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Chapter 17 | Joseph Yvon-Theriault (continued) The expression Francophone Communities of Canada has different variables. There is, for example, the Minority Francophonies of Canada, which I have used as a title of a study on those matters: Francophonies minoritaires au Canada: l’état des lieux (Thériault, Ed., 1999). It is not however said, in such an expression, if the minority refers to the National Francophone minority, the old French Canada... outside the borders (an idea more of nationalitary) or to a minority within English speaking Canada (a more ethnicist conception). We find the same type of ambiguity in the programme of the present colloquium: official linguistic minorities. As there are two official linguistic minorities in Canada, one would think that those minorities refer to two majorities, one English-speaking, the other one French-speaking (that was surely the intention of the legislator who invented those expressions). As a Francophone in English Canada, I am part of a minority within English Canada just as I am an integral part of the other majority — the English and French languages being on the same official footing in Canada. That is even clearer for the official linguistic minority, the Anglophones of Québec; the latter is a minority in Québec but part of a majority in the totality of Canada. However, the organizers of this colloquium have brought us together, as if the status of “minorities,” Francophones outside Québec and Anglophones outside English Canada, were prevailing upon our cultural group of reference. However, the stake of cultural renewal for minority francophones can be understood as a regional question of cultural renewal within the francophone space in America, of which Québec is the hearth. I have always thought that my studies on francophone minorities are more a part of Québec sociology than that of English Canada. Put differently, I could have presented my paper at this colloquium in workshops on the subject of variables in Québec culture and in others on being a minority in English Canada. In the same way, my colleague from the English minority in Québec would not have been displeased, I presume, to have been included in a workshop dealing with English Canadians living... outside of Canada. At the very least, such an appellation seems to me as good as the term Anglo-Quebecker. I will end with a last development within the Francophone collectivities living as minorities, which will remind us of the ambivalence of the situation in which that group finds itself. We hear the leaders of those communities talking more and more of a Canadian Francophony (I suspect that this expression has been given to them by Heritage Canada). Here is an expression, one might think, which can avoid the trap of the minority label and its ethnic parallel. Here is an expression which, less loaded with meaning than that of “French Canada,” would be more acceptable in acknowledging the diverse accents within one of the two national linguistic groups. But it must be said that a Canadian Francophony which does not include Québec, as if it were already sovereign, is in fact a confirmation of the minority status of those groups. But there is something more. In the recent document Dialogue of the FCFAC, the working group established by that representative body of those communities invited Québec (francophone I assume) to become part of the Canadian Francophony. We find in this wish and its appellation all the ambivalence of the Canadian Francophony living as a minority: its refusal to be a minority and its difficulty in redefining, after the death of French Canada, its relationship with an irreducible autonomous Québec. Asking Québec to be part of the Canadian Francophony is trying to replay the adventure of French Canada without taking into account the requirement of seeing Québec as a distinct society because of its Francophone majority. The contrary should have been asserted: in order that French Canada be reborn, Francophony must position itself in reference to the Québec fact, otherwise it is doomed to remain a cultural minority, which is something it won’t accept. To maintain the ambition of being a national culture, Francophones outside of Québec must accept, in fact, their role as Quebeckers outside the borders. references
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