En Québec

This is week two of my stay in Quebec and it is beginning to feel more and more like home. Today, I waited for the bus in the rain: my raincoat hanging almost to the edge of my shorts. Once on board, I watched out the window as the bus passed the large brown river, the high stone-fenced jail, the little street of boutiques and finally the cement bridge. Each landmark was familiar and I descended automatically at my stop.

Once at work, I spent the day chatting with my co-workers in the Boutique by the lake where I rent canoes and kayaks to park visitors. Yet as the rain meant no customers, we tidied the jumbled office, patched the leaky kayaks with fibreglass, went for a walk around the park to see the farm, and watched The Office on a laptop. It was sometime then, staring at the small screen and eating lime-flavoured popcorn, that I realized how quickly I have sunk into my Quebec life.

In the end, Montreal is not so different from Vancouver. I sleep under a giant poster of Jacob from Twilight, listen to English music on the radio, live in a similarly styled box-like house, eat the same brands of foods, and have a host brother who plays Left for Dead and Team Fortress addictively. When I go out with other exchange students, it is either to the mall (with the same chain stores I visit in Vancouver) or to the cinema (with the same movies I read reviews for in The Vancouver Sun). With the presence of T.V., movies, advertisements, and multinational companies, the “pop culture” is virtually identical.

The differences beyond poutine and beaver tails are more subtle. Through conversations with my host family and discussion on the dock at work, I have observed a strong sense of Québécois identity, one much stronger than anything I felt in B.C. It is much as my sister described. I was explained by Amélie, a girl at my work, that being called a French-Canadian is an insult to the Québécois. Most are not separatists; they simply consider themselves to be a culture in and of themselves. And much of the struggle to preserve this identity is expressed through French. When renting out kayacks or canoes, sometimes the other employees refuse to speak in English to those Anglophone customers who don’t make an effort in French. Increases in anglophone schools is an inflamatory issue exploited by the newspapers. Certainly, tensions are present between the two halves of Montreal.

It is for these observations that I am glad I am living and working inside the culture. An all-inclusive hotel resort surrounded by other tourists does not teach one about the place one is in. It does not peel back those commercially canned universal layers. Living in the suburbs and working without other Anglophones, I am being immersed in Quebec. As I make my place here for these six weeks, I hope to learn not just about La Ronde and Cirque du Soleil (which where both very fun), but also about the Québécois. I think I am already starting to.