22 septembre 2009
Le Québec en français, même à McGill!
The McGill Tribune publiait un texte faisant état d'un étudiant de l'Université McGill, Muhammad Ahmad Munir, qui aurait été expulsé d'un autobus de la STM en raison de son incapacité à parler français. Faisant suite à plusieurs articles publiés dans le National Post et dans la Gazette, la nouvelle nous faisait part de la réaction de Munir face à cette situation, et évoquait la question de l'immersion et de l'intégration des étudiants internationaux à l'Université McGill.
comité du Bloc Québécois à McGill, répondait à l'article du McGill Tribune dans un commentaire intitulé "Time to learn French", soit "Il est temps d'apprendre le français" :
As a bilingual international student, I would like to say to Muhammad Ahmad Munir, tant pis. Did the bus driver go overboard in this situation? Yes. Was calling the police a bit too much? Maybe. Since Line 66 runs through the predominately Anglophone cities of Westmount and Côte-Saint-Luc, shouldn't the driver be able to speak some English? Probably. However, I will defend the bus driver's actions, despite their irrationality. I feel sympathy for Munir, however, he is at fault for not speaking French, and not the bus driver for not speaking English.
Québec is an institutionally unilingual French province, and Montréal is, by law, a unilingual French city. Too many students from English Canada and abroad forget that. McGill is an Anglophone institution; however, once you leave the campus, you're no longer protected by McGill's English bubble. Yes, the current reality of Montréal is bilingualism, and it's rare to not find services offered in both French and English, and often in third languages. But you're not guaranteed services in English unless they're provided by the federal government, or by the Québec government in matters of justice, or health and public safety. It drives me crazy to hear students complaining about the poor quality of someone's English outside of the McGill campus. The Francophone majority has the right to complain about a student's lack of knowledge of the French language, not the other way around.
Again, I believe that the driver overreacted and I don't agree with her actions, but I do support the message she was sending. The Tribune's article did not tell the full story. In reading other accounts of the story, when the bus driver told Munir that she didn't speak English, Munir kept demanding an answer. Gomolin's article simply says, "Munir objected to her response," while in the National Post's account of the story, Munir responded to the driver in English saying, "you just showed me you do speak English," then continued to harass her. The French responses that Munir didn't understand could have been "avancez-vous en arrière" or "assoyez-vous monsieur s'il vous plaît," instructing Munir to be seated, and his refusal to do so led to the police being called. In addition, if the bus driver really did point to the clock saying "Québec, Québec," why did Munir not just read the digital clock she was pointing at and sit down? The Tribune makes Munir seem way too innocent, and hopefully the STM's official report will show the truth.
Julie Kouyoumdjian, an executive of the McGill International Student Network, is quoted in the story saying that, "every student should try and immerse themselves in the Québec culture." The best way to immerse yourself into a foreign culture is to learn basic phrases in their language. If Munir truly did choose "to pursue his post-graduate studies at McGill particularly for the French aspect of Montréal," then he surely should know the elementary French expression: quelle heure est-il? That's page one material in a Berlitz phrase book. In addition to normal course readings, I suggest that all Anglophone and Allophone students read The Charter of the French Language (Bill 101), and remind themselves that their Anglophone university is in the middle of a Francophone metropolis.
Justin Margolis is a U3 Quebec Studies student.
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