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Crossroads

by Kenneth McDonald

155 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #06-3075; ISBN 1-4251-1316-8; US$16.96, C$19.50, EUR13.22, £8.76

Period 1969-82, small street Montreal, effect of language laws on English-speaking families.

About the Book

The author takes us to a small street in a Montreal suburb when Quebec's National Assembly passes the French-only laws, and we see the effect upon the English-speaking families who live there. For example, Fred Caple, who runs a small manufacturing company, is required to operate it in French. Invoices, bills of lading, catalogues, sales brochures and pamphlets, specifications and operating manuals, applications for employment and labels, advertising and signed-all must be in French and the task of translation is onerous, protracted and costly. As he explains one day to his wife: Isobel, "It's not so much the expense, though that's bad enough, it's the hassle and the pointlessness of it all. Already more than half our business is done outside Quebec so you can imagine the duplication. Then take the name. How do you translate Canflex? Flexion du Canada? Flexure? It's ridiculous, but d'you know we've had guys from the language police bugging us about it? And it's going to be rough on the younger men in the shop floor. They're discouraged from learning English - and of course their children won't even be taught it - yet no lead hand's ever going to make foreman at Canflex without it. That's the cut-off, where you start talking to customers who come to the plant and very, very few of the will be speaking French." (pp.175-6)

About the Author

Kenneth McDonald was born and educated in England. As a regular officer in the Royal Air Force, his service included wartime flying in Bomber Command, two tours of duty with the RCAF in Canada, and commander of the RAF's main base in the Far East at Changi... Retiring in 1957 to settle in Canada, he was a director of sales for Canadair Limited in Montreal when he retired again in order to write full-time. Author of six books on Canada's political economy, his memoir -A Wind on the Heath- was published in 2003.