An English Person’s Experience Living in Quebec
Why Language Barriers Really Don’t Matter
I lived in Quebec City for about 2 years, and when I was there I only spoke broken French. The French and English relations in Canada are mostly good now, but there are some barriers there. For one, the French and the British back in the day fought over Canada. The British eventually claimed dominion over the country. But there remained in Canada a large population of French people; about a third of the population.
Hence, there was always a bit of a barrier between French Canadians and Anglo Canadians, and this was exasperated by the politics of the country as well. The French Canadians did have to fight for a while to be able to keep their language rights.
An Anglo Living in Quebec
With that background knowledge, you’d think that an English person moving to Quebec would result in some tense relationships. But that just hasn’t been the case, at all. In fact, I’ve made some great friends while there in Quebec.
Sometimes, the relationship would be built in English, other times French (at least what I could…
