FRENCH ALL WEEK AND CREE ON SUNDAY

       FRENCH ALL WEEK AND CREE ON SUNDAY Copyright Frances K. Van Mil

            I have always loved the French language.  As soon as I began learning it in Grade nine, I began to wish that I could spend a year in Quebec.  I pictured old Quebec City, with its romantic cafes and perhaps a gallant French man to show me the sights.  Ah – and I would write poems and sit by the river…

            Well, the Lord answers prayer – but in His own way: I wasn’t exactly expecting to end up in Chibougamau!  It is at the end of the bus route, just within the James Bay region – a twenty-four hour bus ride from Toronto.  I know, because I took it twice, watching over four big bags and a pair of skis all the way through five stops, each one becoming more French: North Bay, Cochrane,  Rouyn-Noranda, Val D’Or…and finally Chibougamau.

            You may wonder how in the world I ended up there –being an “Anglophone” and all.

            I had been unable to find a teaching job after graduation, so had worked in various day-cares and nursery schools.  I was happily employed by the Hamilton Family Services Agency in their nursery school program in Hamilton on a six-month LIP grant, and warmly invited to continue for another six months.  However, time was running out to obtain my permanent Ontario teaching certificate, which must be obtained within five years, and by working for two years at an elementary school. 

            Therefore, I resigned and began applying to every kindergarten/primary teaching ad I could find in the Globe and Mail.  Finally I hit pay dirt, and was asked to come for an interview in Montreal with Mr. Hurley, a principal, for the position of kindergarten teacher at Holy Family School in Chibougamau.  It was August.  My two teacher friends offered to drive me from my parents’ home near Campbellville, Ontario to Montreal for the interview and for some fun.

            I got hired!  The Lord is so good.  On the Labour Day weekend, in the year of 1973, I set out for Toronto for the long bus trip north.  Rows of eager faces, often indigenous children, lined up at each village to greet the once-a-day bus coming through.  Finally, I arrived in Chibougamau, Quebec, met by my principal, Mr. Hurley, who had arranged a place for me to stay in a bilingual French home for the weekend. While not French himself, Mr. Hurley knew everybody in town, and had a great deal of favour. His charming French wife had been the kindergarten teacher, but had resigned to have her fifth child, in the good Roman Catholic tradition. 

            I was most relieved to find that the first week at school would be teacher preparation days, so that I would have time to adjust, attend meetings and set up my classroom without being rushed.

            Holy Family School (Ecole Sainte-Famille) was the only English Catholic school in town.  The Protestant school board did not even have a building.  My kindergarten class was the only English kindergarten, so both Protestant and Catholic children, as well as the English-speaking children from the air base, and a few others, attended my class. Their parents made a decision at the Grade One level whether to have the child attend a Catholic or the Protestant school – therefore, my class was to be religion-neutral.  I remember asking Mr. Hurley whether I might be allowed to read Bible stories to the children, or quote something from the Psalms, but was given a definite “no”.  I did feel “tied up”, and not quite myself under that restriction. Holy Family School was supported mainly by parents who wanted their children to be bilingual.  Often, the child spoke French with a French-speaking mother up to school age, and had a bilingual father in business.  Part of my job was to teach the French children to speak English. 

            And we had some fun with that!  I think it was more the other way around, at first.  I can still hear little Danielle saying,

            “Pas balle, Miss Heddle (I was Miss Heddle then), ballon!”

I had to trust the children’s corrections, even while aware that five-year-olds do not always speak correctly.  Since I was teaching children who were in school for the first time, I had to explain rules and routines.  Therefore, instead of speaking English, (except to the air base and other English-speaking children), I mostly had to go to French at first.  I remember that I had, among my many French children, two Nathalie’s, a Line Marcil, a Danielle, three Marc’s and a Ghislain…then a Brenda Lee Arbuckle, a trilingual German girl, Cheryl Hurley, the principal’s bilingual daughter, two Pakistani children and one Cree boy as well as all the children from the Anglican church which I attended, desiring a low-key English church that year.  With my two half-day classes, I had fifty-four children.  No pressure, but Mr. Hurley pointed to Line Marcil one day and asked, “Does this little girl speak English yet?”  No, but in March, I remember saying something to the children about having to have our cookies on the floor, if our paintings weren’t dry.  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!  Cookies on the floor!” piped up little Line, laughing hilariously…progress!

