Beer O'Clock: Pardon My French!
If you drive past Rockland, Ontario, along the Ottawa River, one of the prominent things that you will see is a large, green-and-white flag that waves near the intersection of Highway 17 and County Road 17. The left half of the flag is a darkish green with a white fleur-de-lys, while the right half is white with the green logo of the Ontario trillium. The flag represents the Franco-Ontarians that make up much of this region of Eastern Ontario. It unites Franco-Ontarians during cultural struggles, such as education rights campaigns, and represents more than 600,000 people and 400 years of French presence in Ontario. Although me my family originally comes from Montreal, having moved to Ottawa in the late 1960s, we are not Franco-Ontarian, much like we cannot say we're Quebecois. I have Franco-Ontarian and Quebecois relatives, but I cannot claim the same. French is not my first language, nor do we live a life where the French culture is a part of it. I'm simply Canadian. And that...
