Prairie fire chief’s anti-French rant shows old prejudices die hard

It's been a very long time since francophone Canadians have been admonished to "speak white," but perhaps the sentiment hasn't evaporated completely.

A woman who moved to a small Saskatchewan community from Montreal was hit with an expletive-laced tirade when she tried to get help from her local fire department.

CBC News reports Danielle Duperre, who's lived in the village of Manor (population about 400) for 18 months, called 911 on Oct. 2 to report a neighbour's bonfire was threatening trees on her property.

Duperre said a man showed up at her door that evening, identifying himself as the chief of Manor's volunteer fire department, and laced into her.

"Are you going to pay for this s---?" the man asked Duperre, who recorded the exchange, which CBC News has posted.

"What do you mean?" Duperre replied in heavily accented English.

"911 call," he said. "Are you going to pay for this?"

"Why?" Duperre asked.

"Because there's nothing going on over there," the chief said. "Between your little petty f--king French shit going on, I'm getting f--king tired of this shit."

"My trees are burned," she said.

"You know what you need to do?" the man said, according to CBC News. "Go back to f--king Montreal where you belong."

"You got me out of f--ing bed for this whole s---!" the man ranted, complaining the 911 system forwards calls directly to his home phone.

[ Related: Quebec teen, Xavier Menard, fights French language law ]

The man, who said he was the fire chief but refused to give his name, can be heard growing steadily angrier in the two-minute exchange. He sloughed off Duperre's warning that he was being recorded and that she planned to file a complaint against him.

Duperre said she was also disappointed an RCMP officer who showed up did not step in as the fire chief berated her.

A local Mountie admitted to CBC News that the chief was rude but that Duperre should not have called 911 and that the confrontation was not a criminal matter.

The village council responded this week, giving Duperre a letter of apology and saying the fire chief would be reprimanded. The fire chief was not at the meeting and the letter was not from him, CBC News said.

Data from the 2011 census shows there are about 10 million Canadians who say they can speak French, a little less than a third of the population but up almost 400,000 from the 2006 census. Of those, 7.7 million say it's their first language, compared with 7.4 million in the previous census.

Most of the growth has come outside Quebec, according to the data. Most non-Quebec francophones live in New Brunswick and Ontario but their presence grew in Alberta and British Columbia. However, a 2008 Canadian Press article noted the 2006 census showed a sharp drop in the number of Saskatchewan homes where French was spoken.

It's hard to reconcile all that with the naked bigotry expressed by the fire chief.

[ Related: Police identify Richard Henry Bain as a suspect in Parti Quebecois victory rally shooting ]

In the more than four decades since the passing of the Official Languages Act there's been a gradual decrease of bleating about things like French on cereal boxes.

Outbursts are pretty rare, even in Quebec, where Bill 101 has since the 1970s entrenched the ascendency of French over English as the province's working language. But it appears the feeling may be under the surface.

In 2007, a young Montreal man was charged with uttering threats and inciting hatred after posting a video on YouTube (since deleted). It was filled with anti-francophone messages over the fact his lack of French was hurting his job prospects, CBC News reported at the time.

Then there's the fatal 2012 election-night shooting in Montreal at the Parti Quebecois' victory rally, purportedly targeting Premier Pauline Marois, with the arrested shooter screaming "the English are rising up."

You really can't compare that with a potty-mouthed Prairie fire chief, grumpy after being rousted out of bed for what he thought was a nuisance complaint. But they are on the same continuum of anger, maybe just on opposite ends.