but we are in North America and the North American culture, obviously with our neighbors to the south, make it so that there's an immense pressure to have

English as a dominant language. The survival of French in North America is nothing short of a miracle, if you think about it in broader terms, if you forget about the Canadian context. Well, it didn't survive. Louisiana did it. Well, they did it. But they did it very much against several waves of very restrictive laws against, for example, the teaching of French.

And Ontario tried that too. Yeah. And this is also something we saw in Canadian history. But the other thing I wanted to mention is that when we have newcomers who come to Canada, actually a lot of them are already sensitive to the fact that there is more than one language that's spoken in Canada. And when you look at statistics, allophones, newcomers who don't have French or English as a mother tongue, are actually more inclined to value bilingualism than unilingual anglophones who already live in Canada. So, you know, we need to be careful when we talk about folks who arrive

to Canada and who don't have knowledge of one of these two languages because multiculturalism started because of this history of tolerance that we had towards each other. And I think that's important to put back in context. Actually, I don't think it's a history of tolerance. I think multiculturalism was a fact, which we've always had in this country. From our earliest days, we have had many different cultures,

predominantly English and French at the start, with indigenous people who were here. But the concept of multiculturalism as a policy or concept of multiculturalism as a policy or a state multiculturalism was introduced to dilute the French and English fact and the pressures that were felt in the 1960s around Quebec separation.

And Pierre Elliott Trudeau, he saw this as a means of sort of an escape valve for those pressures that were literally trying to tear the country apart for the better part of 40 years and two referendums subsequently and terrorist attacks that were happening in my neighborhood in Saint-Hubert in Quebec. There was the killing of Pierre Laporte. He was found actually at the end of our street in Carles. This is the Quebec Labor Minister.

So it was a very big reality at the time on the ground, and multiculturalism as a concept, this difference between reality, which I think we have, and the politics of it, which I think has actually been negative in many ways, but has also been designed to dilute bilingualism, and I think has had that effect over time. I have a question now for Stephanie and Serge. I was wondering, considering that Quebec and Francophones

are concerned with the I thought about this question because I thought we should have a long list, but if we want to keep it at three points, I feel like we could talk about disagreements or different concepts of what Canada is, I'll start with federalism. The French Canadians have long wanted to preserve and build a form of political autonomy. They believed that the annexation to the United States was not viable, and that independence was not viable either, because in the middle of the 19th century, we had 600,000 French Canadians in the Valais-Lorantienne.

So the idea of federalism of French Canadians, as Arthur Silver demonstrated in his thesis, was a form of associated state, really a federalism where we would have a lot of local skills within provincial governments. The English, who were originally British, had the impression that the provinces were a source of irritation.

And that little by little, we were evolving towards a British parliament, centralized, without really regional assembly. So already there was a disagreement on what federalism could and could not be, and I would say that this disagreement continues even today with the government of François Legault.

Secondly, for francophones outside of Quebec, there is the question of access to education. We have long deprived francophones of equitable access to education, either by laws that limited funding for Catholic separate schools or that did not provide facilities of facilities for the Francophones. There was a cause at the Supreme Court as late as 2021 on this issue, the real equality of French education. And, as Stéphanie mentioned, this form of non-territorial autonomy that the French language schools have. Thirdly, I would say that there is a disagreement also on the demographic issue.

In the middle of the 19th century, the French Canadiens formed half of the population. In the middle of the 19th century, French Canadians were half of the population. In the middle of the 20th century, we were 26%, and today we are 21%. There are several reasons that explain this demographic decline. The fact that Quebec is growing a little less quickly than Ontario or British Columbia, that's something. But there is also the fact that half of the children born in the west of Quebec, at least one francophone parent,

either won't learn French or will lose it during their lifetime. That's half of this population. And that plays a lot against bilingualism and the progression of bilingualism. People who come from those areas or who have a francophone family and who are unable, for all kinds of reasons, to preserve that language and keep it alive in their environment. So I would say there are really these three issues on which there may be differences in this perspective or ignorance, but I don't learn anything from the Francophones explaining these points.

