[Late last year,
I had a chance to spend a few days in Montreal, my first extended visit
to the city. Among the many reasons I loved it was the plethora of compelling
spaces and ways through which the city remembers its social, cultural, and
artistic histories. So this week I’ll CanadianStudy a few such spaces, leading
up to a special post on a few Canadian colleagues!]
On two ways
Montreal’s bilingualism can serve as a model for America.
If many of the
week’s historical and cultural issues I’ve highlighted in this week’s posts
would be present in any Canadian (or American) city, there’s one very clear
element that distinguishes Montreal (and most of the province
of Quebec of which it’s part) from them: its ubiquitous bilingualism. Because
my traveling companion speaks French and wanted to honor this part of the city,
virtually every encounter we had—from restaurant waitstaff to store clerks,
museum docents to public transporation employees, and many more—was conducted
in a combination of Anglais and French. And we never encountered a single
person who could not switch between the two languages effortlessly, nor one who
seemed unready or unwilling to do so. I’m sure there are Montreal residents who
know or prefer only French (and I know there are
broader political issues at play when it comes to language and identity in
Quebec), but on a communal level Montreal is by far the most consistently and
thoroughly bilingual city in which I’ve spent any time.
As such,
Montreal can serve as a clear model for how American cities might evolve into a
more fully bilingual future. Although “Press 1 for Spanish” has become an easy touchstone for
conservative fears (to be clear, and I hope obviously, I don’t endorse a
single word of that article) about a changing national identity, the truth is
that such accommodations have arisen because of the growing community of
Spanish speakers across the United States. Indeed, as of the 2010 census some
major cities (such as Miami and Anaheim) and many smaller ones (such as Laredo,
Texas and Lawrence, Massachusetts) already featured Hispanic majorities. It
would seem to be a logical step for those cities—and many others across
America, if not the nation as a whole—to strive to cultivate a genuinely
bilingual identity, not just in recognizing or including both languages (as has
already begun to happen in at least those “Press 1” kinds of ways) but in
helping educate a citizenry who (like Montreal’s) all speak both shared
tongues. Besides the clear intellectual
and neurological benefits of bilingualism for individuals, this shift would
help our communities become more united and engaged, more in conversation in
both literal and figurative ways.
Yet as I’ve long
argued, both in
this space and in
my books, America has been multilingual throughout its history, and
Montreal thus also offers a lesson in how we think about our past. Virtually
every major American city could foreground its multlingual past more fully,
after all: New Orleans would be the obvious starting point (and as
I’ve written here does do so in some key ways), as would California cities
like San Diego (and
ditto); but it would be interesting and important to think as well about
how New York might include Dutch in its collective memories, how Detroit could
do so for French, how all of Alaska could do so for Russian, and so on. All of
those languages and cultures/communities remain present in those places today,
but again it’s not just about the present—it’s just as significant to remember
these linguistic histories, and in so doing to engage with their contributions
to the places’ and our nation’s identities. In that way, after all, Montreal is
no more bi- or multilingual than are most American cities and communities—and can
offer a valuable model for how we might begin to better remember that side of
ourselves.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Sites of collective memory you’d highlight?
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