Monday 28 November 2011

Bienvenue à Mossbank

BY JORDAN HALKYARD
Main street is the hub of the community.


If all you knew about Mossbank, Sask. was from the 2006 Canadian census, you would not know that Lise Costley existed. In the census that year, Mossbank was said to have 10 people who could speak French. All of these people were said to be men. 


However, Costley has lived around Mossbank with her husband and family since 1982. Costley, who originally comes from Gravelbourg, first learned French.Her father was a doctor and she learned English from speaking with the patients at her father’s practice.

                    
Twenty-nine years ago, Costley and her husband moved to a farm around Mossbank. The transition from her mostly French-speaking Gravelbourg to the primarily English Mossbank was tough for Costley and her young family.
           
“It was difficult because my oldest son, I spoke to him only in French. All the little kids would say ‘What’s the matter with him?’, and then I switched to English,” Costley recalled.
           
When Costley switched from speaking to her children in French, they became some of the first people in her family who could not speak the language. Today, none of Costley’s four children can speak French.
           
“It’s heartbreaking (that none of my children speak French), to be honest…They all would have loved to have learned French,” said Costley.
           
Jerry Curtis has only lived in Mossbank for five years, but he has lived on the Prairies for much longer than that. Curtis, a native of Toronto, came to Saskatchewan and worked as a reporter at the Moose Jaw Times Herald. Curtis was a French speaker from his mother and his time as a high school student in Montreal. However, in his time in Western Canada, Curtis lost much of his French.
           
“I started to lose my French when I came out here. About seven years ago, I moved back to Quebec. The town that I moved to was very small and everyone there only spoke French. If I had a problem with the one English TV station, no 
one would help me. So I had to learn French,” Curtis remembered.
           
To Curtis, one of the reasons that there may be some hostility toward the French language in small town Saskatchewan is the work of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. With the passing of Trudeau’s Official Languages Act of 1969, bilingualism became the law of the land. From then on, every cereal box and shampoo bottle would have to include both French and English on it. For people in primarily English-speaking communities like Mossbank, this sudden switch was very strange.
           
This change can be seen at the voting booths of the area. In federal elections between 1908 and 1979, Progressive Conservatives were only elected  three times. However, since that time the ridings that have been around Mossbank have elected Progressive Conservative, Reform, or Conservative MP’s. All of these parties have gone against Trudeau’s initial vision of a bilingual Canada.
           
French speakers in Mossbank like Lise Costley know what kind of oppurtunities learning another language can open. Costley spent three years as a French immersion teacher in nearby Gravelbourg and knows what having French skills can do for a person.
           
“I know that it can open many doors. Even for an accountant, you can get a job with the federal government like that because you can communicate in both languages,” Costley said.
           
Walking through the streets of Mossbank, you would not really expect to have a high amount of people who could speak French. It has the feel of most small towns in Saskatchewan. The only language that you will hear in the local restaurant or on Main Street is English. However, the simple beauty of the town can bring in people from all over. The sight of a sunrise over the rolling hills that surround the town are one of the great sights that a person can see.
           
For Jerry Curtis, this meant bringing his mother to Mossbank.
           
“I brought my mother here to die actually. I mean me and my mom, two French speakers from out East, come to the Prairies for the end of her life. This place can just have a pull on people,” Curtis recalled.
           
For the future of French in Mossbank, Jerry Curtis is hopeful for how the town’s younger generation will respond to the language.
           
“In general, I think the kids here are getting more open to that sort of thing. They know what kind of doors that it can open and that appeals to them,” said Curtis.
           
 Lise Costley is being asked by her son to teach her grandchild French. But she knows how hard it can be to teach a language to such a young child.
           
“One of them right now is trying (to have me teach his child French), he is asking me. But how can you get across to them what you want when they are only a baby?” Costley questioned.
           
Even though the French-speaking community of Mossbank is not huge, the town will continue to diversify as it grows. Since 2006, the town has grown by over 100 hundred people from its then population of 330. In 2007, 42 families moved to Mossbank. As more people continue to come to the town, the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the town will grow with it.
           
           


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