ON THE MONTREALISATION OF FRENCH MIGRANTS

Emmanuelle Walter
Emmanuelle Walter is a freelance journalist and works on indigenous and environmental issues. She contributes to Nouvel Observateur, Châtelaine, Terra eco, and develops documentary projects. Stolen Sisters: The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families, and How Canada Has Failed Indigenous Women (Harper Collins) is her latest book.

They say there are now 100,000 French people in Québec. How does the city transform their values, their social, family, and professional lives? Because she’s witnessed change in herself (sometimes in radical ways), the author of investigative book Stolen Sisters wanted to raise the issue with other expats.

Illustration : Laurianne Poirier

COVERED IN THIS ARTICLE

Acculturation, or how the French become mutants. The mix of arrogance and self-hatred. The joys of no longer waiting in line for the slide. Gushing conversations. Formatting personal growth. Shades of grey.

I can spot one of us in record time. A few seconds are enough to pick out our tense features, jerky movements, machine-gun delivery, or impatience with our progeny. In Montréal’s languor, I can almost see the stress we leave in our wake like vapor trails. However, those who’ve all but forgotten the existence of their homeland, since they’ve been “Montrealed” for so long, probably fly under my radar. And yet: from their years in France inevitably remains a slight emotional distance, a lingering chronic dissatisfaction, a touch of performance anxiety. We come from a densely populated country where we need to fight for a place to sit in the metro or a decent job. “In Paris, you need to stand in line, even for the playground slides,” remembers mother of three Amicie Gardy without a trace of nostalgia; she’s been in Montréal for three years now.

Montréal: a big yet not overcrowded metropolis, dynamic without hysteria, creative but unpretentious. The dream. Between 2009 and 2013, 68.5 per cent of French -people admitted to Québec chose to live there. The French Consulate General estimates their number at 100,000, twice as many as there were 10 years ago.

But can we really call this a French community? Of course, you have what Laure, in Montréal for six years now, calls “dominating expat communalism,” which she observes with her own eyes in Laurier Park every summer once the first warm days of June roll around. And we haven’t even mentioned the streets of Outremont. But she adds: “When French Montrealers meet, they’re quick to discuss their seniority in the metropolis, and how much better they understand Québec than those who’ve just recently shown up. They’re always annoyed by French migrants who haven’t been there as long as they have; they judge them, look down on them.” There are two reasons for that. The first relates to the complex nature of the French spirit, a mix of arrogance and self-hatred. The second is that the French migrant is a mutant. They undergo transformation, year after year, forgetting who they were when they got here, with complete disregard for those who follow in their footsteps.

A few seconds are enough to pick out our tense features.

The beginnings aren’t always easy. I remember a feeling of linguistic and interpersonal haze (on top of that, it was February, and snowing). Upon arrival, the language seems so deceptively familiar that the culture shock can be worse than if we’d landed in New York or Mexico.

But after the initial shock comes metamorphosis, and, for many, a sense of awareness that arises in liberating and inter-related ways. French-born sociologist Valérie Amiraux, a specialist in religious pluralism at the Université de Montréal, breaks it down as follows: “I would say that the feeling of mainly being perceived by others as a function of what we do rather than as a function of origin (social or cultural) is necessarily liberating. The mechanisms that govern social reproduction are very different in Québec and in France. The lesser importance, in social relations, given to the mastery of language, vocabulary, the sacrosanct -‘general culture of the French Republic’ and access to the cultural codes of the dominating classes is most certainly disinhibiting for a lot of people. We are surprised to find out that a dyslexic child is not systematically failing in school, that we can go to work dressed the way we want (and the way we can), that it’s possible to confess your ignorance of certain things, that ethnic origins can be a reason to show pride. Initially, it’s very reassuring, which doesn’t mean that afterwards everything is easy! Another part of it is the stronger awareness of rights within social relations. In some situations, the idea that individual behaviours are regulated by rules that everyone knows about can be a relief.”

Because I saw my position change, sometimes radically, on issues like feminism, parenthood, and multiculturalism, I wanted to ask other French Montrealers about this acculturation process.

Because I saw my position change, sometimes radically, on issues like feminism, parenthood, and multiculturalism, I wanted to ask other French Montrealers about this acculturation process. My sample is not meant to be representative, but it’s vibrant. My seemingly innocuous question (“How have you seen yourself change since you immigrated to Montréal?”) launched gushing conversations and an outpouring of identity-related anguish (Laure: “Being French is a burden. I don’t like the French. I’m leaving the Plateau to avoid being associated with them.”), interesting mental blocks (Katell, a translator: “I have to say that what you’re asking me for Nouveau Projet puts me in a tough spot; talking to you about this France-Québec issue makes me really uncomfortable.”).

Our interview subjects are not all completely sold on Québec and Montréal either: some of them criticize a certain indifference toward culture, an obsession with accumulating wealth, the instability of friendships, the formatting of “personal growth.” But they are mutating, and they tell us about it here.

ACTIVISM FOR OTHERS

Judith Rouan, community organizer in Saint-Laurent and Montréal North, still can’t get over it: “I’m getting paid not to explain to people how to cope, but to support them in their ability to spur into action. Empowerment is an impossible practice in France, where we don’t believe that life experience can be the basis for political thought, where we fight on their behalf instead. I’ve always believed in the idea of communities that can self-organize, and that’s what’s going on here.” Judith enjoys campaigning with anglophone activists and revels in North American feminism. “Intersectionality, the queer movement, gender studies… Campaigning in Montréal has given me the vocabulary I needed to express how I look at life. It’s liberating.”

