Understanding Quebec

In honour of la Fête nationale du Québec, Tearfree, a born and raised anglo Montrealer, gives her take on the Quebec situation

One day long before *69 was invented and back when the Quebec independence movement was still going full throttle, a much younger Tearfree received a phone call from a man with a very heavy joual accent. Because Tearfree had grown up in the era of two solitudes and had learnt her French from Scottish school teachers, she understood next to nothing that the man was saying so she asked him to repeat himself. He did and Tearfree was able to pick up a French word here and another one there but not much more.

Determined to master the language of le peuple, she asked the caller to repeat himself yet again. Once again he obliged and once again, Tearfree picked up a little bit more. In fact, this third time she picked up enough to suspect that it might be an obscene phone call.

Still, this was a touchy situation and Tearfree didn’t want to falsely accuse a member of the linguistically oppressed majority so she had no choice but to ask the man to repeat himself a fourth time.

Clearly, frustrated, the caller offered to speak English.

Tearfree explained that she absolutely had to take every possible opportunity to improve her French and succeeded in convincing the caller to repeat himself a fifth time.

Round number five left Tearfree 80% sure that what he was saying wasn’t fit for polite company and that she had definitely never learned any of those words in school. If he repeated himself just once more, Tearfree was completely confident she would know for sure what he was saying.

“S’il vous plait,” she said, “ one last time.”

“Please, please, please, let me just speak English,” he begged.

“Non, non, non,” insisted Tearfree so forcefully that, after a short debate, she talked the caller into repeating himself for a sixth time.

After that, there was no more doubt left in Tearfree’s mind about what the caller was saying. “You bastard,” she yelled in English without a trace of guilt and slammed down the phone.
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Fast forward years later, and Tearfree is older and wiser, and speaks much better French although she still hasn't mastered the naughty stuff. She’s riding her bike one day when another cyclist cuts her off.

“You asshole,” she yells at him in English, always her first choice of language for swearing.

He gets off his bike, approaches Tearfree and says in a French-accented English, “Are you calling me an asshole?”

Yes,” says Tearfree.

“On what basis?”

“Because you cut me off.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

This futile argument went on in English for several rounds until both parties realized no resolution was possible.

The cyclist got back on his bike and rode off, calling over his shoulder
to Tearfree, “By the way, this is my country. So, next time, speak French.”

Tearfree doesn’t remember if he said it in French or English but she does recall being very frustrated that in the time it took her to figure out what to reply, the cyclist had already peddled off out of earshot.

Tearfree was left muttering to herself:“So that’s what this is all about, is it? The right to be called an asshole in French.”

Now if only Tearfree knew how to say it.

Happy Fête nationale one day in advance.