They live them and often share these points of view. Stephanie, do you feel that there is still mistrust towards the past and what has been refused by the Francophones these last decades? Well, these past few decades, as Serge mentioned, are not just past few decades. If we look at the situation in education today, yes, since 1982, Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, which on paper is supposed to guarantee access to education for parents who come from the minority of the official language in their province, so that their children can be educated in that language. But access

to the land, in fact, the very devastating choices that parents have to make sometimes, make sure that because school is too far away, because the provincial government acts very badly, and we have provinces that are frankly, that overpass the agreement in this regard, to name only the British Columbia among others, who have gone almost half a dozen times in supreme court to this point on issues of linguistic rights since 1982, because the funding is unequal, which means that minority schools are nothing compared to majority schools. It takes parents who are convinced of making these choices, who are decisive,

which means that schools that we currently have are not only ironically overpopulated because they are built too small. We always tend to underestimate the number of children who could participate in these basins. But on the other hand, they are very unattractive in some respects compared to what is being taught to the majority. It's not to say that there is a sur-investissement in education in the provinces. We know that schools in the majority could be improved in some areas. But when we compare ourselves and as parents, it's a choice that has to be made, it becomes personally distressing, but it becomes very frustrating too. And at the moment, what we see, as Serge mentioned, is that we have lots of children who are, according to the law, right-wing people whose parents choose not to send them to those schools.

And so we have a phenomenon where the linguistic transmission is not done because we only speak French at home. And again, when we are outside of Quebec, we have the exogamy phenomenon, that is to say that one parent is French-speaking, but the other parent is English-speaking. Often, the French-speaking parent will be bilingual, the English-speaking parent won't be. So the language spoken at home will be more often English than French.

And if we don't speak French at school, well, these children, well, within a generation, they'll die. So, yeah, let me ask you, how much appetite for a genuinely bilingual country are you picking up in the country these days? Well, not much. In part, because, you know, let's be honest, to learn another language demands a real effort. I happen to learn the two, and I speak Spanish too, because I was

living in those countries. I mean, you can't and I speak Spanish too because I was living in those countries. I mean you can't live ten years in French without picking up French. You can't, if your parents speak French then you necessarily learn French. Then I went to school in English. But otherwise, I said in Saskatoon, you know, la simulation est galopante. It's very hard to speak French in Saskatoon. You can try to learn it in school but then as soon as you leave the school everything's in English. Radio, television, everyone on the street, sports, everything's in English. So it demands a real effort. Is there an appetite for that effort? I'm not sure. Other than in Quebec, and that's the one

thing about separatism, is it took all the francophoneness to itself and abandoned everyone beyond the Quebec border. The federal government has made a valiant effort. You know, supposedly when you go to Canada Post you can speak French, well you don't really, but they make that effort. But I don't think there's a real appetite, no. But is that the end of the world? I mean let's take the example of the Irish or the indigenous people, which is totally ignored in the two solitudes thing, of course they don't even talk about the indigenous people. Many of them, the Irish and the indigenous people of North

America, have lost their native languages and yet they didn't lose their culture necessarily. They're trying to bring that back. But can they bring back the dozens and dozens and dozens of indigenous languages that were spoken in Canada? Probably not. But they can certainly rescue their culture. To me that's the essential thing. I just agree with what you said about English and culture and language being together.

English, for example, there's not one English, there's dozens of English. Jamaican English is totally different from Australian English, from North American English. English is an example of a language as a tool that can adapt itself to any number of cultures. And any language can do that. So I think the indigenous people of Saskatchewan, for example,

speak wonderful English, but they're completely indigenous. They're bringing back their indigeneity, but just happen to using the tool called English. They strip away all the English stuff out of it, but they use it as a tool to express themselves. I think there's real appetite for that, for cultural survival. Linguistic survival? The only province that I remember as a writer

seeing as being genuinely bilingual was New Brunswick. That's the only place that I've done an event that was both in English and in French. I did an event in Moncton. The Fry Festival. The Fry Festival. I did an event that was quite bilingual. We asked one question in English, one question in French.

And the spectators had to get their hands dirty. Could you say the same thing about French though? The French I hear in Northern Ontario does not sound the same as the French I would hear in Quebec, or in New Brunswick, or in Paris, France. No, no, every language can adapt to where it is, like any animal, like any... we adapt ourselves. But as I said, to keep a language alive demands a real... it's like learning an instrument. If you play the violin, it's great. You also want to learn the oboe? Go ahead, it's really hard.

I'm just going to be a little bit in disagreement because the experience in Quebec, I see, Go ahead, that's really hard. If you're not a French-speaking person, you can't immerse yourself in the culture. I agree with the Indigenous communities. They certainly preserve the culture without having the language. But even there, there is a difficulty because the tradition is oral with these communities. They don't have words that can be translated, for example. You need someone who speaks to know the story, whatever it may be, transcribed in English. So there is also a movement of these communities to preserve the language,

because to fully appreciate the culture, at least basic knowledge of the language is necessary. And in Quebec, we see that. We have a whole star system, completely different from the rest of Canada, which is in French. And the people who are in that star system, they are French speakers, but they can't be appreciated fully if you can't speak some French. And people won't watch. They won't watch TV if they're in English speaking Quebec,

or sometimes they won't watch French TV because they can't. They don't get it. They don't get it. I wonder if we could be French-Ontarians without speaking French or at least understanding French. Because what we produce as a culture, as a research, is essentially done in French. And it's very rarely translated. So, who speaks the language loses the cultural identity in large part.

It's not the same case in Nacadie. I was going for that. The World Congress in Nacadie World Congress. It's an event that, depending on the region, is still held, bilingual, family parties, with people who come from Louisiana, or from New England. Often, it's people who have lost French for several generations, but who still claim to have an Acadian identity.

But to participate in the Acadian civil society today, if we don't speak French, we'll remain very marginal. That's right. And that's the difference with French Ontario, which is a very civic identity, very little rooted in Canadian French ethnicity. So we'll hear people say, My parents were French or my grandmother was French, but I'm not French, right? Even if they are Franco-Ontarian ethnically, for example. Shouldn't you raise awareness among the English speakers

about the risk of the French language disappearing if there is no framework to protect it? The question is good, and it's a reflection that I often make, for example, in relation to immersion programs. We know that there are immersion schools all over Canada. Parents make the line to have a place for their children. But, for example, the songs we learn,

the contents we teach these little children, are not the contents we learned in French schools, for example. It's as if we had created a French-speaking culture for the little English speakers in Canada who want to learn French. And it's so exciting. We have beautiful continents, why don't we share them? And I think there are cultural associations on the ground that make this effort. I think, for example, the French Theatre of Toronto here,

which presents theatre in French with English subtitles, for example, so that it is more inclusive, so that the French speakers, or even the English speakers who are interested in these plays, but who might not feel comfortable listening to this play without having a support, maybe we wouldn't see them here. But on the other hand, there is a danger of opening these doors. And we saw it, for example, with the bilingual schools experience in the 1970s,

especially in the areas where the majority language and English, these schools became assimilation homes. To have and maintain spaces of autonomy, public spaces that come out of the family home, where things happen in French, it remains essential. And that's where I think there's a tension that's not easy for Francophones in a minority situation to say, yes, we want to be open, we want to be inclusive, but at the expense of what?

And there's always some reflection to be made, I think, but to find the right balance, it's frankly not easy. You know what I'm noticing, which is kind of funny? I know we're going back and forth between French and English, and I don't know if anybody in the control room is running a stopwatch on this, but it feels like a lot more French is being spoken here than English, and I think it's because French is just a lot more fun to speak than English. Do you think that's happening?

Actually, Steve, it's so you don't understand what we're saying. Maybe that's why it's fun. I'm picking up more of this than you think. It's not too bad. One of the things, actually, one of the problems, I think, is the nature of the language. Maybe that's why it's fun. I'm picking up to speak English well, in English it's you. Whether it's the queen or the god or my child, it's you. It's his majesty. It's his majesty. But in French there is this distinction, as there is in German and in Spanish.

The fact is that French is more difficult to learn too. The time we spend learning French grammar, we don't do that in English. I remember when I learned English when I was in Ottawa, we didn't teach English grammar. English grammar doesn't exist, practically. There are little nuances like that, but English is like we're absorbing it. French is not the case. French is so... And I also notice, we all notice, that when we make a mistake, almost no one notices it.

It's anyway. It's not anyways. Anyway is not an English word. It doesn't exist. But whatever. Who, who, who, who cares? Not French. When someone speaks French and we make a mistake,

we automatically notice it. Maybe we don't say anything because we're polite, but we notice it. And it's the nature of French that we notice mistakes. We don't do it in English. So there's a kind of generosity in English that makes it easier to learn, which doesn't exist in French. We've got three pieces of tape that we're going to play during the course of our discussion here. And we asked for some input from additional voices, the first of whom is...

