THINKING ABOUT... TWO OFFICIAL LANGUAGES

It is time to vote in Canada, and once again we must be responsible citizens and exercise our democratic right. In Quebec, the mosaic makeup of the poll booth workers is a testament to the allophone society our politicians have created, in spite of themselves. Years and years of backbiting, bickering, and bastardly  slogans and speeches have turned most of us away from an exclusive view of  our French society to an open-minded one of inclusivity: we are all welcome. At the advance polling booth I attended,  the workers were a poster for the picture of   a multicultural society, for it shows people from the Caribbean nation to the Asian continent, from the Anglo to the Euro to the Franco, all ages, all faces, all colours, yet all  workers conversing  and instructing in  our two official  languages. 

But, of course, there always is one in a group, and he, newly arrived to the line, only heard a lovely elderly  poll worker respond to a question in English. And he, smugly armed with his sense of entitlement , annoyingly asked that this  lovely elderly lady, obviously from a Caribbean nation, speak to him in French. And  so she did,  in a lilting manner with a great degree of fluency .  It was a joyful moment for the notion  of  respect : her fluency stole his thunder and wiped the smug grin off his face. 


To listen to another viewpoint is to respect another way of thinking.  In the world of design and architecture, we may come to a project with an armed set of conventions and  a sample bag of some tried and some new   formulas, our own sense of entitlement. But we too must listen. All  projects have two official languages: the one of the client and the one of the designer.