Lemons wrote: ↑Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:15 pm
Linda_Runs wrote: ↑Thu Mar 26, 2020 1:42 pm
winterglow wrote: ↑Thu Mar 26, 2020 12:31 pm
I know that - my responses were more in reply to the poster higher up in this thread who suggested that England tried to force the use of the English language in Canada in the 70s ...
I grew up in Scotland and we got quite a lot about Canadian history in primary school
Half of my family history is from Scotland; the other have England. Throughout school, probably like many British students, our geography and social studies went far beyond our own borders, not like some school systems in some countries.
The native language in the Nova Scotia area went from French to English around the 1940’s give or take a decade. The schools in that area no longer allowed children from French speaking families to speak French at school. Government records went from French to English. That’s the time period I was thinking of.
I am not sure where you are getting that history from. While I was born in Quebec, I was raised in Nova Scotia from about age 11 until I left in my early 20's. Almost nobody I knew spoke French, had French families or any French speaking heritage. Officially and historically, French settlers where only in one small port in the earliest years in the 1600's before Nova Scotia was even known to Europe. In the mid 1750's, that small group of French settlers were deported or dispersed.
Other than the very sparse small pockets of Nova Scotian's with Acadien roots, the only French in the province are modern day Canadians whom moved from the north shores of New Brunswick or Quebec for reasons of employment or education. Having traveled all through Nova Scotia, I found no historical references to anything French at all. As for Canada as a whole, Canada is an English speaking nation with only about 20 percent of the population French speaking. In our generation, I would be surprised if you could travel anywhere in Canada and not find an English speaking Canadian, regardless of their mother tongue.