Francophile At Large: Vive le Québec libre!

The Francophile is branching out. I returned this afternoon from spending Labor Day weekend in Wentworth-Nord, Québec at my beloved Daniel's son's lake house. Québec, of course, was originally part of New France and remains a bastion of francophonie. Some people think that English is invading the province and French is losing ground, and there are a range of opinions about whether Québec would be Québec without the French language as its cultural backbone. I'm a fière québecoise (if only by marriage) and an optimist: I do think French is extremely important to the province's identity and I don't think it will die out. Everyone has something to say about the value of French and it's exciting to be in a place where people think critically about their language. Not to say that they are snobs--rather the opposite--but no one ever seems to say "Whatever!" about French the way we sometimes do on fine points of English usage. Saturday night we had a 30-minute conversation about the word la relève and whether an English equivalent exists (at length we decided on "successors"). That is this nerd's idea of fun! When I go to Québec I am very glad to be a French speaker not only to be able to communicate but also because, even more so than in France, it's a way of connecting with people. And of course that's especially important when the people in question are your in-laws!

So Daniel and I flew from Atlanta to Montréal on Friday morning, then picked up our rental car and drove to Dany and Nadine's chalet ("Chalet" sounds fancy but it is just a regular-but-great lake house) by way of St. Sauveur, a gorgeous little tourist town next to a ski area. I was a tiny bit disappointed not to spend any time in Montréal this time around but St. Sauveur and Wentworth-Nord are so pretty that I got over it quickly. Dany and Nadine have two girls, Marguerite (6) and Céleste (2 1/2). They live in Montréal but come to the chalet most weekends. We spent the weekend doing ordinary chalet things: sitting around the fire pit and talking, watching DVDs, taking pictures, entertaining the kids, swimming, NOT getting up early or hurrying to get lots of stuff done. It was a lot of fun, very relaxing, and also a great challenge for me: having to speak French the entire time. There were occasional moments of confusion: Marguerite said "Quoi?" almost every time I spoke to her and I don't think it's because she wasn't paying attention. And I still have not figured out the real word for the landing/storage area above the basement steps. It sounds like concombre ("cucumber"), so that's how I have remembered it, but I'm pretty sure it's not technically correct to say that the broom hangs on a hook in the cucumber. It's very good practice to speak French in a domestic (rather than professional or academic) situation--even if you find yourself getting corrections from a 6-year-old.

Photos after the jump! Click through . . .