Is it time for Ontario to be split up into new Provinces?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Your Pakistan example reminds me about how the rise of nationalism often leads to the rise of the idea of a single national language to represent the nation-state, even at the expense of multiple local native languages. It's like what happened with France when Parisian French became the national language. It gave France a strong identity, at the expense of local languages like Occitan, Breton, Basque, Alsatian etc.

I'm not that knowledgeable about the Inuit languages, and don't know whether Inuktitut is standardized as one language among the Inuit.

It's even more extreme in Italy. 200 years ago there was no such language as "Italian". The language that we now call Italian was originally Tuscan, spoken in Tuscany only, and was artificially created into the language of all of Italy.

Similar processes happened in Spain and Germany as well. Yugoslavia is an example of a failed attempt at this sort of national consolidation.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

This is one of the reasons why two provinces, NE ON and NW ON, would make sense. NE ON would be officially bilingual, while NW ON would have English as an official language. The differences in the proportion of indigenous populations is also another demographic difference worth noting.

I disagree. NW ON has the Municipality of Greenstone (includes Longlac and Geraldton) which has a lot of francophones.

There just aren't really any big differences between the NE and NW to split Northern Ontario. I've never heard anybody here who wants to be separate from the Northwest. But there are big differences between the North and South of Northern Ontario.

Both the Northeast and Northwest have large Indigenous populations. Many if not almost all issues are identical. Plus we can't split up Nishnawbe-Aski Nation.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Loco101

I disagree. NW ON has the Municipality of Greenstone (includes Longlac and Geraldton) which has a lot of francophones.

There just aren't really any big differences between the NE and NW to split Northern Ontario. I've never heard anybody here who wants to be separate from the Northwest. But there are big differences between the North and South of Northern Ontario.

Both the Northeast and Northwest have large Indigenous populations. Many if not almost all issues are identical. Plus we can't split up Nishnawbe-Aski Nation.

I would simply argue that NW and NE Ontario has more in common with each other than the rest of Ontario

[vid]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's interesting that in your region most of the people who can speak French aren't native francophones themselves.

It's mandated and someone has to fill the role. Most Francophones (French as a first language) that I do know are from Timmins and Hearst, and my French teachers were all Western Canadians who were educated in Paris (since we teach Parisian French here because why not? ). There are a few families who settled here in the 1800s who spoke French then and continue to today (just as in St. Boniface) but for the most part, those Francophones are all kids of parents who want their kids to have French speaking skills as an employment asset.

There is also a decent sized Francophone community from the middle eastern countries here (particularly Lebanon, as Thunder Bay has long had immigration from Lebanon and Syria; we even had a Lebanese mayor in the 1980s) and they're likely speaking English at home with their kids since this is an Anglophone city, but putting their kids through French instruction at school to maintain that language and give them an advantage in the public sector, so do you count those children as having English, French, or Arabic as a mother tongue? I'm not sure if the census gives an option for multiple mother tongues, because I also know families that are bilingual either English/French or Ojicree/English, and in the case of the English/French bilingual families, the parents themselves are FSL but want their kids to have French language skills as an advantage so they use it at home alongside English.

Originally Posted by Loco101

I disagree. NW ON has the Municipality of Greenstone (includes Longlac and Geraldton) which has a lot of francophones.

There just aren't really any big differences between the NE and NW to split Northern Ontario. I've never heard anybody here who wants to be separate from the Northwest. But there are big differences between the North and South of Northern Ontario.

Both the Northeast and Northwest have large Indigenous populations. Many if not almost all issues are identical. Plus we can't split up Nishnawbe-Aski Nation.

Yeah I don't really understand the separation either. I can understand Northwestern Ontario leaving Ontario to join Manitoba, leaving Sudbury behind in Ontario, and I can understand both Northwestern and Northeastern Ontario leaving together to form a new province, but the idea of both of our regions leaving and being their own provinces, separate from each other, makes no sense.

I do believe that Nishnawbe Aski Nation could be extraterritorial, and there might be advantages to them joining together with the Cree and Ojibwe communities in Northern Manitoba and around James Bay in Quebec. If we gave them a similar status as Nunavik has for Inuit people in Northern Quebec, but with the ability to transcend provincial borders, I think that would actually strengthen their position. It's bad enough that my native relatives have an international border separating them since the 1840s, I don't see why we need provincial divisions getting in the way of cooperation either.