            Then there was church.  Since I was surrounded by French-at home, at school, at the grocery store, at the bank, I wanted to relax with an English-speaking church.  I had the choice of an evangelical church and the Anglican Church.  In my first year of teaching, I did not want a gung-ho church which would require me to do too much, so I chose to follow my old Anglican roots.  The minute I walked in, and the priest learned that I was a teacher, he invited me to become a member of the vestry!  I did not even know what the vestry was – but I assumed it was a leadership position.  However, nothing came of that.  The minister and his wife were very good to me, inviting me to their home for fresh blueberry pie and dinners, and taking me to see “The French Connection” at the Officer’s Club.  I got drafted right away to teach Sunday School –perhaps my first mistake –yet I would not have missed it either. I never even got to hear one Scripture or sing one hymn, nor hear a message, but was always in the basement with the Sunday school.  I was given a flannelgraph package with the wonderful Winkie the Bear, who had eyes that blinked, and came with many stories.  When I saw that most of my children were Cree children, non-English-speaking, I asked the minister how I was to communicate with them.  He gave me this famous answer:  “You communicate with your personality!”  Hmmm-how does that work, I wondered…

I had an assistant, Jeannie, a lovely Cree teenager, whom I tried to encourage to teach, but she was too shy.  I loved those children so much-the roly-poly quiet Cree children especially.  However, later in the year, I quit, burned out from having no spiritual input to meet my own needs.  The minister had a three-point charge, one of which was on the Mistassini Reserve.  He loved the native people very much.  He, too, burned out at the lonely, overwhelming mission he had.  Thus is it in the far north sometimes.

            When I did attend services at any time there, I was upset to see that the church was not integrated.  The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant types who usually held a job at the mine, sometimes in management, sat on the left.  The quiet Cree people sat on the right.  We all sang together in our own language to the same tune – such as “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.  The two groups never mingled at any social function.  The lay reader was Cree.  Why did he have to have the lower position, I wondered.  I expect it was because the Anglican Church requires its ministers to have a high level of education.  So the Apostle Paul would have been in; the Apostle Peter would have been out.  Just my thoughts… more than a bit angry still.

            I resided for a while at the Wrights.  Mrs. Wright kept telling me that she really wanted to board the Protestant teacher.  The fact that I was Protestant, though teaching at a Catholic school, and attended the same Anglican church as she did not seem to change her attitude.  The funniest thing I ever saw was Mr. Wright trying his best to watch an English musical in French, with English subtitles, grimacing the whole way through.  Unless it was myself, attending a Friday night movie which was the English slapstick “Carry On Gang at the Hospital”, translated by my bilingual friend Evelyn as “The Wild Ones at the Hospital”.  Hilarious in French!

            It was cold up there in winter.  I had to walk from my home to school or wherever I was going, unless I took a taxi.  The winter temperature was always  60o below freezing, with the wind chill.  I dressed professionally, heels and all, but did have a pair of knit slacks to wear in extreme weather.  I developed what I call my “Chibougamau shuffle” to get me to the next building quickly.  On my birthday, a friend and I went up to see the Mistassini reserve by bus.  And on that birthday I got frostbitten on my nose-just call me Rudolph, because in cold weather, it always turns red now.  We were just white visitors, not knowing anyone on the reserve, so were not particularly welcome, and were asked not to rest against the shelves in the Hudson’s Bay store.  I’m pretty ashamed at our gawking.  Some teachers, white girls, eagerly invited us in for lunch on learning that we were teachers.  Us and them again, as always, as I reflect on it now.  But we had a good time.  We saw the beautiful church with its gorgeous native decorations, then went home on the evening bus.  

There was a wonderful morale at Holy Family School.   We had a bilingual-leaning-to-French secretary who would translate all of our letters to the parents for us.  The school went from kindergarten right through Grade eleven, when the students would have to attend the Cejep before going to university or college.  I found that the French school board did not easily accept my Ontario teaching qualifications, but, to meet their standards I would practically have had to have a PHD.  I was merely a fill-in until they could get any sort of French teacher.  In discussing qualifications with other staff members, who were a really nice group of colleagues, we found that we all had basically the same education and training, except the high school teachers, who may have had more.

            The parents supported many fund-raising activities for their school.  One, in particular, was the ten-mile walk-a-thon.  I was not athletic, but, seeing that I would have to walk with my class, I bought a pair of Adidas, my first expensive athletic shoes.  My kindergarten kids were well-sponsored.  Many people pledged from two to twenty dollars a mile, assuming that they would not last long.  Did they get a surprise!  

            There were stops, with checkers and water for the walkers; there were patrol cars, parents, going back and forth to see that all was well, and driving children home who were unwell or tired.  At the end of the walk would be hot dogs and other treats at the school.

