Once, she told us about a person who had been killed in Trois-Pistoles many years prior.

“Like maybe because I am...bad.” “For always speaking English,” she said, carrying a tray past the counter to the crowded table. Many visiting students aren’t used to living in an actual small town, the kind of community where the nearest McDonald’s is forty minutes away and shopkeepers and customers greet each other by nickname. I hope the pledge scares them a little too—at least enough to believe the people of Trois-Pistoles are listening in. Who am I, Charlie Brown?”) with no viable method of delivery, a plane without landing gear. L'humoriste s'est amusé à taquiner son ami en exagérant ses privilèges. I suspect that for her, we were just another cycle of coltish houseguests: near-incomprehensible, then slightly more comprehensible, and then gone. A representative of the program wrote: “In recent history, there have been no students sent home for breaking the French-only rule. Life in Trois-Pistoles felt like it came with metaphorical, if not literal, training wheels: tipsy experiments like “do you think I can bike home with my elbows on my handlebars?” (answer: no) had minimal consequences. In hindsight, this strikes me as absurdly generous: she was given a stipend to feed us, not to let us rifle through her living room in search of old board games or use a landfill’s worth of Keurig cups. With Guy A. Lepage, Dany Turcotte, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Pierre Fitzgibbon. Ou alors, faites un lien vers l’un des contenus de votre siteAppuyez sur Entrée / Retour pour commencer votre recherche. The couple who owned the house where I slept was nice but seemed mostly bemused by the presence of four university girls in their home. The program enforced a three-strikes policy: you received three warnings, and then you could be sent home early on the shame train courtesy of VIA Rail. Language acquisition is a lot like piano lessons or hearing long stories from grandparents: children are the most likely candidates, and also the most grudging participants. Like all English visiting students in Trois-Pistoles, I had made a pledge to speak French and only French only during my five-week course. Her children had moved out long ago, but she treated her anglophone wards with a motherly combination of exasperation and indulgence: quick with both a sharp remark and a second piece of dessert. I got comfortable making mistakes in Trois-Pistoles. The town has notoriety that exceeds what one might expect from its small population, lending its name to a Tragically Hip song, “Three Pistols,” and a popular UniBroue strong beer. Surtout, dégustez chaque article!Ce site utilise Akismet pour réduire les indésirables. We're … In his autobiography, Fox wrote that “establish[ing] a summer school in Quebec where English speaking students could readily acquire at least a limited spoken French had been a germ kept alive in my memory for many years.” For Fox, the school was to be an endeavour not just of language acquisition but of national understanding and harmony. Normally, you might think that where you slept would be the place for building intimacy with your hosts and fellow students: those moments of padding down the hall, toothbrush in mouth, or returning a wayward sock. Impossible de partager les articles de votre blog par e-mail. I applied to Trois-Pistoles during my first year of university, received a bursary, and proceeded to spend the intervening months agonizing. The punishment cloud was right: I was speaking English—furtively, after checking my surroundings—when I should have been speaking French. Photo: ICI Télé And we trust students to take advantage of that opportunity.”While the opportunity seemed great in theory, I found it hard to enact in practice. As a student years ago, Asari did Explore in two locations, and said that her time in Trois-Pistoles was markedly different. Lunch, back at host house. Age matters, too: some visiting students are “mature learners” or families, often paying their own way or funded by their employers, but the vast majority are between eighteen and twenty-five and funded by student bursaries. French class in the morning, taught at the high school. While not the intent of the program, the hosting arrangement also brings the young and the old together. In 1932, then-president of the University of Western Ontario (usually just called “Western”), W. Sherwood Fox, wanted to open a school where students would be immersed in a francophone community during their summer break, replicating a formative experience he had as a young man. She’s biased, she told me with a laugh, but she thought that long before she became its director. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in introducing the legislation, extolled it as a step towards a bright and prosperous future: “such a country will be more interesting, more stimulating and, in many ways, richer than it has ever been.” The “richer” part may be true, at least for those who have knuckled down with a Bescherelle. Created by Thierry Ardisson, Catherine Barma. Immersion can trick your brain into learning like you’re a Montessori toddler. I got to my “host house” in time for dinner but was soaked through, much to the confusion of my fellow students who had gathered there to eat. “I’m on the train right now for hour six of sixteen…” I wrote in a Facebook message to a friend. “Sure,” she replied. My friend Alexis, who went in 2017, told me that she thought that the vulnerability necessitated by the French-only pledge was part of the reason why people who had done the program felt such a fierce sentimentality about each other and the town itself.