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rfmcdonaldThe World Cup finished today, with an Italian victory over France. I knew that there was an Italian victory, owing in large part to the processions of honking cars with passengers (even dirvers) who waved Italian flags out of windows. I can only imagine what things were like in Little Italy; frankly, I'm thankful that I didn't have to pass through there this afternoon. I have to admit, too, to a certain mild pleasure at the fact that the final wasn't an Italy-Portugal game, especially since the growing Portuguese neighbourhood downtown borders upon Little Italy. The potential for riots is obvious ("Hold the Lusitanians at Christie!").
There isn't a French neighbourhood, though. As Wayne Scanlan recently observed in the Ottawa Citizen (Wanted: Some French expats to share in the fun"), there tend not to be ethnically French neighbourhoods in any Canadian cities.
As the intelligently revised but once controversial Wikipedia article on the French people should make reasonably clear, the Québécois and other Canadian Francophones do not identify themselves as French. The last time that Canada was a French territory, after all, an uninterrupted line of Bourbon kings ruled France and its dominions. The immigrant communities that they founded in New England in the late 19th centuries were called little Canadas for a reason.
There isn't a French neighbourhood, though. As Wayne Scanlan recently observed in the Ottawa Citizen (Wanted: Some French expats to share in the fun"), there tend not to be ethnically French neighbourhoods in any Canadian cities.
As one Toronto reporter put it, this was the "safer" World Cup final.
The one with France involved.
Italy vs. Portugal?
"It would have been a war zone," one fan said.
Chaos on the streets.
Little Italy vs. Little Portugal.
Adding up to big tension in the Big Smoke.
Italy vs. France?
Not so much.
In fact, where are the French?
In France, mostly.
Here in Ottawa, there is no Preston Street equivalent for expatriates, fervent followers of Les Bleus. Just pockets of activity to hint at the fire and passion back home on the streets of Paris.
The simple truth is that there aren't enough French expats in Ottawa to create much of a stir (that's not meant as a challenge, mes amis).
[. . .]
[French embassy staff member Olivier] Roy estimates there are at least 1,000 expats in this region. Nation-wide, about 100,000 former French nationals live in Canada, half of them in Montreal.
"Unlike other countries in Europe, France has been a place of immigration, not emigration," Roy said.
"There have been no diseases, no dictatorships," Roy said. "During World War II, France was invaded by the Germans. Otherwise, it has not been hard to live there."
Or to visit.
Vineyards, cheese, two mountain ranges and a place on the Riviera. What's not to like, except the occasional abrupt waiter?
In an essay distributed by the French embassy in 2005, sociologist Emmanuel Peignard wrote that France has had a tradition of immigration dating back 150 years, as a means of combatting declining birth rates and an aging population.
As the intelligently revised but once controversial Wikipedia article on the French people should make reasonably clear, the Québécois and other Canadian Francophones do not identify themselves as French. The last time that Canada was a French territory, after all, an uninterrupted line of Bourbon kings ruled France and its dominions. The immigrant communities that they founded in New England in the late 19th centuries were called little Canadas for a reason.