MANAGING WITHOUT HUMILIATING

In Mile-End, Sylvain Lumbroso manages an educational videogame start-up. “This morning, my technical director said, ‘I know you’re already making efforts to be more diplomatic, but you have to keep at it.’ There you have it… I’m learning to avoid being critical in too harsh a manner. It’s an exercise in language and behaviour that’s completely the opposite of the hot-headed management style I engaged in back in Marseille. It’s calmed me down. Now I wouldn’t be able to go back.” Amicie brings up the sandwich method: “Squeeze criticism between two slices of compliments. I also take this approach with the people I collaborate with that are still in France. And it works.”

“Squeeze criticism between two slices of compliments. I also take this approach with the people I collaborate with that are still in France. And it works.”

LEAVING ELITISM BEHIND

Karine Gentelet, a sociologist specializing in indigenous issues, has relieved herself of the weight of French hierarchies. “In France, there’s always someone who feels they are socially above you and think it’s legitimate to be rude to you. In Québec, class differences seem far less apparent in social interactions. It’s great! Everything is permeable, flexible. No sublime and crushing architecture, no History that weighs 10 tons, no intellectual supremacy. We are free, we innovate more quickly.”

A WIDER RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES

Nathalie Collet was an actress. “I was secretly dreaming of restoring old furniture and designing lamps. Here I discovered my own freedom, I knocked down my mental barriers. And I’m giving it a shot! In France, we don’t risk changing career paths. Here, people go back to school whenever they feel like it.” Like Laure, for example, another friend who, at the age of 33, is taking up psychology studies at UQAM: “I’m surrounded by people who have no barriers. It’s an emancipating environment. I’ve gained more power, a propensity for action.” Emmanuel Césario, a marketing strategist, speaks finely of a “mentality of possibilities. It’s not that everything is easy, but there’s something in the air that pulls you upwards.”

“I’m surrounded by people who have no barriers. It’s an emancipating environment. I’ve gained more power, a propensity for action.”

PUTTING AN END TO ETHNOCENTRISM

Karine remembers discovering that “the French Revolution isn’t as central as I thought. In Québec I learnt to put aside my Eurocentrism. All of our myths are debunked. I realized that the French Republican model was debilitating. My mental boundaries have expanded. Being here, where people express their culture and identity, makes us grow as citizens of the world.” Richard Montoux, an optician who moved from Lyon, has the impression that’s he’s “living freely, mixing with all kinds of people, of all ages, of all cultures.”

FULL-ON FEMINISM

Montréal liberates French women. This statement is unquestionable. Say goodbye (or nearly so) to harassment in the street and the tyranny of appearance. Aurélie Arnaud, a PR agent, can’t say enough about the issue. “The first time I walked home alone, at four in the morning, I didn’t feel threatened at all… What a change! In Montréal, I let go of my fear, then of the judgment of others about how I looked, and then of the obligation to be attractive to men. Today, I passionately admire how strong Québécois women are. There’s a feminine power here, both sexual and social, that continues to transform me.” Laure adds: “If I hear macho remarks at a party, I’m going to speak my mind loud and clear, and I won’t feel like a marginal loudmouth, but fully within my rights.”

“If I hear macho remarks at a party, I’m going to speak my mind loud and clear, and I won’t feel like a marginal loudmouth, but fully within my rights.”

LIVING GAY WITHOUT CONSTRAINTS

Richard immigrated to Montréal with his partner Fabien. “When you deal with the administration, the personnel tells you, as naturally as can be, ‘When you have kids…’ There isn’t even any question of ‘gay marriage,’ it’s completely integrated. Even my own way of looking at these issues has changed.” Laure, who moved to Montréal to be with her Québécois girlfriend: “I’m not afraid of educating anyone about the issue. It comes naturally. It’s incredible! Being part of a homo couple doesn’t restrict my choices in any way. We French kiss in public. This world is my oyster. Obviously, it’s not quite the same in Baie-Saint-Paul.” And let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not the same in certain environments or more conservative neighbourhoods, either.

LOOSENING THE STRANGLEHOLD

In France, the nuclear family remains an implicit ordinance. “In Montréal,” says Laure, “the couple is a kind of forward contract that can’t last. The decision to have children is not related to the requirement of starting a family ‘until death do us part.’ There’s less cross-generational solidarity, but also no overpowering family model. Separation is not the end of the world.”

IMMIGRATING TO GROW

Katell has doubts about everything, including the “nice and peaceful Quebecer, tiresome and tormented French” duality. “If you take darkness, ego, and violence away from Quebecers, you end up Disneyfying them! When I emigrated, I gained greater access to grey zones, to the complexity and nuances of others and in myself. And in this vagueness and lukewarmness, I find greater richness and life impulses than I do in binaries. I feel cured of all anger. I find that emigration softened me up, made me more lenient toward the French, toward Quebecers, and ultimately, toward myself.”

When I emigrated, I gained greater access to grey zones, to the complexity and nuances of others and in myself.