Quote:
Originally Posted by MTL-514
...but it's curious, in 2015, that so many non-montrealers, from places as close as Ottawa, are surprised at how many anglophones live in Montreal, and how bilingual/bicultural Montreal truly is. Still quite amazing to what extent the Quebec media and govt (and to a large extent even national media) propagate the fiction that Montreal is a unilingual French city, and manage to hoodwink so many people in the ROQ and ROC into believing...
|
Well, even though I am someone who values the historic anglo community's presence in Montreal, I have to say that my observation is that it's generally the opposite.
The ''anglo'' aspect of Montreal is often played up way above the share of the population, to the point where there is a persistent perception among many that it's a 50-50 francophone-anglophone city. Some people even seem to have a perception that it's a majority anglophone city that the evil (insert PQ, Frenchies, whatever here) have unjustly imposed French upon.
Anyway, if Montreal truly is bilingual and bicultural (another topic of debate) then that actually proves my point, when you consider that 15-25% (depending on city proper, island or metro) anglophones would therefore be enough to make Montreal it de facto (if not de jure) bilingual in most circumstances, whereas 15-35% (city proper vs. metro) francophones isn't enough to make Canada's capital feel very bilingual at all.