Okay, help me here. It's Béatrice Renée Descaries. Renée Descaries. You got it. So I pronounced it pretty well then. You got it. Okay. A pretty well then. You got it. OK. A Quebecer studying theatre at Sheridan College in Ontario.

So, Sheldon, s'il vous plait. How do you say roll the clip in French? Roll the clip is fine. Roll the clip is fine. I don't know. Roll the clip, s'il vous plait. I would say that it's a concept that has been talking to me a lot more in the last few years.

I've been living in Ontario for three years. And I come from Gartineau, Quebec. and I've been talking to myself a lot more in the last few years. I've been living in Ontario for three years, and I come from Gatineau, Quebec. So, since those last three years, it's the first time I live my time in English. And it's only now that I'm starting to understand that there's a big difference between the two cultures, I think, and that there's a big division between the two.

And I grew up in Gatineau. So, Ottawa was always the other side of the river. For me, it's just the other side of the river. It's not a big secret that the other side of the river. But no, it was a big shock when I started living in Tentelain, in England, in Ontario, that I was like, ah, OK, it's really not like at home, it's not like at home, it's not like when I'm with my family, it's different. And it home, it's not like at home, it's not like when I'm with my family, it's different.

And it was a big shock. And especially since I started thinking in English, that's when I realize, OK, I really don't know who I am in English because of that. It's a shock because I feel like a language changes a person. It's like, I speak English, it's not the same person who speaks French. It's weird to see your whole personality change just because of a language. Stephanie, to what extent does the linguistic insecurity play a decisive role in the separation of the two sides?

We're talking about duality, the in the separation of the two sides. We're talking about duality, the francophone side and the anglophone side. It's a kind of de facto rejection by insecurity. Linguistic insecurity, on the one hand, is living within the francophone community, and it doesn't really have to do with the other person's perspective. It's more about what Yann was saying earlier, that is to say, the look we put on ourselves. And the fact that young French speakers have the feeling,

in some respects, for some, that it's easier to speak English, that we have access to a culture that is easier to access in English, or that our French is simply not good enough, because we make too many mistakes, and so we self-censor ourselves. And in many young bilinguals, we feel this phenomenon of a kind of schizophrenia, that is to say that we have the impression that... And the clip in testimony a little bit, we have the impression of having two different personalities,

because our cultural references in one language and the other are not the same. I tend to make this joke when I teach in English. I tell my students, you're getting a really crappy end of the deal here because I'm much funnier in French. It's a phenomenon that we all experience when we switch to our other language. But for Francophones, in a minority situation, it's a bit of a reversed phenomenon, that is to say that in our mother tongue, we feel that we have more difficulty

than when we switch to the majority language. And that's what I see in Saskatchewan. It's quite disturbing, yes. Yes, and the kind of... the bilingual is magnificent, but in fact, mixing languages can be complicated too. And this kind of bilingualism is all attractive. When we grow up in an environment where both languages are continually mixed, where we speak a certain French that is truffle of Anglicism, it can be difficult to find

its place and then it can actually weaken our Francophone identity. And then, in fact, I've been living in Quebec for 11 years. Sometimes, when I'm tired, my French-Ontarian accent will come out a little more. And then people will say, Oh, but you're English-speaking! And then I'll say, well, no, I'm French-Ontarian. I didn't necessarily speak English before I was 8. But in their idea, in Quebec,

an English-speaking person is someone who speaks English and speaks French without an accent. Because, in fact, English-speaking people in the Quebec region have been there for two centuries. a person who speaks English and speaks French without accent. Because, in fact, the English speakers in the Quebec region have been there for two centuries, and they speak French as well as you and I. So their definition of an English speaker is someone who is perfectly bilingual. So there too, in the bubble, in Quebec, French of the 4 million, bilingual, it's something else.

They are running a stop watch back in the control room, and we are six minutes more of French than in English right now. Oh my goodness, then I think it's almost entirely your fault. A question that always comes up on this topic, and it's something that comes back quite often, that I see quite often. There are a lot of Canadian English speakers who criticize Quebec French,

but they themselves don't speak English from the United Kingdom, for example. My question is, once again, an open question for you four. Why do we see a devaluation from the English speakers of this French from Quebec? The imperial reflex. Yes, that's right, but it's precisely, and it's perhaps in Canada too, that we see the French from Quebec, it's not the French from France, and it's not necessarily the French that we learn at school either. And in Quebec, I didn't learn Quebec French at school. It was French French, French teachers. It wasn't because I was in an English-speaking system in Quebec.

