...of the river. When I first got to France and my new students found out I was from Canada, they bombarded me with questions about popular French Canadian music groups or artists. Not recognising any of the names, I had to describe to them the extent of the divide between French and English Canada. I felt completely ignorant about whole cultural phenomenons whose existence was revered a short bridge-walk away. I've spent most of my life living on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River only really crossing over to Quebec in summers to go to a heavily anglicised cottage-country. Sure, we took multiple school trips to Gatineau where the Museum of Civilization sits but, to any English Ottawan, thats still Ottawa. I had never taken any interest in French Canadian culture, or if I did, it was to listen to bands from Montreal who had started singing in English, or a mix of both, and were being played in clubs and bars in Toronto. I never realised how Anglo-centric my view of Canadian culture was until these French kids, thousands of kilometres away, started outsmarting me with their knowledge of Canadian artists (writers, artists, musicians alike). It gives you a bit of a shock when you're standing in a French classroom and a bunch of kids are telling you about a singer they like who found his fame only a few short hours away from your hometown, or a TV show they're streaming that was produced in Montreal. Weird.
So now that I've found myself back in Ottawa for the time being I am trying to take advantage of the city's strategic position on the border of this Canadian divide. Understanding the language ten times better helps every day, although I find myself a walking stereotype of "English Canadian learns French in France and can't understand a word of Quebecois". Yet, I'm understanding French-English jokes way better than I used to and, as a result, am picking up on cultural cues. A friend of mine, who has worked on her French and is pretty much fluent, introduced me to a show called Les Invincibles. Hilarious show about a bunch of guys who make a pact to break up with their girlfriends at the same time and the resulting consequences. I've recently discovered it was remade in France for French television. There's this whole cultural exchange between France and Quebec which I, as an Anglophone, had completely missed. My sister also recently led me to discover a French Canadian group who were apparently huge from the 70s into the 80s. They started in Montreal and my mother (also an anglo), who grew up there, had only vaguely heard of them. Here is one of their most popular songs, which, now that I understand the lyrics, I've come to love. They're called Beau Dommage and the song is La complainte du phoque en alaska .
The song is telling the story of a seal who finds himself alone on an iceburg after his 'blonde' has left him for the circus in the United States. It's just a very pretty song, I especially like this lyric:
"Ca n'vaut pas la peine de laisser ceux qu'on aime
Pour aller faire tourner des ballons sur son nez"
It's not worth the pain to leave the ones we love
to go spin circus balls on our noses (but much prettier sounding than that)
I still have a long way to go in understanding French Canadian culture, but its been a really interesting start. You never know what you'll find just across the river.
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