AT HOME, CHEZ NOUS
Forty years after Bill 101, French universities in Montreal are the choice for a small but increasing number of anglophones. But the decision is more practical than political: English students want to boost their chances of finding a job in their home pro
More anglo students in Montreal are choosing French universities to improve their language skills and their chances of finding work in Quebec. As the 40th anniversary of Bill 101 nears, René
Bruemmer notes the part the Frenchlanguage charter has played in the trend.
As an anglophone Montrealer who attended English schools throughout her academic career and rated her French fluency as merely “OK,” enrolling at the Université de Montréal to obtain her law degree was not Serena Trifiro’s first choice.
After passing the notoriously difficult Quebec bar exam on her first try and quickly finding work in her field, however, she has come to see the move as a minor godsend.
“At the end of the day, I’m so happy it happened,” she said from her office at the Colby Monet law firm on McGill College Avenue in downtown Montreal. “It wasn’t intentional, but I can’t stress enough how grateful I am that it worked out that way, because I honestly don’t think I would have been as prepared for a) the bar and b) my career in Montreal as an anglophone.”
Trifiro is not alone. She is among a growing cohort of English students in the province who are opting to attend francophone universities to improve their French, study in the field of their choice and maximize their chances of finding work and staying in the province. They are being enticed by French universities that are actively recruiting English students to bolster their numbers and improve their diversity in a global marketplace where fluency in multiple languages is seen as a commodity.
A study released this summer by the Office de la langue française found Quebec students whose mother tongue is English are choosing to study at French universities in greater numbers.
In 2002, just 5.9 per cent of Quebec-born students who listed English as their mother tongue opted to attend a French university. By 2014, that number had risen to 9.5 per cent.
Although the number of anglophone students enrolled at French universities is still relatively small compared to the inverse (roughly 20 per cent of McGill University students and 23 per cent of Concordia students list French as their mother tongue), the rate of increase is not. The number of anglophones choosing to study in French rose by 83 per cent in just over a decade.
Anglo students are also doing the linguistic crossover in greater numbers than their francophone peers: in 2014, 95 per cent of Quebec-born French mother-tongue speakers chose to study at French universities.
As the 40th anniversary of Bill 101 nears, it is fitting to note that Quebec’s French-language charter has played a part. Studies show 20 per cent of Quebec students who list their mother tongue as English went to French elementary and high schools either by choice or, more often, because they had to, as they came to Quebec after Bill 101 was passed into law on Aug. 26, 1977.
“Don’t forget that now what we call the anglophone community is no more just white Anglo-Saxons,” said Marie McAndrew, a professor in U de M’s department of educational administration who specializes in the teaching of minorities. “There are a lot of people who arrived after 1977 who may declare English as their mother tongue who are perhaps South Asian or Jamaican or other new immigrants.”
Although that segment of students often moves back to the English system for CEGEP when they’re free to study in the language of their choice, studies have shown there is considerable crossover back to French universities among students who are already comfortable in French.
“It is not in the nationalist vision of the CEGEP as a black hole, that if they escape into English CEGEPs they never come back into the French system,” McAndrew said. “That’s not the way it works. A lot of those went back to French university.”
The other 80 per cent of anglophones who study in the English system are often in French-immersion programs, McAndrew said, and feel confident enough to attend a French university, and also see it as a means to improve their French.
The hypothesis of researchers is that at the university level, choice of institution is based more on where students think they have the best chances of getting accepted into their program of choice and what is best for their career prospects, and less on identity and linguistic battles.
“People who are going to the university, they are playing the market. They are looking at opportunities, at where the faculties are strong, and most are making at least two applications to different schools,” McAndrew said.
Trifiro went to English elementary and high schools, Dawson College CEGEP and then majored in English literature with a minor in criminology at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville.
She decided she wanted to be a lawyer in Quebec, but wasn’t accepted at her first choice, McGill University. The other options were to study at the University of Ottawa, which teaches civil law required to practise in Quebec, or to attend a French university. She opted for U de M. There were roughly eight other anglophones in her class of 100, she said. She suspects most of them were there for the same reason.
Unlike some of her Anglo classmates who would translate the French texts into English to better understand the complicated legal jargon, Trifiro decided that would be too time-consuming and opted to immerse herself fully in French.
“It was a struggle at first — I had to read everything four times and focus intensely,” she said. She lost marks for subpar spelling and grammar. But she got better. The university allows some leeway in the first year, considered a transitional year, giving students the option to write their exams in English if necessary. After that, permission was much harder to come by, Trifiro said.
“To me, the message was very clear: You are coming to a French school. You should adapt.”
Her francophone peers were friendly and helpful, she said, as were most professors. The anglophone students, floundering together in the same linguistically challenged boat, often studied together.
