Quoted from Cobra99

I'm open minded as much as the next guy.  It's just when it gets crammed down my throat is when I get pissed.


I totally agree, but to outlaw English on a window is silly when we live in a bilingual society.  Hell if someone wants to post French here let them.  I walk into a Chinese market and see signs written in Chinese and I don't get offended and run around screaming where's the English and call my local MLA.

Then you completely not understand the idea of the law.
The idea isn't to forbid english, but to force french. When you are 1% of the continent, surrounded by 99% of another culture, you need to make your own prevail in some way to ensure it remains alive. The "french police" ensures that movies are available in both french and english when they hit the theater, they ensures that french versions of books and videogames are available, and they ensure someone who only speak the official language can read what this store has to offer.

Need I to mention that the laws aren't 100% enforced?
Go to the old pointe-clair, get into the first store you see, read the name of said store in all-english. Get in there and say "bonjour, comment allez-vous" and be looked at just like you're an alien. That being done in an officially french province, with french-nazi laws, where the laws state that the work language is french.

If you find it normal, let's see it the way around.

Would you like to get into a store near you place and be served in french? Forced to speak french at work?

The nature of those laws is to ensure that french speaking people actually are able to function in french.

Trust me, as a young avid videogamer who didn't speak english, I found hard to understand solid gear - or even super mario bros. - when I was a kid. Those laws makes that I am no longer a stranger in my own country.

Nazi? no. protectionism? Certainement!

"stranger in my own country" - hmmm... considering that over 80% of the population of Quebec considers French their "mother tongue" and 90% speak French or are bilingual, I don't think you're in much danger for the moment. We likely can't claim the same statistic of English here in Ontario or in B.C. at least.

No offense intended, and this is not personal, but the National Assembly of Quebec originally did want to forbid English on all outdoor signs (and Levesque was hated by much of English Canada for invoking the not withstanding clause in the face of an unconstitutional law), people still remember the FLQ, and there was contraversay over the right to English schooling if I remember correctly.  It is only over time that things have started to "soften", and over time the French culture (as assuredly as the English one) will dissapate and change, just as every culture and every language in the history of mankind has changed through migration, evolution and changing politics.

Hell, one of the more succesful charismatic Canadian politicians of the past few years is Gilles Duceppe. Of the federal political leaders, he is easily the best.  And hell, here he is running for election in a Federal jurisdiction on a separatist platform (isn't that the very definition of treason?) - only in Canada you say?

One of the more successful cultures that engaged in protectionism was feudal and even post war Japan. Even into more recent times they successfully practiced cultural protectionism (for a developed nation) ... but with the advent of the Internet, loss of economic power, the pervasiveness of Rock, Roll and Rap, and an ever shrinking world, even that bastion of distinct culture is starting to meld into the global culture that we are all starting to evolve towards. Think Pizzicato Five.

The Nazi reference is black humour expressed from an English perspective.  Only niave people would think that it is an advantage to communicate in just one language, or to isolate themselves from other cultures...oh, hey isn't that one of the main defining hallmarks of Naziism then and now (but then I digress once again).

My purpose is not to piss off (although I likely have to have my foot surgically removed from my mouth), but to stimulate thought, protest and discussion, even when its contraversial.  We live contraversial lives. We get no where being silent, alone in our own beliefs. We enrich ourselves and our lives by sharing our thoughts, including the most uncomfortable truths - because it's only then that we learn of each other's perspectives.

..that and I like playing devil's advocate.       yé-yé

I agree with preserving French heritage and culture. However, if I was a Francophone Canadian I would want my kids to be bilingual so they dont limit their awareness of everything around them.  Its not as though France gives a crap about Quebec.

I had a discussion with an engineer I work with who is from Montreal. I told him I was astounded that there are so many kids in Quebec that literally dont speak any English at all. His reply was, "Good, that makes it easier for my kid to compete for a job in the future."

Plus, there are so many fewer channels to watch on TV.