A woman refers to her feelings regarding the exclusion of children from
French-speaking schools in Quebec.
Res.: Very good. So, what was the biggest difficulty
here?
Μ.Υ.: I don’t think I faced any difficulty. The only
thing I got angry with, when my son became six years old and he went to the
‘Prince Edward’ School, it was called, parallel to […], parallel to Park
Avenue and I went along with the son to register him and they didn’t accept
him. They handed me a paper to fill, a form and it said that… what religion
and when I wrote ‘Christian Orthodox’, they say “No, we cannot accept him,
because… because we are a French school, we teach religion in French”. And
they didn’t accept him. Afterwards though, when that school accepted some
hundred-two hundred children who had come, some had been born here and others
had come from Greece, they were forced to change the schoolboard and they were
accepting them, you understand? And then he attended this school. This was the
only difficulty that surprised me and I didn’t like it. It was discrimination,
but back then we didn’t even know the word ‘discrimination’, most of us then
that is, you understand? I didn’t face any difficulties, I didn’t face any
difficulties at all.
