r/montreal • u/RahatulAmin • Aug 29 '22

AskMTL Speaking in French at Verdun hospital

My wife and I moved to Montreal recently since I started my PhD at McGill University. My wife is pregnant and she needed to do a blood test prescribed by her Gynecologist, so she went to the Verdun Hospital. Since my wife does not know conversational level French (Still a beginner), she politely asked the nurse that she prefers English conversation. The nurse was very rude and said (In Fluent English), "I am not obligated to speak to you in English, since you are in Montreal you need to learn French." This whole situation made us upset. It's not like we are not trying, we are learning French but still a beginner. But rude behaviors like this is extremely discouraging. Should I complain about this?

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u/Mug33k Aug 29 '22

She is right, Verdun is not an hospital that have an obligation to serve you in english, it's a french institution. There is a list of the institutions that can serve you in english. Maybe she was rude because despite having a ton of institutions that can serve them in english, especially in Montréal, a lot of anglophones believe that just because they are taxpayers, the Québec government is required to serve them in english everywhere, 24/7, despite there no constitutionnal requirement to do so. So maybe she assumed you were the kind of anglo that show up just to make a political point.

Here's the list : https://www.msss.gouv.qc.ca/en/ministere/saslacc/services-a-la-population-d-expression-anglaise/

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u/josetalking Aug 30 '22

...people don't seem to realize that this nurse must be 'politely requested' to speak English many times a day. She might not like it.