by Chris Lowrey
The events of June 17, 1999 occupy a strange place in the collective memory of Shawville residents.
That was the day that a representative from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages – often referred to as the language police – came to Shawville to document and warn businesses about their English signage.
A sign of the time
The mid to late-nineties were a tumultuous time between the French and English populations of Quebec. The 1995 referendum that saw Quebec remain a part of Canada by the thinnest of margins happened less than five years before the events of June 17, 1999.
Shawville, in particular, drew the ire of the language police as many of the signs in the predominantly English town didn’t comply with the province’s language laws.
While English can be used alongside French on signage, Bill 101 dictates that the French language must be “clearly more predominant.”
As a result, many business owners were issued fines for non-compliance.
One of those business owners was Barry Murray, who owned and ran Murray’s Sporting Goods.
Murray was in court eight times in four years fighting fines that he received from the language police.
“The lad even said I shouldn’t be able to work in my own store because I couldn’t speak French,” Murray said of the treatment he got from the language officers.
While Murray was going through his court battles with the Language Commissioner’s office, several residents donated money to help with the costs.
He hired noted Montreal lawyer Julius Gray to take on his case, which was eventually thrown out of court.
Murray said he opposed the language law on principle, and that fighting it was an important stand for him to take.
“Most people just give in and take the English down or pay the fine,” Murray said.
In fact, Murray saw his legal battle as a way to prevent Shawville from undergoing drastic change.
“If we wouldn’t have stood up to it, Shawville wouldn’t be the same,” he said.
He said that many of the English-speaking population in and around Shawville would have had their employment opportunities severely curtailed.
The myth of the “Angry Posse”
The headline in the Ottawa Citizen on June 30 screamed “Angry Posse of Shawville residents runs language inspector out of town” in response to the events of June 17.
“A Posse of Shawville, Que., residents fed up with being harassed about business signs, has run one of Quebec’s language police out of town – and residents say that if they have to, they’ll do it again,” the article started.
On the day in question, language inspector Lucie Couvrette pulled into town and started questioning the owner of the local H&R Block, Lynn Wilson, and taking photos of the signs on her business.
THE EQUITY reached out to Couvrette but did not get a response.
Eventually, Wilson asked Couvrette to leave, and took particular issue with the photos Couvrette was taking.
“I told her never to take a photo without permission,” Wilson told the Citizen.
After Couvrette left her business, Wilson got in her car and followed the language inspector as she made her rounds through town and made some calls to other residents – including THE EQUITY reporter, Paul McGee, to take pictures of the events.
One of those residents was Shawville’s mayor at the time, Albert Armstrong.
While the Ottawa Citizen described a “multiple vehicle parade” following Couvrette around town, that’s not how Armstrong remembers it.
“Including The Equity reporter and myself, there was one other person there,” Armstrong said.
When he arrived on the scene, Armstrong said he approached Couvrette and asked in French if she would be willing to have a conversation with him at the Town Hall.
“Once we reached the street lights, [she] turned left and went down to the highway,” he said.
“Maybe [she] felt uncomfortable, but [she] wasn’t chased out,” Armstrong said.
As for why there was such a staunch opposition to the language police, Armstrong boiled it down to dollars and cents.
“The small business people were trying to stay in business so they couldn’t afford to take down their signs and put up the expensive bilingual signs,” Armstrong said. “So that was the main reason at the time.”
Not only that, but many business owners simply saw this as “harassment” on the part of the provincial government.
Stirring up a controversy
Once the Quebec media got a hold of the story of a predominantly English town organizing an angry posse to chase a language inspector out of town, tempers boiled over.
Raymond Villeneuve, a former member of the terrorist group Front Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), tried to organize a demonstration in Shawville and set out from Montreal with a busload of supporters in October of 1999.
His goal was to ensure Shawville businesses were complying with Quebec’s sign laws. He told the Citizen that he planned to turn Shawville into an “Orangeman’s cemetery.”
That line struck a chord in the town where the Orange Order, a Protestant group with a history of conflict with Catholics, still have a lodge on Centre Street.
As the bus entered the Pontiac, police convinced Villeneuve to meet with Armstrong in Quyon.
After a conversation between the mayor and Villeneuve, the former FLQ member was eventually convinced to turn the bus around without incident.
It’s a good thing, since hundreds of people were waiting for the arrival of the bus at what is now J&J Grocery on the way into Shawville.
“I’m happy there was no violence but disappointed we didn’t get the chance to prove we weren’t maniacs,” Wilson said in the Citizen’s article about the events in October.
A merging of the stories
After 20 years, memories tend to fade and some stories tend to blend into others.
It’s not often that a small town like Shawville makes the national news stage twice in one year.
So it’s understandable that, like a game of telephone, details get lost in the fog of time.
Many of the people contacted for this story had trouble differentiating the events of June 17 from those in the fall of 1999.
Obviously, it doesn’t help matters that when someone searches for the news story of the day in question, a story about an “angry posse” is the one that greets them.
An easing of tensions
The Pontiac in general, and Shawville in particular, is an odd region.
The mix of French and English speaking populations in such a close proximity to one another is sure to foster rivalries.
It’s no secret that Shawville is one of the very rare towns in Quebec that doesn’t have a Catholic Church – a traditional cultural institution of Quebecois.
In its early days, the land agent for Clarendon actively prevented Catholics from buying land in the region.
But in the intervening years – much like the rest of the province – those tensions have eased.
The younger generation of Quebecers seems less fixated on the prospect of separation. Granted, debates like the Bonjour-Hi one that went on last year about the greeting choices of Montreal shop owners attempt to reignite the division.
But those debates usually serve as cannon fodder for the columnist class across the country. For those who live in the province, it seems an attitude of “live and let live” has taken hold.
Even in a traditionally English bastion like Shawville, complete with an Orange Lodge smack dab in the middle of downtown, things are changing.
“In recent years, many of the signs have become bilingual,” Armstrong pointed out.
“We get along great in the Pontiac,” Murray said. “I just hope it stays like this.”
With the tensions that existed between French and English in the mid 90s subsided, it appears as though the relationship between the two linguistic groups is the best it’s been in the province’s history.
“Being up here in the Pontiac, we may struggle to communicate,” Armstrong said. “But we get along just fine.”