It wasn't the Quebec French who taught me. So my French was different, and when I finished my studies, I went to college, it was there, the Quebec French that was taught. And it's different. So I don't know why we denigrated that, except that it's perhaps like, imperial snobbish, I don't know. It should stop, frankly. Because this exists also between, for example,

the Holland and South Africa, and like between, you know, parts of languages that have evolved differently on different territories. So I think there's as much value to Quebec or French or French-Canadian French than there is for any dialect of the French language. I think what's challenging is that sometimes they look at the container, not the content. I'm thinking of an expression, le contenu, it doesn't work in English. But it's kind of like a barrier where you're not in conversation anymore.

It's like you're this other, right? You're this, you're Quebec, you're an Anglophone, you're Franco-Canada. I think it should be a point that would arise maybe much later in the conversation. We should be able to exchange and talk about things without there being an obstacle and without noticing errors right away because some people are very annoying about correcting the way that other people speak French. And I mean, the way that other people speak French. And I mean, it should be, you know, in a spirit of generosity, maybe at some moment, if we think it could help someone.

But I mean, if you're gonna correct someone and, you know, make them realize that they speak imperfect French, you should do it kindly and not too often. And a lot of people are vicious. I'm not saying they necessarily correct them, but they just notice it. In French lot of people are vicious. I'm not saying they necessarily correct them, but they just notice it. In French, you notice the mistakes.

In English, like I correct my children in English when they get me and I wrong. Me and Ron were going to the store. No, it's Ron and I are gonna go to the store. You know, to go back to the theme of the two solitudes, I think it's kind of a passe term now, because the two solitudes wasn't just linguistic, it was religious, Protestant, Catholic.

Economic. It was economic. And that's kind of now the Quebecois are much more self-confident. They took control. So they're not the poor second class citizens they used to be in the time of Hugh McClellan. Now they're much more confident.

So all those barriers have fallen. As Stephanie said, religion is irrelevant now. The Anglophones are not Protestant anymore, or in a completely irrelevant way. And nor the Quebecois are Catholic anymore. All the churches of Quebec are empty now. It's full of allophones, and most are homeless people. So those differences have all gone away.

Only the languages remain as sort of like things that can't mix, because they can't. You speak one or the other. You really can't. But I think, so I think now, English Canada, my sense is in Saskatchewan, is a sort of a healthy indifference. Let the Quebecois do what they want, it's fine. I would suggest that Quebec doesn't separate now

because otherwise the Americans will eat us alive. If Quebec separates and Canada puts us up, he's gonna eat up all of Canada. We really will become the 51st state and Quebec will be what's left of Canada. Okay, on this note, I propose you listen to our second additional voice,

which is Tula Drimonis, author of We, the Others, Allophone, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. So let's listen to what she has to say. Sheldon, the floor is yours. We are a country that constantly has these debates around language and debates around these two solitudes or these so-called two founding nations. And I'll use air quotes because really, you know, it is still a country that is these two founding nations required still the systematic erasure and repression of indigenous communities

here. So I think we need to be mindful of all these conversations and allow space for each person's priorities, what it is that they love and what they want to retain and what they want to value and respect. Being able to speak your mother tongue and to retain it or to share it with your children does not in any way negate not feeling Canadian or not feeling Quebeer or not feeling whatever it is, whatever province you tend to reside in. I think there is, in my experience as a trilingual Quebecer who is very proud of my Greek identity, very proud of my Quebec identity, and very proud of my Canadian identity, the ability to have multiple languages and multiple identities coexist within you,

and they don't necessarily have to be at war with each other. And I think we have to have these conversations in a healthy, proactive, positive way to allow for people to be heard. Stephanie, has the whole French-English thing been superseded by multiculturalism now? Well, I think Tula makes a good point in bringing up indigenous languages and cultures, which obviously in the concept of Two Solitudes were completely sidelined. And both Anglophones and Francophones came much too late to the realization that there were other languages, and not just other languages on this land but languages that don't exist anywhere else as opposed to French and English

