7.3.4 Case Study: Municipalité Hérouxville

What happens to language and culture in our globalizing world?


  • A Montreal police magazine suggested female officers step aside to let male colleagues deal with Hasidic Jews. 

  • Members of a Montreal YMCA had the windows of their gym covered due to a complaint from a synagogue across the street whose members did not want the boys who worshipped there to see women in their work-out clothing.

  • Men were banned from pre-natal classes at a Montreal community health centre to avoid offending Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu women.

  • An Ontario judge ordered a Christmas tree removed from the lobby of a Toronto court house because it was offensive to non-Christians.

What is reasonable accommodation? In Canada's
pluralism
a society where individual and group differences are present and are celebrated as enriching the social fabric.
pluralistic society, members of the dominant culture are asked often to make reasonable
accommodation
When one culture modifies itself in order to fit in with the dominant culture.
accommodation to their customs and traditions for the sake of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. This has led to a debate about what is reasonable and fair. At what point does the dominant culture decide not to accommodate the values and beliefs of others?

Hérouxville, a small town of 1278 people in the province of Quebec, is 98% French-speaking according to the 2016 census. Only 15 residents were born outside Canada. Its population has been decreasing slowly, unemployment is higher than the provincial average, and the town has an average income significantly lower than most Quebec towns.

Hérouxville is ethnically and linguistically homogeneous. That is, almost everyone is the same. Economically, the benefits of globalization have been slow reaching Hérouxville but so, too, have been the threats to values, language, and culture that often come with globalization.
Courtesy of Alain Fournier
Municipality of Herouxville

Preserving the dominant culture in a multicultural world is difficult. Although the people of their town all represent the majority or dominant culture in their province, the people of Hérouxville felt they needed to preserve their values and lifestyle in view of a perceived threat against a way of life in which they deeply believe. The changing values and practices in their larger society led the people of Hérouxville to make an effort to preserve and promote their own culture and values. In January 2007, they established a set of standards or culturally-based norms that newcomers were expected to follow.

In a well-publicized document on the town's website, the mayor and town councillors welcomed newcomers to their town. They advised them that, if they were to immigrate to the town, they would also be expected to fit in. The council received overwhelming support from its citizens for the document.

We would especially like to inform the new arrivals that the lifestyle that they left behind in their birth country cannot be brought here with them and they would have to adapt to their new social identity.

Featured items on their document include the following:

  • Women may not be beaten or stoned.

  • Women are allowed go out in public alone.

  • Children may not be beaten.

  • Men may attend the births of their children.

  • There will be drinking of alcohol, the eating of meat, and dancing.

  • Teachers, doctors, policemen, and firefighters may be men or women and may work with those of the same or different gender.

  • Boys and girls may take part in sports without segregation.

  • Medical professionals can provide blood transfusions or other medically necessary services without permission.

  • People are allowed to cover their faces only at Halloween.

  • Parents have equal authority over children, and they may be of the same or different gender or race.

  • Christmas trees may be displayed in public.

Some of these items are already enshrined in Canadian law as security and human rights issues. It is not legal in Canada to stone a woman or beat a child. Obviously, some of these items target particular groups. For example, the item about covering the face applies to orthodox Muslims. The piece about blood transfusions is specific to Jehovah's Witnesses. The idea that parents can be of the same gender targets people of many religions who do not accept homosexuality.

Do you believe the people of Hérouxville were justified to tell prospective newcomers how to live? Complete the anonymous survey on the next page.