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I'm not that knowledgeable about the Inuit languages, and don't know whether Inuktitut is standardized as one language among the Inuit.

None of the native languages are standardized, and they're all language continuums to some degree. Ojibwe and Cree have as much in common as German and Dutch. Inuktitut spoken in Iqaluit is probably about as different from the Inuktitut spoken in Rankin Inlet as Parisian French is from West African dialects of French. They can understand each other relatively well, but they'll know they're not speaking to a local. Expand that to contrast the Inuit languages of Greenland to the Inuit languages of Alaska and you're looking more at a comparison between Russian and Slovakian than just two dialects of French. Same language family, but lower mutual intelligibility at that point, due to distance and time.

In the future there will probably be more standardization simply because producing materials in multiple similar dialects is difficult, especially for a sparsely populated region.


For Northern Ontario itself, it might make the most sense to do what the Northwest Territories did, and have multiple official languages. English, French, Cree, Oji-Cree, Ojibwe/Chippewa, and Odawa. The last four are all vital languages with between 10,000 and 100,000 speakers each, though Odawa only has about 400 speakers in Canada, mostly in Manitoulin and Sudbury Districts.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Your Pakistan example reminds me about how the rise of nationalism often leads to the rise of the idea of a single national language to represent the nation-state, even at the expense of multiple local native languages. It's like what happened with France when Parisian French became the national language. It gave France a strong identity, at the expense of local languages like Occitan, Breton, Basque, Alsatian etc.

I'm not that knowledgeable about the Inuit languages, and don't know whether Inuktitut is standardized as one language among the Inuit.

Exactly, but what makes the Pakistani example particularly intriguing is that they didn't choose one of the local languages to become the national language, nor did they choose the colonial language.

It might be like Nunavik becoming a territory and deciding to focus on English instead of one of the indigenous languages.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

That said, if there is a specific Quebec policy that is ostensibly responsible for greater indigenous language retention in Nunavik (separate from other factors, which may account for some of the variation in indigenous language retention), and if the indigenous peoples want greater indigenous language retention (and are comfortable with any consequences attendant to the Quebec policy that is ostensibly responsible for greater indigenous language retention), then the indigenous peoples of the concerned regions could consider reviewing and adopting such policy if they so choose.

Believe it or not, the much-decried Bill 101 actually gives a bit of a leg up to indigenous languages.

And perhaps most importantyl the "James Bay and Northern Quebec Convention) from 40 or so years ago (and amended a few times since) which is an agreement between Quebec and the Cree and Inuit in order to obtain their OK for Quebec to develop resources in the north, includes regional governments for both the Cree and Inuit, and their own school boards which prioritize the Cree and Inuktitut languages. So aboriginal kids in those regions have been going to school in their own languages for quite some time.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

Agreed. It is impossible to predict, but one interesting case study may be Pakistan, which, post-independence, has seen a reduction in the use of languages native to the region. Under British rule, the language of administration was generally English, while locals typically learned and used local languages (namely, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi). Because of the Pakistan movement, which developed primarily in northern India where the language commonly used was Urdu, modern-day Pakistan uses English and Urdu as the main languages, in lieu of Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi, each of which have waned in use since independence. Even if Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi would have fared better under continued British rule, I doubt most Pakistanis would want to cede authority over language policy to the British, even those who do not know or like Urdu.
.

This is a fascinating case study. But I don't think it's relevant to what would happen with an independent Quebec, because what it shows is that the language that the newly independent entity *wants* to push ends up getting a boost, no matter what. At the expense of all others.

As you kind of hint at, Pakistan independence wasn't at all about giving breathing room to those regional languages.

Likewise, regional languages suffered in France and Italy precisely as a result of greater political unification at the national level.

So what I am getting at is the idea that French would fare worse in an independent Quebec (than under the Canadian status quo) makes little sense as the Republic of Quebec would likely favour French in all spheres of life of the new country.

Just as Pakistan, France and Italy set about "making themselves" into a certain vision of Pakistan, France and Italy, so too would Quebec set out to make itself into a vision of Quebec. (Arguably, it already does that to a significant degree even within the Canadian context.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

The "I'd rather have self-determination and be free, but lose some advantages" vs. "I'd rather stay as a colony and keep the advantages the colonizers bestowed on us" was a recurring tension during times of decolonization.