We do exist in other places But there is this cultural wealth that is that is native to this land That's been not only cast aside by imperial powers but that we are at a threat of losing or have already lost in some cases and we should have been I think far earlier in our history sensitive to these plights quite frankly. On that point, main thing I was thinking about before this show was striking that Two Salters is somewhat of an old fashioned book

that we should maybe consign to history. If we want a literary metaphor on the current situation, another novel we might use, whose title we might use is Disgrace by J.M. Kurtze, a wonderful novel about South Africa and the relations there between the black and the white. To use the term disgrace would be much more useful. So the way the Anglophones in Quebec

treated the Francophones, lording over them as if they were second class citizens, that is a disgrace. However, the nationalist response of Quebecers was also a disgrace. So when Jacques Parisot, when they lost the second referendum and he said, why did we lose? L'argent et le vote et le technique. Money and the ethnics.

Money and the ethnic vote. That is a disgrace. An utter disgrace to otherize, to turn to other, the Anglophones, those who didn't vote against them. That's a disgrace. The way we treated the indigenous peoples of Canada is a disgrace. So the idea of using the word disgrace,

because what we want is to come to a state of grace with the other. Cultural other, religious other, Muslims, Francophones, whatever you want. You want to be in a state of grace. You want your relations to be graceful, to exemplify grace. And if it's not, if you fall into disgrace, then that's a shame, and you have to work away from that.

So that term, that using that novel, Disgrace, which is a fantastic novel, by the way, won the Booker Prize, the Man Who Won the Nobel Prize. Disgrace is a phenomenal novel, a very subtle examination of the relations between blacks and whites in South Africa. the man who won the Nobel Prize. Disgrace is a phenomenal novel, a very subtle examination of the relations between blacks and whites in South Africa. So disgrace would be my suggestion of a better term to use in this ongoing debate.

I like the idea of the novel. I don't like the title for one simple reason is that it's this sort of negativity that we always are overlaying our history with in the last, I would say, decade and two decades, on many levels and I agree with you but the the notion of how people were treated and there is an element of disgrace but faced with the reality of political realities we are the 51st state that you know Donald Trump would like to make us into as a country we need to rediscover the

positives of our history and emphasize them and I think bilingualism ironically as we're talking here, is one of those huge positives that we as a country should be proud of and does make us not American. Justin Trudeau said, we're not American, but what does that mean? Canadian, bilingual, we are multicultural, we are a country that was started,

founded by indigenous people, but we are moving forward together, because no one's leaving. And that's the difference in the decolonization as we talked about of Canada you can't actually decolonize Canada because no one's leaving it's not like colonies where you know French troops are expelled in Africa for example where there's a physical presence of the other that can be removed we're all here together so we've got to live together and you know

I think this discussion here maybe it will cheer you up a little bit So we've got to live together. And you know, I commend you. There, I've lost my French. I commend you. You're holding it. Because it shows how two solitudes can interact on a common plateau. Well, we promised three exterior voices, three other voices beyond yours on the program.

And we're going to hear from the third one right now. And we have referenced the indigenous angle on this discussion as well so let's hear from John Paul Taliqov who is an assistant professor in Anishinaabe studies at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie. He is a member of the Michipokotan tribe, First Nation rather, and Sheldon s'il vous plaît, Rolé. Language is more than just the sounds that we make and like words that come First Nation rather, and Sheldon, s'il vous plait, Rollet. Language is more than just the sounds that we make and words that come out of our mouths. It's also how we understand the world around us and how we express things and a lot of the way that we understand and speak about and talk about.

Language encapsulates that, encapsulates the way we think, the way we understand, the way we take in and then output. Like language kind of captures all of that, right? And I think Francophone communities really understand that through the fight that they've had to do to maintain their language and culture. And that's what I believe is something what the indigenous communities are trying to do as well and preserve our languages and cultures.

And I'm working specifically in Ojibwe or in the Chinabé Mo'en preservation, K'chipi'tan'awagw'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w'w' It wasn't just kind of like passively lost over time, right? There was an element to languages kind of being ripped from our communities through policy and educational strategies to remove these Indigenous languages from our families and our communities. And then to not just think about them as something in the past, but something in the present and the future and to use them and to hear them. And yeah, it should be thank God with this like a very, very important thing.

Yeah, and let me get you on this. Has the idea of two solitudes in the country essentially overlooked indigenous communities and languages in Canada, in your view? Oh, completely. I mean, obviously. The novel is only about French and English characters. There's no mention of the indigenous peoples of Quebec.

