When I first did my summer study program in Trois-Rivières, Québec in 2017, I tried to figure out how long it had been since I'd been anywhere in Québec. I wasn't even sure. I knew it was pre-9/11. I finally decided it was probably 1999 or 2000. I used to enjoy going to performances of the Montréal West Operatic Society (now sadly defunct). I'm not sure why I stopped going to Québec. The first few years after 1999-2000 I was newly divorced and just keeping my head above water financially. Eventually I got picked up full-time at Freeport H.S., so got back to getting my French on during the summers of 2005 and 2006 through a summer immersion program at Université Sainte-Anne in Pointe-de-l'Église, Nouvelle-Écosse (also known as Church Point, Nova Scotia). It was an absolutely fantastic fun program where I learned a lot. It's a tiny campus right on the ocean in the middle of freaking nowhere -- a beautiful part of freaking nowhere. So it was ideal for an immersion experience; no distractions. There were 400 of us if I recall correctly, ages 13 to 70's, and there was something to do in French every waking hour; classes in the morning and constant activity in the afternoon and evening and on the weekends.
Summer 2017 was coming up, and I wanted to get my French on again. But as much as I had loved my two Université Sainte-Anne summers, I had already worked through all the levels of French they offered. There was nothing left for me to do. So I looked elsewhere, and Google searching called my attention to the Road Scholar program at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Exact same immersion model as Université Sainte-Anne; class in the morning, excursions and activities in the afternoon and evenings, and out-of-town excursions on the weekends. I didn't know the city of Trois-Rivières but noted that it was exactly at the midpoint between Montréal and the city of Québec. Sounded good.
And it was. - so much that I repeated the program in 2018 and 2019. I've had the same fantastic teacher for all three years, and he has taught us as much about Québec culture, history, and life as he has about the French language. Outside of class, it hasn't strictly been an immersion experience as a lot of English has been spoken by participants, and the organizers have sort of looked the other way. This is a trip sponsored by a for-profit company, so they were inclined to give people what they wanted, as opposed to Université Sainte-Anne which was an academic program with credits granted so they had standing to enforce the all-French rule.
So even if the program wasn't in French as much, why have I fallen in love with Québec over the course of this program? First, I've had great French learning experiences my whole life thanks to fantastic teachers and professors, so I was predisposed to love a place right over the Maine border which is all French-speaking. Second, the people really are different in more qualities than the language they speak. Québec people are more physical and warm than their anglo counterparts. People kiss on both cheeks when they meet. People seem to be a little more direct in their communications too. Over my years in education I've learned to filter every word that comes out of my mouth or my keyboard lest someone take something the wrong way. It's so refreshing to just say what needs to be said and know that it will be received as intended, even if I'm saying it in my second language.
There is music everywhere, and people appreciate Québec folk music as much as whatever is popular at the moment. And the folk music is up-tempo and lively. I've heard very little English-language popular music when I've been there over the past three years. Finally, there is overt pride in their culture and language, and a certain strength of character and resilience that comes from the fact that they have had to fight to maintain French as their language. I truly did not understand that at first. I thought the French and English-speaking communities co-existed peacefully kind of on the scale of a Coke-or-Pepsi preference. Not so. My teacher over the past three years and the grad student who was my online tutor over the past school year have taught me a lot about the social history of Québec. It's more than just hockey and snow. There is rich literature and folklore borne out of their struggle to maintain their language and culture. And for a province / culture of 8 million people, there is a LOT of art-music-literature. Fun fact from my teacher who is an author and singer-songwriter (fun fact about the fun fact: I played on two tracks for his new album!): 3000 sales is considered a best-seller in Québec.
Here's a live video of the big hit of 2015 from the annual Québec music awards ceremony. When I asked my tutor for suggestions for Québec songs to learn to sing and play on guitar, this was the first one she mentioned. The group is the super-popular Les Cowboys Fringants, which means "The Frisky Cowboys." Their music is a mix of folk rock and Québec traditional. Note the violin and accordion in the band. The song is "Marine marchande," which means "Merchant Marine." In the tune, a man and woman in a couple are calling each other horrible names, the man says he has signed up for the merchant marine to get away from her, he goes and he's miserable, he says he wants to come back to her, and she says forget it, she has a new girlfriend who lives upstairs and is keeping his side of the bed warm. The refrain says "Let's drink, let's drink, let's drink, my throat is on fire, let's drink, let's drink, let's drink for all the unhappy couples, let's drink, let's drink, let's drink, just one more, babe, I've enlisted in the merchant marine." A cultural note about the "couple" thing particular to Québec: a much higher percentage of man-woman couples never get married in Québec than in English Canada or the USA. Something like one-third. People are in decades-long committed relationships, have kids even, and never get married. Québec French has something American English doesn't and really needs: a word for a committed non-married partner, any gender person or couple. It's "conjoint / conjointe" (in its grammatical masculine / feminine forms). And people also use it for their partner they're married to. So calling someone your "conjoint/e" means they're your partner with the marital status or lack thereof irrelevant. Pretty cool. O.k., here's the video!
Les Cowboys Fringants, "Marine marchande"
As for Trois-Rivières itself, it's a city of 137,000 and I'm not really a city person. Portland is plenty big enough. But what I like about Trois-Rivières compared to Montréal and Québec is that, in fact, I have to do everything in French. Montréal has a large English-speaking community and Québec has a ton of tourists. Trois-Rivières has neither. So I never, ever, ever hear or see English when I'm out and about. I'm learning more because of that. And as cities go, it's clean, it's safe, and it has a nice riverfront downtown area and a cool music and theater scene -- needless to say, right up my alley. I told someone once that the only thing I missed when I'm there (besides family and friends) was living less than 200 yards from the ocean as I do in Portland.
Corollary to that, I love that I'm learning all the time. Every day I pick up lots of new stuff: vocabulary words, conversational expressions, info I need for daily living, cultural or current events references. Sometimes it's a challenge; I find that when I have to interact with someone out in the city as opposed to on campus, I kind of steel myself before the interaction. I make sure I know the vocabulary I need to ask for what I need, and I hope like crazy that I'll understand what they say back to me. I don't always. But I can almost always get the gist. Once in a great while someone will switch to English; that's discouraging for me because it means that I wasn't successful at executing the interaction in French. But I just remind myself that they're doing it out of courtesy. And the longer I'm there, the less it happens, and the less it will continue to happen.
As I write this, I'll be back and forth between Portland/Freeport and Ellsworth for most of the rest of the summer. After that, still up in the air at present, but I'm checking out a few options. I should know soon. But I'm following news from up there, corresponding with a couple of new friends, and playing lots of lively Québec music on my phone through my car speakers whenever I'm driving anywhere. I'm lucky to have three places where I feel like I'm at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment