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Tag: Canada
Frenchville, PA: a distinct dialect of North American French
This is not about Quebec or Acadia, but this is where my North American French stuff goes, so: in reading a book on Prince Edward Island French, King, Ruth. 2000. The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing: A Prince Edward Island French Case Study . Amsterdam: John Benjamins. —I’ve come across a mention of Frenchville, PA, […]
Weekend Acadians
I’ve left this post so long (a month!), it’s funny; funnier still that I’ve already said much of what I was going to say in it, in the preamble that ended up as a separate posting. Still, I’m reaching the end of my current backlog of Canadiana—and I’m not finding Angry French Guy’s latest inspiring […]
Acado-Russian Dolls
It’s true, the initial obsession with Franco-Canada is somewhat wearing off; it was remarked at the pub last week that I went a full 20 minutes without mentioning Quebec. Because my downtime has been taken up with adventures in the language of War of Troy and Chalcocondyles (of which more at The Other Place), I […]
Those Who Have Bowed Down
This started out as a meditation on Acajack’s take on assimilated Acadians. I will still do that meditation, because it’s a rich vein to tap, but it’s not where this post has ended up, because I’d also been discussing with a friend about community politics among Australian Aborigines, and there was some cross-fertilisation of concepts. […]
Spokesblogger for a Nation
Montreal airport has the same Canadiana as Toronto airport. Airports sell humorous quirky takes on the local culture to inform the curious tourist—The Undutchables was all over Amsterdam airport. Toronto surtitled its Canadiana “Like Maple Syrup for the soul”. Montreal surtitled it “Comme sirop d’érable pour l’âme”. But it was the same English-language Canadiana in […]
Franco-Canada Blogged
There will be a blog post ruminating on Acadieman, Brayons, and “weekend Acadians”. After I got taken to the woodshed at the pub Friday by a friend who’s spent a lot of time in Quebec, there will also be some flailing about on civic nationalism, and whether defence of a language is enough to rally […]
Further on Acadia: Duelling “I am Canadian”s
My confused researches on Acadia have continued, and this is what I further report back. I remember a decade back that Joe Canadian rant ad campaign from Molson, which turned into a surprising assertion of Canadian nationalism, though it was mostly an assertion of what Canada was not (i.e. the U.S.):It’s a cool ad, which […]
Acadieman
Knowing nothing at all about Canada, I assumed there was a well defined Franco-Canada set up in opposition to Anglo-Canada; and I was surprised (as I’ve already blogged) that Quebec is not particularly losing sleep over the Francos outside Quebec. It turns out that, after a shortlived surge of westward colonisation, Quebec had decided by […]
The Civic Nationalism of Quebec
Now that Quebecois have noticed my blog, I’m going to have to post eventually about what I don’t think they should secede. That’s going to be a hard post to write, given that (a) it’s none of my maudite business; (b) the ideal that I defend in my head, like Ramsay Cook does, inherited from […]
Montreal VI: Joual 4, Nicholas 1
I’m back in an implausibly cold Melbourne Town, and I haven’t been blogging my experiences in Canada live as they were happening. That’s always a high risk venture: on the one hand, I’m far enough from the actual experience to smudge it round the edges, and come up with something less accurate and more entertaining. […]