Pakenham, bilingualism and the lack of common sense

It’s a situation that is clearly insane in both official languages but for the sake of the Canada Post executives at the Riverside Drive headquarters here in Ottawa let me put this in real French for them, c’est aliene, c’est fou!

A woman in Eastern Ontario who has been working as the local postmistress for the town of Pakenham has been told she will keep her job, this after being told on Friday that she would lose it, which came a week after being told she would keep it, after being told she would lose it. The reason for all this confusion, Jeanne Barr does not speak French.

According to Canada Post, and just about no one else, Pakenham is inside the “National Capital Region” at least when it comes to the delivery of postal service and that means that all service to the public must be in both official languages.

This small town sits just outside of the Ottawa boundaries and is legally part of the municipality of Mississippi Mills, population 11,500. According to the 2006 census, while there were 500 people in the entire region that spoke French, just 25 that spoke only French with no English. That’s for all of Mississippi Mills, not Pakenham, which might have just over 500 people in the town proper.

Barr has worked for Canada Post for years and been the acting postmistress in her hometown for most of the last 8 months. She's a local girl that lives in the village and knows the clients she serves and by all accounts they are happy with her. Barr has applied for the permanent position and never heard back on those applications although she has been told that she is being moved out because she does not speak French. According to Doug Hempstead at the Ottawa Sun, this is happening in the town of Almonte as well, another community inside of Mississippi Mills.

From the Sun, “The acting postmistress in Almonte for the past four years found out her shifts were being reduced to 2.5 hours per week from 40. In addition, she will be relegated to a back-room assignment.”

The woman in Almonte has been told by her bosses not to speak to the media, she’s listening to them, afraid it might damage her job prospects further. That’s advice that, if given to her, Jeanne Barr has ignored. The woman would have been shuffled out of her job, posted to a nearby area where she would not interact with the public and make half her wages had she not spoken out and let local media ride to her rescue.

Under considerable public and political pressure (Barr’s MP Gordon O’Connor has spoken on her behalf) Canada Post has agreed to leave the unilingual postmistress in her job for now. I say for now because the Crown Corporation has agreed only to allow her to stay in current position until they find her a job nearby at the same salary level. Eventually, Barr will be replaced with a bilingual person; her new job will not allow her to work directly with the public.

All of this to ensure linguistic harmony in a village that has no significant Francophone population, it is a move only a bureaucracy could love. Were this my neighbourhood in Ottawa South, where there is a large French speaking population, then bilingual staff would only make sense. In Pakenham it does not. Those objecting to this are sure to be called bigots, anti-French, accused of being opposed to the core Canadian value of bilingualism. What they are speaking out in favour of is common sense.

Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. Follow Brian on Twitter to get the latest as it happens.

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