The Montreal chapter of the Societe St. Jean Baptiste has become increasingly strident, and increasingly absurd, under the leadership of professional language hawk Mario Beaulieu. In its latest sortie in aid of preserving the health of the French language in the province, the organization has trained its rhetorical fire on sick anglos.
The SSJBM has appealed to the Office Quebecois de la langue francaise to refuse bilingual status to a new rehabilitation centre intended to serve both French and English patients for fear that it would somehow weaken the status of French in the province. The centre in question is the newly created Institut de readaption Gingras-Lindsey de Montreal, formed by way of a merger of the francophone Institut de readaption de Montreal and the bilingual Lindsay Rehabilitation Hospital.
The Lindsay had bilingual status under the French Language Charter because more than half its clientele spoke a language other than French. But this will no longer be the case with the merged facility, which is considered a new legal body and has to reapply to the language directorate to maintain bilingual standing. The hospital authorities, who unlike the SSJBM seem to have a grip on reality and compassion for the afflicted no matter what their mother tongue, have applied for bilingual status for the new institution, but the outcome is uncertain.
Officials at the hospital concede that the clientele of the new institute will be for the most part francophone, thereby risk being denied bilingual status. The Office will conduct a survey of the instution's clientele in the new year and likely rule on the case come spring.
The SSJBM opposes bilingual institutions shared by anglos and francophones on the spurious grounds that French necessarily takes a back seat in such facilities. It sees a further threat in the fact that such institutions are allowed to post bilingual signs directing patients to services and that the employer can communicate with staff in English. It is further appalled that some staff positions, which involve dealing with anglophones, can require English as a qualification. The horror!
In fact, there have been other successful mergers of anglophone and francophone health care centres -namely one in Sherbrooke -where the new body failed to meet the 50 per cent rule but bilingual status was maintained without perceptible harm to the predominance of French in the province.
The Office de la langue should show common sense and compassion in this case as well. For the SSJBM, that's obviously too much to ask.