Counterfactuals in general are difficult. How a culture will fare if it stays or breaks away is hard to predict. We can use comparisons with other cases, but it's hard to tell how things would be "if only the other choice was taken, instead" because, well,... its hard to run a societal experiment twice to see an outcome.

I've known quite a few people in my life who are old enough to have known the before and after periods of countries that achieved their independence in the second half of the 20th century. From all parts of the world.

A not-insignificant number of them will agree that many things (often pretty important ones) were actually better under the old régime - which was often that of a European imperial power.

But if you ask them if they'd like their ocuntry to go back to that type of régime because of this, all of them answer a resounding "no".

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Acajack

This is a fascinating case study. But I don't think it's relevant to what would happen with an independent Quebec, because what it shows is that the language that the newly independent entity *wants* to push ends up getting a boost, no matter what. At the expense of all others.

As you kind of hint at, Pakistan independence wasn't at all about giving breathing room to those regional languages.

Likewise, regional languages suffered in France and Italy precisely as a result of greater political unification at the national level.

So what I am getting at is the idea that French would fare worse in an independent Quebec (than under the Canadian status quo) makes little sense as the Republic of Quebec would likely favour French in all spheres of life of the new country.

Just as Pakistan, France and Italy set about "making themselves" into a certain vision of Pakistan, France and Italy, so too would Quebec set out to make itself into a vision of Quebec. (Arguably, it already does that to a significant degree even within the Canadian context.)

Sorry but please read my post again -- the Pakistan example was raised solely to illustrate that the hypothetical of French faring worse in independent Quebec isn't absurd in general. The intention was not at all to suggest that French would in fact fare worse in independent Quebec. And the Quebec hypothetical was merely raised to support the overall argument:

If the Indigenous peoples democratically expressed desire for self-determination, then we should respect it even if respecting it would adversely affect the retention of Indigenous languages by the Indigenous peoples. They get to decide what is important -- they could pull a Pakistan and not give a damn about their languages.

I mean, if Quebecois decided they wanted an independent Quebec where Spanish would be the official language, could the Canadian federal government revoke their right to self-determination on the basis that staying in Canada would improve the retention of French by the people of Quebec?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

Sorry but please read my post again -- the Pakistan example was raised solely to illustrate that the hypothetical of French faring worse in independent Quebec isn't absurd in general. The intention was not at all to suggest that French would in fact fare worse in independent Quebec. And the Quebec hypothetical was merely raised to support the overall argument:

(...)

I mean, if Quebecois decided they wanted an independent Quebec where Spanish would be the official language, could the Canadian federal government revoke their right to self-determination on the basis that staying in Canada would improve the retention of French by the people of Quebec?

I get all of this, but the very idea that Quebec would separate from one of the world's most successful countries in order to anglicize or hispanicize itself still makes no sense.

For a minute there I thought you were repeating the old trope that an independent Quebec would be so desperately poor that French (and the culture that goes along with it) would die out. That it would go begging to either Canada-sans-Quebec or the U.S. to let them (back) in, yadda yadda yadda...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

If the Indigenous peoples democratically expressed desire for self-determination, then we should respect it even if respecting it would adversely affect the retention of Indigenous languages by the Indigenous peoples. They get to decide what is important -- they could pull a Pakistan and not give a damn about their languages.

On this I agree. Self-determination includes the right to do stuff (that others might see as) not being in your interest.

In the case of actual independence, there is generally no going back and the previous entities have no say in what happens in the newly independent state.

In the case of a region remaining part of the larger entity but gaining autonomy, I still don't really see the feds or a provincial government besmirching them for not living up to what they said were their linguistic or cultural goals. In any event, I don't think anyone in Canada is unrealistic to the point where they'd hold any aboriginal group to the goal of establishing a society that functions pretty much from A to Z in an aboriginal language (e.g. in the way that Quebec largely does in French). That's even out of reach for the most vibrant languages like Inuit, Cree and Ojibway.

As for Pakistan, I'd also mention that the motivations behind its independence weren't primarily linguistic in any way.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I get all of this, but the very idea that Quebec would separate from one of the world's most successful countries in order to anglicize or hispanicize itself still makes no sense.

