Welcome to Nowhere

Quebec’s got problems. So says just about anyone who doesn’t live in Quebec and a significant number of people who do. Kicking out the separatist party as they did earlier this year solves a chunk of them, but there’s still the niggling little issue of language. Specificly, Quebec’s insistence that there can be only one. It’s lead to some very interesting conversation topics. Like what, exactly, the french word for pasta is. Or exactly how large the writing on a package of spoons aught to be before it’s offensive. Or whether or not one should rearange their request for hospital care so it sounds pretty in French before you can consider yourself an equal among cancer patients–wait, what?

An agitated orderly at a Hull hospital demanded that an anglophone family — still reeling from a cancer diagnosis — address him in French in the emergency ward because he was “Québécois” and “c’est le Quebec,” the family has complained.

To make matters worse, the patient, John Gervais, 77 and a Canadian Navy veteran, is a longtime resident of Aylmer, Quebec and, though too weak to speak, is fluently bilingual.

Bilingualism in Quebec? Off with their heads. It’s French or nothing, and everyone knows. Just ask your friendly neighbourhood orderly, after he’s done with his suspension with pay and… er… that’s about it. Clearly the family has learned their lesson, I’d imagine. The next time one of them ends up with cancer, they’ll do it in French. Or, you know, they’ll just pack up and leave Quebec, but you’ll have that. Canada, you’re awesome, but you’ve been broken since at least 1982. And it’s all the fault of bilingualism–except in Quebec. Only in Canada…