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McGill-Queen's University Press is pleased to announce the release of Life After Forty, Après quarante ans edited by Jack Jedwab and Rodrigue Landry.
Life After Forty, Après quarante ans includes English and French essays from several of the country's leading experts, who assess the effectiveness of Canada's Official Languages Act and propose ways in which it can meet future challenges in addressing the language situation.
The following is excerpted from the Postmedia News article Book questions whether Canada can truly claim to be bilingual.
In the 42 years since Ottawa passed the Official Languages Act, many Canadians have come to see bilingualism as the country's defining trait.
But the recent furor over the appointment of a unilingual federal auditor general, and the revelation that two executives at Quebec's public pension fund manager can't speak French, have showed up the cracks in Canada's bilingual facade.
Now, a forthcoming book raises questions over whether Canada can even lay claim to be a bilingual country at all.
While many Canadians uphold bilingualism as a quintessential value, that belief is not actually borne out by the proportion of citizens who speak both official languages, according to Life After Forty: Official Languages Policy in Canada, edited by Jack Jedwab and Rodrigue Landry (Queen's Policy Studies Series, McGill-Queen's University Press, due out next month).
After four decades and billions of dollars spent on official bilingualism, just seven per cent of anglophones outside Quebec are able to carry on a conversation in French, writes Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies.
Click here to read the full article
To learn more about Life After Forty, Après quarante ans, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
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