Inside Story

The Inside Story

In which your intrepid editor records the behind the scenes wheelings and dealings of Bay Crossings

This month: how a cousin does it.

Tabernacle!

I am in Montreal to attend a family reunion. A first cousin is a cameraman at a big television station here and I ask him to let me tag after him one day at work. I’m curious about the contrast between producing television news and a small community newspaper like Bay Crossings.

My cousin’s name is Jacques Northon. He is a Québécois, a label that carries the approximate emotional and social baggage for Canadians that African-American does for Americans.

The background is this: Louis XIV unwisely got himself into the Seven Year’s War. England, not a party to the conflict, nonetheless cheerfully exploited the situation by seizing French possessions in Quebec and the Caribbean while Louis had his hands full with Frederick of Prussia.

The mistake cost the Sun King and France what very likely today would be a vast French-speaking nation occupying all of what is now the heartland United States, stretching from Quebec down through the Great Lakes and all the way down to New Orleans. It gives pause to consider that, but for the caprice of one man, we Californians would be speaking Spanish today, and the English-speaking United States, should one even exist, would be limited to the eastern seaboard.

The French settlers of Quebec paid the most terrible price of Louis’ error: occupation by the English and abandonment by their mother country. The Québécois, though a conquered people, resist English hegemony to this day. Over 5 million people in Canada consider French their first and, in many cases, only language. Separatist groups have long been active, and a referendum calling for Quebec’s secession from Canada failed by a whisker a few years back.

My cousin Jacques works for the TVA Network, Canada’s largest French-speaking television station. Jacques had been working on the French-Canadian equivalent of 60 Minutes, but found it too stressful and, for the time being anyway, has returned to working for the evening news program.

I’ve only gotten to know Jacques recently. My mother is Québécois but married my English-Canadian father and together they emigrated to the United States where, I, the first American-born member of either side of my family, was born. My father, a zealous technocrat, read an Ivy League study suggesting that learning two languages impeded learning (the theory has since been debunked). Thus, my three brothers and I were forbidden to learn French and, as a result, we had little to do with our French-Canadian relatives.

A year or so ago I resolved to learn French and reconnect with my Montreal roots. My mother agreed to be my tutor and I have since spent Sunday afternoons in frustrating and infantalizing labor, writing out basic sentences and struggling, so far unsuccessfully, to learn how to roll my "r’s".

I started corresponding with Jacques and other cousins and have visited once before this trip. Jacques has three boys, and they find me fascinating because I am from exotic California. They agree to help me learn French and my mystique is soon much diminished because they find my accent debilitatingly hilarious. My painstakingly acquired mini-phrases, which so impressed my wife when I tried them out on her, leave my young cousins incapacitated by laughter, slapping their thighs with tears streaming down their cheeks.

Things go better when I ask to be taught swear words. French-Canada is fervently Roman-Catholic, so the curses are almost all sacrilegious in nature. By far the most common, used seemingly to punctuate both the start and the end of every sentence in conversation, is tabernacle, or tabernacle in English, which Webster’s defines as the portable sanctuary in which the Jews carried the Ark of the Covenant through the desert.

Jacques’ kids are boundlessly enthusiastic about teaching me swear words, and work diligently to get my pronunciation of tabernacle just right. They assure me that perfection here is key to being regarded a true Québécois. The trick is to start out low with the ta, plateau with a slightly higher-toned ber and finish brightly by ejaculating the nac loud and proud. The young generation is proud enough of me, their protégé, to parade me through Old Montreal, elbowing me in the side at propitious moments as my cue to yell out "tabernacle"! They grade me on my effectiveness at startling passerbys.

Jacques picks me up at my hotel and we head to the station for the start of his 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM shift. We park in the basement of TVA’s headquarters, a large building in downtown Montreal bedecked with glossy advertisements featuring station personalities. We head to the Assignment Editor’s desk to find out what stories we’ll be given.