CFB Esquimalfs French-Speaking Families: Social Networks and Linguistic Communities

Abstract

In the early 1970s, the Canadian Forces first bilingualism programs were aiming for an increased participation of French speakers in the military, mostly in services other than the infantry, where they had traditionally been more involved. French Canadians were particularly absent in the Canadian Navy, which was a stronghold of British tradition in the Canadian Forces. The policies which were put into place in order to implement the Official Languages Act were mostly directed at the Halifax
naval base, in hopes of creating at least one bilingual navy base, while the west coast base of Esquimalt, near Victoria, was deemed to have too small a French-speaking population to justify French-speaking or bilingual units. However, the policy demanding a certain percentage of French speakers in all English-speaking units, paired with an increased recruitment of French speakers, resulted in a greater number of francophones in the Pacific fleet. This increasing number of French
speakers coming to live in the Victoria region with their families, combined with the Official Languages Act, created a need to provide certain services in French, not only for military members, but also for their families. As such, although a small French-speaking community already existed in Victoria, it was the emergence of a large number of Francophone military families which justified the creation of a French-only school. Today, CFB Esquimalt's French-speaking military families form a community whose members can take part in many social networks, such as the anglophone military and civilian communities, and the Francophone military and civilian communities. In this paper, I present some preliminary conclusions based on fieldwork undertaken in CFB Esquimalt during the summer of 2006