The francophone association for Calgary and area is reaching out to the French-speaking population of Cochrane in the form of a new survey to identify their most pressing needs for French services.
The Association canadienne française de l’Alberta (ACFA) has launched an online questionnaire aimed at improving access to services not only for existing French-speaking residents but also to attract French-speaking newcomers.
The association gets its funding from Heritage Canada. Their target area includes Cochrane, Okotoks, and Airdrie, and their role is to promote the interests of the francophone community and ensure its overall development via community consultation, planning, and implementation of socio-cultural activities.
The ACFA also look to launch and develop community projects to create services in French in various sectors, develop and promote the voluntary sector, and defend the use and appreciation of the French language.
Charles Brochu, president of the ACFA, was born and raised in Victoriaville, Que., but moved to Calgary in 1998 and to Cochrane in 2010.
His father played beer league hockey in Victoriaville with favourite son and Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Gilbert Perreault up until last year, when the then 71-year-old former Buffalo Sabres legend decided to officially hang up his skates.
“I have my Victoriaville hockey stick signed by Gilbert Perreault,” Brochu said with pride.
Although the 44-year-old Big Hill Hockey League player grew up speaking exclusively French, he now feels more kinship to Cochrane than anywhere else. But he still has an attachment to his mother tongue.
Brochu said he’d personally like to see fun French cultural events like sugar shacks more often around Cochrane. Sugar shacks typically take place in or around maple syrup season in Quebec. Many families traditionally spend their Easter dinner together at a sugar shack, eating traditional Quebec cuisine and consuming lots of maple sugar.
At the end of the meal, warm maple syrup is poured on fresh snow in perfect little rows. The idea is to let the liquid syrup “set” in the snow, and then then roll it around a popsicle stick and enjoy it like a lollipop.
“If we have a sugar shack, we want it to be open to everyone – anglophones, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“For us, it means getting somewhere we can have maple syrup on the snow, and people bring food, beans and stuff like that, and have a get-together, often with music, someplace like the Cochrane Ranche Park,” he said. “That’s a good get-together.”
He said the response to local events organized by the French-speaking community in town highlighted the need to get a better handle on demand.
“Our goal is to establish the current situation in Cochrane, what services are available and what our community is looking for,” Brochu said.
The latest census figures from 2021 show about one in 10 Cochranites “with knowledge of” the French language.
Brochu said support from local francophone school Notre-dame des Vallées makes it easier to reach interested Cochranites, but it’s not enough.
“With that said, we hope the survey can reach more than those families with ties to the school. There is also a growing demographic of senior French-speakers in the (Bow) Valley and we want to make sure they are also represented in the survey,” he said.
Notre-dame des Vallées opened in Cochrane in 2002 as a Kindergarten to Grade 8 school. Cochrane's only francophone school has expanded up to Grade 12 since then, with an enrollment of over 200 students.
Students are immersed in an environment where the language of communication is French.
As the official working language of the FrancoSud School Board and its Alberta schools is French, all meetings, written communications and reports on student progress are also in French. However, individual meetings concerning a student can be held in French or English.
Besides in-school activities organized for students, there aren't any extracurricular activities outside school for the students to socialize in French, nor any social activities for the families, or any plan to attract French-speaking entrepreneurs, retail stores, or other French services that would serve bilingual residents of Cochrane.
In 2018, the federal government recognized Calgary and its region as one of 14 cities to become a "welcoming francophone community.” The Francophone Immigration Strategy aims to achieve three main objectives to support the vitality of Francophone communities: to increase Francophone immigration to reach a target of 4.4 per cent of French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec by 2023; to support the successful integration and retention of French-speaking newcomers; and, to strengthen the capacity of Francophone communities.
The survey will run until Jan. 15, 2023 and is open to Cochrane residents who wish to have services and activities in French, regardless of whether French is their mother tongue.
Once the data is compiled, the ACFA will create a committee that represents Cochrane interests.
The survey can be found at forms.gle/NvvkRUHfpnBiUpKx9.
