Hockeyville

Last night, the Buffalo Sabres and the Montréal Canadien played in Roberval, a town of about 11,000 in the Lac St-Jean area of Québec. As you may have heard, Canadians love their hockey, and Roberval won a contest to host the match by proving itself the Canadian town most devoted to the sport. Sorry, I don't know the details of the contest. Now, the Saguenay-Lac St-Jean area has a reputation as one of the most, possibly the most, proudly French-speaking areas of Québec, where separatist sentiment is strongest. In the large cities, Montréal and Québec, a lot of people speak English. In Saguenay--Lac St-Jean, 99.something % of the population speak French as their home language, and the number of English speakers is smaller.

The radio commentators noted this morning several goodwill gestures across the language gap from both the French and English sides. Don Cherry, a hockey commentataor on the CBC, Canada's public English-language network, was applauded because he took the trouble to address the crowd with, "Bonjour, les amis!" Cherry is, in fact, an unpopular figure among French-Canadian hockey fans. I don't listen to hockey matches myself, but what the (French) radio commentators say about him is how hostile to French Canadians he is, rude jokes, complaints about how those Frenchies get everything and are just whiners, etc. According to them, he's about as friendly to French Canadians as Rush Limbaugh is to Barack Obama. But last night he won the crowd over by making the effort to say a simple (week 1 of Elementary French I) phrase in French. A small, friendly gesture worked wonders.

At the same time, French speakers in the crowd, including those whose English is limited, trotted out their English to speak to English-speaking players. They idolize hockey stars, whether they be francophones or anglophones, or russophones, lots of Russians players nowadays. The chance to be near a great player and communicate with him trumped nationalist sentiments.

Hockeyville: http://blogues.cyberpresse.ca/dore/?p=132
Hoockeyville: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/sports/story.html?id=d9a41dd2-99a6-4081-ae56-fa2f4488b959 Incidentally, The Gazette is not usually very friendly to francophones, and you can see in the article that their writer is apparently unaware that lots of francophones know exactly who Don Cherry is.