Times flies! Almost one year ago, I was embarking on the journey of a lifetime, boarding a plane and leaving my family, beloved childhood friends and tropical French island of La Réunion behind to finally realize my dream of moving to Canada.Many people, including friends from my hometown as well as Quebecers, told me my decision to give up the paradisiac island lifestyle was misguided.
Federal government agency call centres are a slice of Canadiana. Anyone who has ever had to frequently call Service Canada or IRCC is familiar with the diversity of accents and manners among the agencies' (mostly) helpful customer service reps. The experience offers almost endearing insight into the makeup of the Canadian public service. That diversity of background is perhaps even more audible on the French-language phone lines a delightful cross-section of the domestic francophonie. It's the French-speaking call centre characters that local content creator CiCi Moya (@cicimoya) lovingly parodies in a pair of videos posted to Instagram. At the time of writing, the first video, fearing enthusiastic québécois, anglophone Canadian and Haitian Canadian customer service reps, has amassed over 300,000 views.
The Labombardes, it turns out, are like many French-Canadian families of the past displaced to New England and New York by work. They did not blend in. And yet they faced assimilation.
François Legault may have changed his separatist strategy but he hasn’t changed his stripes, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says in an exclusive column on CTVNews.ca.