Olympic Games: Language Disaster

The language catastrophe predicted a year ago finally hit the Olympic Games at the opening ceremonies last week, leaving Canada hurt and divided.

The anger that swept through French Canada last week has turned into long-term sadness this week. It’s an old Canadian story.

Federalists and separatists are saying the same thing – it was a disaster. That’s always a tip-off something is wrong. And when even the Official Languages Commission agrees, that seals it.

There were 20 million watching on television in Canada and 3.2 billion people more in the rest of the world; it was our golden opportunity to show off is to the world what Canada is all about.

Worse than the lack of French at the ceremony, was the absence of the North American French culture in the presentation. Bring on the all-English show.

The world saw snow and it saw Indians, and even a giant polar bear. It saw the Prairies and the Rocky Mountains, and that is good, because Canada is all of those things. But where was French culture in North America? Where was the rest of our mosaic? And those other shrines, Niagara Falls and the CN Tower, and the Atlantic Coast?

The worse part is that John Furlong, the man responsible for the disaster still can’t grasp what he he did. “It’s no big deal,” he said. Ouch! That one hurt.

Consider Heritage Minister James Moore who poured $20 million into a show that didn’t reflect the Canadian values of language and diversity that his ministry preaches day in and day out.

Moore did have plenty of warning. The first indication came a year ago when the Vancouver organizers put on a dry run of the opening ceremony without a single Francophone performer. They would fix that, they said. They never did.

On the big day, all they managed was one Francophone performer, Garou, an afterthought. They said they called up Celine Dion but she was busy working on another baby, so they just gave up.

The Olympic flame ceremony was no better. When the flame arrived in Moncton, the whole thing was in English. “”Sorry” they said. Then it came to Ottawa once again in English only. Finally the Vancouver organizers were hauled before a Commons committee, before Harper closed down Parliament, and they made more excuses and more promises.

The Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser had enough. Late last year he travelled to Vancouver to see for himself what in Canada’s bilingual name was going on.

Fraser had to throw a fit just to get a few bilingual signs. They really didn’t understand.

Then it came out they hadn’t budgeted translation money. So Moore came up with an extra $7.5 million so they could print up a visitors’ guide, several brochures and an athletes’ manual in both languages.

The Francophonie people came from Europe to investigate and they posted a Swiss official, Pascal Couchepin to report back to them. Still Furlong and his people couldn’t see anything wrong.

Bad enough they couldn’t respect Canadian language law, they couldn’t respect French as the first language of the Olympics, which goes back to 1898 and the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertrin.

Maybe Vancouver should have never bid on the Games in the first place if it wasn’t ready to play by the language rules.

The sad guy in all this is Moore, the manchild minister from British Columbia, proud graduate of French immersion. If there is a guy in cabinet who had wanted B.C. to look good in the eyes of Canada, it’s Moore.

Now he’s stuck as the fall guy. Last week he was going around saying how “sorry” he was. Now he’s had orders from head office not to criticize any more, so he pretends nothing was wrong.

It might be time for Moore to consider another job. As for Furlong, he still goes around saying: “It’s no big deal.”

But he’s stopped joking that he’s bilingual – English and Celtic. It’s not funny any more.