French… yet much more

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This article was published 05/07/2011 (5208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a stroll down Provencher Boulevard on a hot, lazy July Sunday, you can still hear French being spoken. But there’s a bit more to the street than cute, European-style cafés.

On the baseball diamond at Provencher Park, a group of South Korean men play ball, hurling directions to each other in their native language, suggesting plays.

Where Les Jasmins de la Tunisie restaurant once stood near Tache Avenue, a sushi bar has opened, where the owner raves about the friendly, “bright” neighbourhood, but seems surprised when asked if many customers speak French.

Pizza Hotline is next to the Promenade Bistro. And near Le Garage Café and the À la page bookstore (À la page is a pun that means “up to date”), you have the Sawatdee Thai Restaurant.

But walk inside the Thai place and you’ll be greeted by Marise Svistovski, an 18-year-old of Franco-Manitoban and Polish origin, just graduated from Collège Louis-Riel.

She’s part of the community still living and breathing in French.

“If you look for French, you will find it, but if you don’t look for it, you probably won’t,” Svistovski says in English with just the faintest wisp of an accent.

Step inside most of the houses on Place Gabrielle Roy, says Suzanne D’Amours, Svistovski’s mother, where they live, and you’ll probably hear the language.

“I hear it everywhere,” D’Amours says, but admits “francophones have a tendency to speak in English when they don’t know if the other person is francophone or not.”

Browse through the newspapers for sale at the Shell service station and you’ll find La Liberté, a 32-page French paper published in St. Boniface.

Perhaps the strangest discovery is farther down Provencher, where the restaurants become stucco houses and a strip mall holds both the Source Adult video store and Electric Babylon, which advertises “tatouage et perçage” (tattoos and body-piercing).

Ninety-year-old Sister Ida Beaudin, a former teacher, grew up in St. Eustache and switches effortlessly between English and French. “The best school in the city is Provencher,” she says, pointing in its direction, one block over. “You give the kids a book in English — they learn. You give them a book in French — they learn.”

william.burr@freepress.mb.ca

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