Ralentissez pour nos enfants: slow down for our children

London is an english-speaking community in the south-western part of the province (Ontario). Yet, London has a number of french-speaking schools.

École élémentaire Marie-Curie is not a french immersion school where english speaking children are immersed in the french language. Marie-Curie is a french first-lanuage school providing instruction in french for children who come from french-speaking homes.

Why does London have school like Marie-Curie? Because Canada is a bilingual country: french and english are the languages of the land. Of course, in Quebec, french is the primary language while in most other parts of Canada english takes the primary position.

My granddaughters attend Marie-Curie. Why? Are we a french-speaking family? No, we are not but Fiona, my oldest granddaughter, went to a french-speaking daycare when she was but a toddler. Today she is bilingual. Because of her fluency, her sister, Isla, was accepted into the Marie-Curie french pre-kindergarten class. Today, Isla is fluent as well.

In a bilingual country, speaking both languages is a plus. At the very least, it makes a number of cable channels available that would otherwise be of no interest. The channels of which I am speaking are, of course, the french language ones.

I can read french and so I turn on the captions for the hearing impaired and watch the french channels. I especially enjoying getting the french slant on the news by watching TV5 out of Paris.