And I think this incessant discussion that we've had because of separatism has completely ignored the indigenous elements. And we saw that when Quebec wanted to separate under Parisot, and suddenly the indigenous peoples of Quebec were saying, well, wait a second. If you separate, we don't want to go with you. We talked to the Crown.

We want to. And suddenly the Quebecers, the French, the nationalists were saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to ignore you. Which they didn't realize the irony of that, that they were trying to ignore the indigenous people the way they claimed the Crown, the English Canada, was ignoring them.

Apparently Canada was divisibleible but Quebec was not. Exactly. So yeah, I think the indigenous people were completely ignored. And hence why I think this two solitude thing is a bit self-centered. And we got to widen the conversation. And you know, our guest, what you just said there, listen, in a perfect world, no language would have been lost and we'd all be our language, we rooted to our culture, but that's in a perfect world there'd be no wars. The fact is life is a tussle, life is a battle and there are some winners and some losers and we have to make the best of it. So as I said, to me

what really you want to rescue is culture, is the ways of being, but the ways of being can be expressed in any language. The fact is English, as I said, has spoken the world over with extraordinary variety. What you don't want to lose is culture, because once a culture is lost, it's lost. It's like an animal species that is gone. Language can always retrieve something,

can always change something. There's nothing unique to any language. This notion, for example, that, you know, Inuit languages have 40 words for snow. Well, talk to, 12, okay. Well,uit languages have 40 words for snow. 12. 12. OK, well, talk to any skier, and there'll be 40 ways in English to speak of different snow conditions. Languages can adapt.

What you really want to save is culture, and that, sometimes you have to do it in a foreign language. I gave the example of the Irish, who lost a lot of their Irishness. But they express it out in English. They take a foreigner, the invader, as a language. They lost their Celtic, and the Irish are so Irish, but they express it now in English. They take a foreigner, the invader's language. They lost their Celtic, and the Irish are so Irish, despite the fact that they speak

English. To me that's... But Gaelic in Ireland is being revitalized as we speak. But if you go to Gaeltachs where they do that, I remember once speaking in a little southwest corner of Ireland, speaking to a young woman who went to school in Gaelic, and she hated it. Why? Because her English was spoken with an accent, she went to Dublin, she couldn't

get a job, she was stuck in this little Gaeltacht because these old white men in Dublin wanted to revive Gaelic. But in Ireland, in my experience, the Irish will say two little words in Gaelic and then switch to English. And they wanted, they made her pay the price for their nationals by saying we'll teach you Gaelic but you got to stay in your little corner. But language is also, language affects how your brain works and how you see the world and how you learn. And also, I mean, I'm thinking of Japanese, for example, which has three different vocabularies. And the children spend... I mean, there's, I don't know, how many thousands of characters.

It's either katakana or hiragana. I can't remember which one. But it's so complicated. They spend their primary years just learning the alphabet. The discipline instilled by just learning an alphabet like that changes their way of being as a person. Japan is an extremely disciplined society. One of the reasons it starts actually with that and with the attention. So a language affects you as a person and how you even think of the world. When I speak French, I would say that I don't dream in French. I think that I've never had a dream in French. I dream in English. But when I speak French, I feel different too.

And I use different muscles in my head. And it's impossible to really explain. But it changes the conception of the world. So I'm not convinced that we can separate language and culture in this way, because culture also comes from a people of Saint-Langue. If language dies, part of culture dies too. It's a part of it. It's a universe, it's a way of thinking about the world.

I was just going to mention, in relation to our last speaker, if there is one thing we can do, it's not to make someone feel ashamed or guilty for speaking their language. It seems to me that this is the strict minimum that we could do as Canadians. Between English and French, with languages from the First Nations, with languages from other parts of the world,

we should be open and tolerant towards the presence of other languages on our territory. It's all about bilingual schools, English, Indigenous languages, mainly Cree. Indigenous languages are a springboard in Saskatchewan, which has the strongest majority of Indigenous people in Canada. And it's not to mention their political autonomy, which is another issue that we could talk about. Yes. Yann Martel, on these questions, you are an author to facilitate the fluidity between languages. I'm not even going to say just the French language.