For a minute there I thought you were repeating the old trope that an independent Quebec would be so desperately poor that French (and the culture that goes along with it) would die out. That it would go begging to either Canada-sans-Quebec or the U.S. to let them (back) in, yadda yadda yadda...

A Quebec that upon independence forges greater links to Latin America would make for an interesting alternate history fiction setting!

It'd be a reprisal of the rather old-fashioned idea of Latin or Romance-derived cultures in the New World sharing a common heritage against or in contrast to the more "Germanic" Anglo-America.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

A Quebec that upon independence forges greater links to Latin America would make for an interesting alternate history fiction setting!

It'd be a reprisal of the rather old-fashioned idea of Latin or Romance-derived cultures in the New World sharing a common heritage against or in contrast to the more "Germanic" Anglo-America.

Our tempérament latin is actually an ages-old meme in Quebec, though obviously it's mostly in reference to France (and even Italy to some degree), rather than Latin America.

Though perhaps that's slowly changing with the ever-growing percentage of us who spend at least some time in Latin American countries (Cuba, DR, Mexico) every year.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Acajack

On this I agree. Self-determination includes the right to do stuff (that others might see as) not being in your interest.

Then we agree. Apologies if the analogy didn't help.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

Then we agree. Apologies if the analogy didn't help.

I appreciate the analogy as it was something I did not know about Pakistan.

[blacktrojan3921]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

It's even more extreme in Italy. 200 years ago there was no such language as "Italian". The language that we now call Italian was originally Tuscan, spoken in Tuscany only, and was artificially created into the language of all of Italy.

Similar processes happened in Spain and Germany as well. Yugoslavia is an example of a failed attempt at this sort of national consolidation.

Actually, looking at the future, I think we might see more 'failed attempts', because there has been a big swing upwards in terms of ethnic nationalist movements (which, in all honesty, I support). Catalan is probably one of the biggest examples because it's people (granted it was less than half of the Catalan populace) voted pretty strongly for independence. Of course the results speak for themselves, but I wouldn't be surprised if more ethnic minorities start to be more confident and determined as a result of this.

I disagree. NW ON has the Municipality of Greenstone (includes Longlac and Geraldton) which has a lot of francophones.

There just aren't really any big differences between the NE and NW to split Northern Ontario. I've never heard anybody here who wants to be separate from the Northwest. But there are big differences between the North and South of Northern Ontario.

Both the Northeast and Northwest have large Indigenous populations. Many if not almost all issues are identical. Plus we can't split up Nishnawbe-Aski Nation.

One municipality does not really change the fact that NE Ontario has much more francophone speakers than NW Ontario. And it's also worth mentioning that Nishnawbe-Aski Nation can effectively be in two provinces, as their goal is to help First nations communities across Treaty 9, and the sliver of Treaty 5 in NW Ontario.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by blacktrojan3921

Actually, looking at the future, I think we might see more 'failed attempts', because there has been a big swing upwards in terms of ethnic nationalist movements (which, in all honesty, I support). Catalan is probably one of the biggest examples because it's people (granted it was less than half of the Catalan populace) voted pretty strongly for independence. Of course the results speak for themselves, but I wouldn't be surprised if more ethnic minorities start to be more confident and determined as a result of this.

I do tend to think that with the European Union in place as a comprehensive economic union, it makes sense to some extent for larger multinational states to split up into their constituent national parts.

[vid]

There are apartment buildings in Sudbury that have more Francophones living in them than Greenstone.

I posted the numbers somewhere in this thread or another; Northwestern Ontario has about as many Francophones (percentage wise) as Winnipeg.

[JHikka]

2016 Census, Knowledge of Official Languages

.............English Only / French Only / Bilingual
Kenora...........95% / 0% / 5%
Rainy River.....96% / 0% / 3%
Thunder Bay....91% / 0% / 9%
Cochrane........43% / 5% / 52%
Timiskaming....64% / 2% / 34%
Algoma...........87% / 0% / 12%
Sudbury..........65% / 1% / 34%
City of Sudbury.60% / 1% / 39%
Manitoulin........95% / 0% / 5%
Nipissing..........65% / 1% / 34%

I can supply Language Spoken At Home figures but I think this more or less speaks for itself.

[vid]

There is a greater disparity when you look at mother tongue. A considerable amount of NWO's bilingual speakers have learned French as a second language.