Are you part of the historic English commuity?

Coming soon, from the same people who brought you the attempted ban on the use of Italian on restaurant menus and the legislative vote rejecting “Bonjour-hi” as a greeting; a new official term - “the historic English community.”

That’s correct, our government in its wisdom, proposes to maintain Anglophone rights to receive correspondence from it in English as long as you can prove you are a member of the “historic English community.” For new immigrants it will be French only.

It hasn’t been made clear just yet how one will have to go about proving one’s origins but with the government involved it could be tricky. Take myself for example. I chose to make Quebec my home after attending university here and although I’ve been in the Townships for fifty years, more or less, I’m not sure if that counts as “historic.” If push comes to shove and I have to prove my bona fides I suppose I could get a copy of the tax rolls, called the Fees, that were taken in Northumberland, England in 1242. There is a Belford mentioned there. The name was also recorded in Scotland in 1147 when James de Beleford was listed as a “carnifex” or slaughterer but I’ll skip mentioning him since the government gnomes would likely jump on the “de” part and I’d be tossed from “the historic English community.”

My problem is that my family has a strong nomadic streak. My first ancestor to arrive in Quebec came ashore in 1783 just after he and his family were chased out of the newly created republic to the south. He’s apparently buried in Sorel since he actually “came ashore” in a coffin having died on the trip. At various times branches of the clan have lived in Richmond, Windsor Mills, Danville, Cookshire, Hatley, Hull, Sherbrooke, Bagotville and of course Lennoxville. Unfortunately, I’m the only one left in the province.

When it comes to the case of my better half it could get even more convoluted. She Who Must Be Obeyed comes from a pure laine background on her father’s side and a mixture of Scots and Poles on her mother’s. She grew up as what she likes to call “a double minority” – English speaking and Catholic. Would she qualify? Sure, she was educated in English but her mother didn’t move to Quebec until the 1940s while her father’s family called Champlain by his first name: hardly a part of the “historic English community.”

The government is not clear on how they will actually define “the historic English community” but they may fall back on the same regulations they use to allow newcomers to the province to attend English-language schools. If you don’t qualify to attend English schools you don’t get your driver’s license renewal or you income tax forms in English either.

Maybe it’s time for the government to actually come to the conclusion that “the historic English community” is neither English nor historic. It is composed of English, Scots, West Indians, Irish, Poles, Jews, Africans, Romanians, Egyptians and dozens of other nationalities. Some arrived with Wolfe and others fled pogroms in Europe, world-wide war and devastating famine.

Immigrants are already attending French-language schools and every effort is being made to immerse them in the culture of the majority as it should be. But to deny them access to their government in a language that would, for many, be of great benefit in a difficult transition, all in the name of assimilation, is right up there with telling us how to greet the staff at the local dépanneur.