Languages in general, in our case, are this duality, but shouldn't we review a little bit the way we teach children to mix, precisely, common cultural references, including literature? Yes, yes, indeed, The translation, for example, of foreign countries. In fact, when you asked this question, my instinctive answer was Netflix. What will perhaps save the game is Netflix.

What I love about Netflix, and we can hate Netflix, is that now we can watch Netflix is shows in several languages. Series in German, in Spanish, it's never been seen before. Before that, there was only English on TV, or if we wanted French, nothing else. Now with Netflix, there are whole series in foreign languages. And so maybe that's the appeal of foreign languages. If we watch a show that we really want to watch, and it's in Spanish and we're tired of subtitles, then we'll start hearing Spanish

and perhaps we'll want to learn Spanish. So, what I would say, what will help, where indeed it is the translation, it is the appreciation of the cultural productions of these other languages. So, all these Netflix shows, which are in Spanish, in German, in Italian, add to the appeal of these languages. So that's perhaps a dissolution. It's to make other cultural languages attractive.

How do you say Netflix in French? Netflix. I think there's another way to do it too, which is to literally transport young people different cultural and linguistic environments. Most of the time, it's Quebec exchanges. We know that we want to take... French people are sent to Jonquière for four weeks, immersion... That's it. But I think it's more than that. We had programs, the Catimavic program, famously.

I think it no longer exists, I don't know. But it was a way to encourage young people to have a different cultural and linguistic experience to appreciate the various things, to be sent to a Franc-Ontarian community or another. It may be utopic to say, but I think if every student in Canada had an experience in another part of the country that was linguistically, culturally different, we would be more united. But it is utopic, sorry. A language is a living thing. It's no point learning a language if you don't use it like muscle. If you don't use the muscle, it atrophies.

I love Katimivic, it's a brilliant program. You learn your French, but if you don't use it on a daily basis, it will wither away. That is true. And so do you want to put, how much effort do you want to put in it early on if it's not used in a living way? And to me, there's no solution to that.

You can't force people to speak a language you don't want to. And I think there's a different reality between Southern Ontario, the prairies, and what we call the bilingual belt around Eastern Ontario, Northern New Brunswick, and Southern Quebec where both languages are very present and people see daily relevance of learning that language either professionally or socially. And it's the area where you find the most bilingual people.

In Quebec today, 75% of Anglophones have learned French. Franco-Ontarians, 98% speak English. So, I mean, there's been a lot of movement towards bilingualism in those regions where it's culturally and daily relevant. Let's see if we can do a little better on that in our last couple of minutes here. Stephanie, if... and the point of this whole program of course is to Bâtissons les ponts, n'est-ce pas?

Okay, we're trying to build some bridges here between French and English. Give us some ideas. How can we better do that going forward? Oh, so you're asking you to solve just that little problem. I'm asking you to solve 160 years of French-English tensions in the next minute. Well, listening to each other a little bit more, I think. And I think this is a valiant effort at, you know, participating in that. I do agree with Tasha, though, for kids. And I don't think Khitimovic exists anymore, but the Explore program does. And sending kids in a place where not only do they

get to put their French immersion to use, but to live the culture and to see people in real life who use that language and who live in that language, I think, is useful. That will build respect. That will build respect. As well, and personal bridges as well and and obviously, you know It's up to them after to keep up with it or not

We can't force their arm to watch Netflix in French You know or to make those choices but to avail them of those choices. I think is the first step This was so much fun. This was really great. We should do this again This was so much fun. This was really great. We should do this again sometime. We should do it again. That's exactly what I was thinking. I like that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, but we got to say goodbye now. Sandra, after you, please. Okay. I want to thank our guests, Stephanie Schwinar, Serge Dupuis, Tasha Keradin, and Yann Martel for joining us for this special crossover episode with our friends from TVO. Merci à nos invités et à vous, à la maison, qui nous ont suivis sur TFO ou sur TVO. And boy, have I got a headache from trying to listen to this much French. I have not had to do this since university.

Anyway, it was a delight. Well, Steve, we've proven we can do it. Je pense que oui. Et nous l'avons bien fait, je pense, n'est-ce pas? Tout à fait. Excellent. Okay. Well, if we've convinced you to pay more attention to the other side, please check

out our colleagues on TFO. And for all of you, French speakers who were with us tonight, I invite you to follow the excellent work of our colleagues at TVO. That's it for us. Good night, everybody, and thanks for joining us. Good evening to all of you. Thank you.