It was only once she had graduated that she realized the full benefits of her choice. Ninety-five per cent of legal work in the province is done in French, she discovered, including discussion between lawyers, procedural work and most courtroom litigation. The bar exam is mainly in French, and U de M ranks highest in the percentage of students who pass the bar on the first try. Trifiro passed in 2013, and now works in civil commercial litigation and family law.
Ultimately, Trifiro said studying in French served not only to improve her employment prospects, but also her overall integration into the province in which she was born.
“It has been beneficial to my career and my interactions in Montreal, and I now consider myself completely fluently bilingual,” she said. “It’s nice to be able to not have to think about speaking English or French, especially when I’m doing it every day.”
Given the history of linguistic tensions in Quebec, providing accommodations to English students at a French university can raise hackles. In 2014, Le Devoir published an article in which two students, one the vice-president of the young Péquistes association, the other the head of the university’s sovereigntist student movement, denounced what was termed “rampant” anglicization at the U de M. They accused some professors of flouting the school’s linguistic policy by allowing students to take exams or submit papers in English, and having too many English textbooks on their readings lists.
To me, the message was very clear: You are coming to a French school. You should adapt.
Guy Lefebvre, then the dean of the law faculty, responded in a letter to the newspaper that only 1.5 per cent of exams were written in English by first-year law students, and only 22 out of 400 students had written exams in English.
U de M has accepted anglophone and immigrant students for decades, he wrote. “Not only have they acquired a solid legal training, but also a better mastery of the French language.” They include graduates like Alan B. Gold, former chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court, and Herbert Marx, who served as justice minister of Quebec and as a judge. Marx, a former professor at U de M, told Lefebvre he wanted to perfect his French to best serve Quebec and its inhabitants.
“That (English students) learn law and the French language at the same time can only be an advantage for Quebec,” Lefebvre wrote.
Like all Montreal universities, U de M recruits from both the English and French communities, Lefebvre said in a recent interview with the Montreal Gazette. The number of applicants who applied to the university and listed English as their mother tongue was up by five per cent last year. Even more promising was the fact the number of anglophone students who accepted the university’s offer of admission was up eight per cent.
Since part of the mandate of any university is to foster debate, share knowledge of other cultures and improve communications between nations, bringing in students of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds can only be a positive for the school and its city, said Lefebvre, who is the university’s vice rector of international relations.
“For many years, it has been part of our priorities to have a campus that is diversified,” he said. The faculty of law has a long history of accepting anglophones, particularly Jews, when other universities in the city would not, he said.
The main reason more anglophones are choosing to study in French comes down to “employability,” Lefebvre said. As multilingualism becomes an increasingly sought-after competency in the global marketplace, more students are looking to improve their odds of working, be it in Quebec or anywhere in the world.
At the Université du Québec à Montréal, the number of students who have English as their mother tongue rose to 519 in 2016 from 193 in 2012. While it represents only 1.2 per cent of the overall student body, the rate of increase is promising. Most of the anglophone students can be found in the domains of business management, sciences and arts. In many cases, like law or doctoral studies in psychology, it’s the nature of the program that is the main attraction.
“Another explanation may be that the new generation of students is interested in and sensitive to the importance of learning several languages,” said Jenny Desrochers, director of media relations at UQAM.
Jack Jedwab sees the trend as a reflection of young anglophones’ increasing desire to make a go of it in their home province rather than seek their fortunes in more English-accessible environments like Ontario.
Jedwab, the executive vice-president of the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration, who has taught at McGill and UQAM, speaks from experience. Three of his children, who did their early education in English, chose to go to French university in Montreal — one in engineering, one in law and the other in public health. In all three cases, it was born of a desire to strengthen their French and maximize their opportunities to work in Quebec.
“None of them talk about moving,” said Jedwab, whose wife is a francophone and spoke to their children in French as they grew up. Nor do their friends, he said. His children found French university challenging, but they adjusted and all improved their French fluency.
The trend bodes well for Montreal, as more students from Canada and around the world come to study in English or French. Montreal was recently voted the best place to study as an international student by a global higher education analysis firm, beating out London, Paris and Tokyo.
“If you look at the bilingualism figures across the country right now, we are generating here in Quebec by far the most significant degree of bilingualism among anglophones and francophones. We have the most trilingual population, I would argue, of any region in North America, because of the immigrants coming here who don’t speak any English or French when they arrive, then learn French and English.…
“That’s a real advantage we have in Montreal, and I think we’re increasingly seeing it as an advantage and not something to be frightened about.”
If you look at the bilingualism figures across the country right now, We are generating here in Quebec by far the most significant degree of bilingualism among anglophones and francophones.