            Our class started out well, happy and singing.  We soon lagged behind the others, though, and after a while had absolutely no pace at all.  Some were picked up by the patrol cars, but a determined little group of five-year-olds kept plodding along,  Towards the end of the walk, Mr. Hurley kept coming back to check on us, since the other students were already enjoying hot dogs back at the school.  No, the children did not want to quit!  I remember little Nathalie refusing to get into the patrol car, driven by her father, which closely followed our small group at this point.  Finally, Mr. Hurley told us that time had run out, and they would grant us points for the last few checkpoints.  In the end, our kindergarten class of fifty-four five-year-olds brought in as much as some of the high school classes.  I believe we came in second!  What a tribute to perseverance!  I ached all over, but a hot, hot shower took most of the pain away. 

            Most of the business people in town, once they saw that we English-speaking teachers would be residing there, switched to English rather than try to carry on a conversation with our pidgin French.  Although I had studied French at university for two years, I had forgotten many of the phrases over the years.  I had real trouble adjusting to the Quebec accent, until my ear was acclimatized.  This was real – the way French-Canadians actually spoke, rather than the formal Parisian French that we were taught.  ”Jacques” became “Jowk”; “oui” sounded more like “weh-nh”.  Some of the miners actually pronounced “lit” “litt”, but my bilingual colleague Evelyne informed me that that was extremely poor French.  I became practiced in the phrases necessary for renting rooms:”Laveuse?  Secheuse?” I would ask. Also, I became so good at rhyming off my street address to taxi drivers that I was mistakenly thought to be bilingual, and was treated to an onslaught of fast French which I could not follow.  

Having only a hotplate in my rented room, I often ate at a certain restaurant.  The usual fare was either tortiere or hachi Canadien, and a strawberry pie.  I remember the French-speaking waitress, who knew me, asking me one day: ”Hachi Canadien –in English, hash?”  I loved her interest and attitude.

Our Friday nights were often spent at the movie theatre, usually to see a double feature in French.  I attended a French Roman Catholic mass with Evelyne, and tried to follow the French spoken slowly and clearly by the priest.

           

 The only time I was made to feel rejected as an outsider was at the clinic, where a nurse whispered to another nurse “C’est une Anglaise” in a disparaging way.  When I telephoned the clinic, I had been unable, with my rusty French, to think of the basic phrase “J’ai mal a la gorge”, and kept saying only “ma gorge”.  For all they knew, I might have had my throat slit, rather than just a sore throat.  A bilingual doctor was finally found, and he said in a most disgusted way, “She has a sore throat!”

            Another new experience in my fascinating adventure concerned the weather.  I am not sure of the month, but some time in spring there came a strong warm wind.  I found myself unable to stand up against it, nor to help my kindergarten students, who had to stay lined up against the wall until their parents came to take them home in the middle of the day

            Towards the end of the school year, I received a letter in French from the school board, saying that I could not stay on as a teacher there.  Mr. Hurley made it known that he had given me a good report, but the issue was basically the enmity between Quebec and Ontario, French and English.  Does this go back to the English conquering of Quebec long ago?  I suspect so, but am so aghast at this enmity, because I love the French-Canadian people so.

            So on Sunday mornings, (I no longer attending church), I sat around with some of my colleagues in a restaurant, looking through the Globe and Mail for job postings. 

            One day, a superintendant from a northern Ontario school board, after talking to Mr. Hurley, desired to hire me for either Espanola or Spanish – I cannot remember now which it was.  I do remember that he sounded desperate –not a good sign –and that the job entailed both a junior and a senior kindergarten, plus special education on the side.  On the map, the location looked isolated for a single woman. He gave me the weekend to think it over.  So desperate to hire a teacher with one year of experience –hmmm.

            I sought the Lord for signs, pleading with Him for wisdom.  I needed a job, and had no idea whether another offer would come along.  I needed to get back to Ontario, where my credentials were accepted.  At first, I had liked my situation with Mr. Hurley and the school so much that I would have been willing to take courses from McGill University to please them – but it was a bit ridiculous. Finally, I felt the Lord speaking to me at the end of the weekend.  He seemed to say this:  “If the job is too hard for you, with three jobs in one, then don’t accept it.”

That made a lot of sense.  I felt His peace, and turned the offer down, with the superintendant still pleading.

“You’re brave,” said Mr. Hurley.  But another principal called, and I accepted a kindergarten job in Britt, Ontario – where I obtained my permanent Ontario teaching certificate, and met my husband –but that’s another story!

I cherish memories of my year in Chibougamau, Quebec – my most fascinating cross-cultural experience, and a real answer to my prayer of long ago, to spend a year in Quebec.