I remember grade four at Crane Elementary in Fort Garry, Manitoba, when my French teacher, Mrs. Payette, strode into the classroom like a minor emissary of the federal state.
She had a splendidly French name and an uncompromising Scottish brogue.
Her English arrived in sharp Highland cadences; her French followed obediently behind, wearing the same tartan accent. None of us had French ancestry. None of us had French neighbours. None of us had any practical reason to learn French.
We were prairie children whose continental ambitions extended roughly as far as Winnipeg. And yet there we were, year after year, solemnly conjugating aller as though the republic would crumble if we failed to master “je vais, tu vas, il va.”
Every spring, like thaw and flood, we went. We went in the present tense, the imperfect and the future. We went without ever arriving anywhere. And to what end? Perhaps the most gifted among us, after hundreds of hours of instruction, could perhaps—if tragically misdirect…
