MONTREAL - A Quebecer's moment of Olympic glory is being tempered by a bitter feeling in his home province that the language he speaks has been treated like an also-ran at the Games.
Celebration over
Alexandre Bilodeau's Olympic freestyle skiing victory risked being overshadowed by a torrent of criticism over a perceived lack of French at the Olympics.
The issue is receiving major media coverage in Quebec just as the country celebrates its first gold medal on Canadian soil, delivered Sunday by a
French-speaking Quebecer.
There's a two-page spread in
Monday's La Presse newspaper with headlines like: French as Rare as Snow in Vancouver; and Only 15
Per Cent of 25,000
Volunteers Speak French; and there was one mocking column in the paper partly written in English, titled Proud to be 'Canadian' — with the word Canadian written in English.
A stream of negative viewer comments was being aired on
TV talk shows.
Several commenters argued that French — which is not only one of Canada's official languages, but actually one of the Olympics' official languages — was heard more often at the
Beijing Games in 2008 than at Vancouver's opening ceremonies.
Federal Heritage Minister James Moore and
Quebec Premier Jean Charest have both noted their frustration over the lack of French spoken at the opening ceremonies.
On Quebec's TV talk shows, questions were being raised about whether official bilingualism in Canada was actually a facade.
Denis Coderre, the federal Liberal critic for official languages, said francophone concerns were being ignored in English Canada.
Coderre, who habitually sprinkles his own political speeches with a few phrases of Haitian Creole or Italian, poked fun at the Vancouver organizing committee CEO's failure to do the same.
He said John Furlong could have bothered, over the last several years, to learn a few phrases of French — other than tossing out a token, mispronounced, "Bienvenue" during his address at the opening ceremonies.
"I don't accept being a second-class citizen," Coderre told a talk show on LCN network.
"The reality is not to find something negative about the games, it's to say look, respect me."
Another former cabinet minister said she watched the opening ceremonies with a group of federalist friends — all people who believe in Canada — and that they were aghast at what they saw.
"We were really disappointed on the one hand, and hurt on the other," said Liza Frulla, who was once minister responsible for sports.
Quebec nationalist groups quickly pounced the issue to argue their case that Canada doesn't work.
They said that federal policies on bilingualism had obviously failed to protect the French language. One ardent sovereigntist said that he expected Games organizers to at least try keeping up the charade that Canada is a bilingual country.
"It seems like the atmosphere of indifference, if not intolerance, of French has reached the point where there wasn't even an effort to save the appearance of bilingualism," Mario Beaulieu, president of the Societe Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montreal, said of the opening ceremonies.
"It's deplorable, but we're not surprised."
Canada's official languages commissioner, Graham Fraser, issued a report last fall that warned Olympic organizers they weren't doing enough to make the Games bilingual.
The Conservative government gave the Olympic organizing committee an additional $7.7 million in September to pay for French translation services and more French signs.
