I’m a proud Québécois. Moving to Alberta helped me feel even more Canadian

This First Person column is written by Thomas Aguinaga, a musician, writer and international exchange co-ordinator at the University of Ottawa. He was proudly born and raised in Aylmer, Que. This column is part of a Canada Day series exploring what Canada means to people across this country. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

In 1983 my dad, Brian Aguinaga, set foot in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., (“St- Jean,” to the locals) for the first time.

Like many new military recruits, he was completing his French language training at the town’s base. He was an almost 19-year-old “Anglo” from Nova Scotia, by way of Ontario, with little time spent in “La Belle Province.”

The plan was to quickly finish his training and avoid being cornered into any linguistically awkward situations with locals. 

But one night he was tempted to go out, and he was cornered into a linguistically awkward situation with my mom.

Josée Lachance, a then 18-year-old francophone from St-Jean- was smitten. So was dad. Their friends became their unwitting translators for the night. 

On later dates, now without friends’ help, they’d walk the streets of St-Jean playing a game they called “dictionary.” The rules were simple: See an object, call it out and the other repeats it in their language. “Leaf,” dad said. “Feuille,” mom answered. “Car,” he proclaimed. “Auto,” she responded. 

On they went, learning each other’s language — and falling in love — one word at a time.

They got married, and dad’s military career took them all around Canada: Victoria, Halifax and Kingston, Ont.

Eventually, they had kids (my sister, then me), and settled down in Aylmer — a diverse, bilingual suburb on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river and 15 minutes from Ottawa. My parents, now fluently bilingual, made sure we also learned both official languages.

We spoke English with dad and French with mom. We watched CBC and Radio-Canada, celebrated Canada Day and St-Jean-Baptiste and rooted for all Canadian NHL teams. We were never half-Canadian or half-Québécois. We were completely and unashamedly both. 

My upbringing was open-minded, bilingual and bicultural, but I only discovered what that meant to me when I moved to Alberta.

My decision to venture west in 2017 was twofold: At that time Alberta had an NDP government better suited to my progressive sensibilities and this contrasted with the separatism and nationalism I saw growing in Quebec.

For me, this culminated in the passing of Bill 21 a few years later — legislation which prevents certain public sector employees like teachers from wearing religious symbols at work — and which fundamentally contradicts my values both as a French Canadian and as someone who studied education.

What’s in Quebec’s secularism bill: Religious symbols, uncovered faces and a charter workaround

So, at 21, I moved to Edmonton and studied at the University of Alberta.

For me, Edmonton wasn’t just a place, it brought perspective. On my own for the first time — juggling school, work, rent and groceries and with family too far away to rely on, I grew up. I started to see and accept more nuance and complexity in the world, both in Alberta and at home.

I started to consider the possibility that Quebec wasn’t federalist or sovereignist, bilingual or unilingual, left or right. It was — completely and unashamedly — all those things. I had only to choose which of those values defined me as a Québécois: I was a federalist, bilingual, left-wing progressive French Canadian, living in Alberta, and proud of it.

So, over time, my descriptions of my home province to friends and classmates out west became more affectionate: painting a picture of a forested suburb on the Ottawa river, and a couple who lived there — one person speaking French, the other English — but nevertheless laughing and loving, and above all understanding.

I’ve finished university now, and this past year, I moved back to Ottawa.  

When my parents had to choose where to live, they settled on the Quebec side of the capital region — seeking to balance French and English for their kids. When met with the same decision, I chose Ontario.

I wasn’t ready to move back home and perhaps I never will be. What I do know is Ottawa gives me exactly what I need right now: I live only a short drive from family, and an even shorter commute to a job I love — and I can more easily avoid the frustrations of Quebec’s politics, from this side of the river. All in all, I prefer being an expat Québécois.

As for my career, I work with students at an international exchange program at the fully bilingual University of Ottawa. It’s a job where I help ensure students are prepared to live elsewhere, perhaps like it was for me to better understand where they’re from.

It took some moving around, but I know what being Canadian means to me now.

Like the British Protestants and French Catholics of Confederation, and on a much smaller scale, my parents have shown me that compromise may not be easy, but it can work. Language and culture need not divide. If anything, when combined, they’re assets that appreciate over time, in our children, and theirs, until something new emerges from the middle ground.

Quebec gave me a voice uniquely my own, Alberta taught me how to sing the words, and now in my career, Ontario handed me a microphone.

My parents gifted me two languages to express my gratitude. Thank you. Merci.

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