Spending time in Ottawa and meeting and becoming friends with some Quebeckers has been an interesting experience for me. Meeting Quebeckers has given me a better understanding of the language issue in Canada. I have to sya most people from Quebec I have met, I have liked. Having learned French and being reasonably fluent (especially after the last two years working in a bilingual environment) I feel pretty comfortable most of the time in situations where French is spoken.

In Ottawa, you hear French all the time, sure you can get away from it if you want, but most of the time it's a fact of life. It makes things interesting, and it's been great to be in an environment where French is spoken by many many people. I like it a lot. It's a nice environment and once you've spent time there, you understand the issues of bilingualism and how it fits into the scheme of things much better.

Coming from Saskatchewan though, I understand why people don't like certain aspects of bilingualism and why it seems so foreign to them. My problem is that people are almost afraid of people who don't speak English. I see it time after time. I've dealt with many people at the infocenter who were anti-French. That's what I don't understand.

We need to open up and get over ourselves. People need to move away from this close-minded idea that everyone should always speak english, because they do. Learning other languages is such a good thing, it opens up avenues of cross cultural communication. It makes you realize how central language is to communication in General.

Learning another language, is opening up another way of seeing the world. Such a valuable experience in a complex world one which is becoming more integrated all the time. I think it's short sighted to demand that everyone speak only english here. In reality, in a lot of countries, they are pishing English, without diminishing their skills in their native tongue. The result, a lot of people speak english as a second language. If that continues, what happens to those who only speak english?