The Franco-Albertan flag flies once again over St. Albert this week as the city jumps into a nationwide celebration of all things francophone.
About 100 students from Sir George Simpson, Father Jan, and Alexandre-TachĂ© schools gathered at St. Albert Place Thursday to sing songs, eat cake and raise the Franco-Albertan flag and kick off the city’s celebration of the Rendez-vous de la Francophonie.
The Rendez-vous is a national celebration of francophone communities and culture that runs from March 7 to 23. It leads into the International Day of the Francophonie on March 20.
Alberta is celebrating the event by raising the white-and-blue Franco-Albertan flag in 23 communities across the province, including Edmonton and Calgary.
This was the sixth time that St. Albert had taken part in the event, said David Frechette, president of the Association Canadienne-Français de l’Alberta’s Centralta division. Legal held its event Tuesday and Morinville did one Friday.
Frechette said this year’s theme is “joie de vivre,” which refers to the easygoing, happy-go-lucky habits of French settlers.
They were hard workers, but they were also known for singing, dancing, drinking and merrymaking, Frechette said. The band Le Vent du Nord brought a lot of that merrymaking to the Arden Theatre this week with its music and folkloric singing, he added.
“This is one of the pluses we add to our Canadian mosaic,” he said. “We are still a community and a people who like to get together and have parties and enjoy ourselves.”
City Coun. Gilles Prefontaine said St. Albert has a strong French and MĂ©tis heritage that dates back to its first settlers. Roughly 10 per cent of today’s residents can speak French, and many of them attend French immersion or francophone schools.
That’s a big change from 25 years ago when francophone Albertans were being assimilated at a rate of about 65 per cent per generation, Frechette said.
“We’re actually gaining ground now,” he noted, due to a recent upswing in French immersion programs.
Alexandre-Taché principal Marcel Ouellette said he is very proud that St. Albert will soon have a new francophone high school, and thanked all parents for realizing the importance of learning French.
“Without you, St. Albert would not have developed as it is today, where it places a big value on cultural diversity and especially on linguistic equality,” he said.
Alexandre-Taché student Amelie Doiron (whose first language is French) said being bilingual lets her talk to twice as many people, know twice as many songs and jokes, read twice as many books and have twice the chance of getting a job.
But she’s also concerned that the language might be fading away.
“People talk English all the time. Even I do it,” she said. “French is something I was born with, and I should really keep it.”
The Franco-Albertan flag will fly at St. Albert Place for about two weeks, Prefontaine said.
Visit rvf.ca for details on the Rendez-vous de la Francophonie.
Le drapeau franco-albertain
The Franco-Albertan flag was adopted by the Association Canadienne-Français de l’Alberta in 1982, and was designed by Jean-Pierre Grenier. <br />It consists of two colours, blue and white, to represent Albertans (blue) and francophones (white), as well as two flowers, the fleur-de-lis and the Alberta wild rose. This combination represents the importance of francophones in the Alberta community. <br />The flag also has diagonal stripes to represent the roads and rivers people travelled to settle Alberta.<br />Source: ACFA
