MONTREAL SLANG AND THE HAITIAN-CANADIAN EXPERIENCE

I had to consider that a city known for its seamless blend of French and English would eventually expand its rolodex and add other languages into the fold. Was that inherently problematic? Isn’t the beauty of immigration in all the things we can teach and borrow from one another? Exchange between different cultural groups can be something as trivial as a kimchi poutine for example or it can create long-lasting change. For example,the meeting of nationalist Québecois and anti-Duvalier activists in the late sixties/early seventies changed both groups' outlooks on their respective situations and introduced them to new ideas. Both fighting oppression and state control, nationalist Québecois borrowed from the anti-Duvalier and Black Panther groups to vocalise their frustration against the status quo. Although sometimes that borrowing turned out to be controversial, like Nègres blancs d'Amérique by Pierre Vallières¹, it did spark some of the most powerful reforms the province has ever seen (see: the nationalisation of electricity, the removal of the Catholic Church’s power over the public school system).

On the Haitian front, immigration to Québec in the midst of multiple social justice movements opened eyes to unseen possibilities. For those who had been exiled, it was inspiring to see a population fight fearlessly for their nation. In a series of recorded interviews by Jonathan Roux, exiled political activist Elizabeth Philibert explains;

 “ Au début je regardais ça et je me disais ça ressemble beaucoup aux haïtiens, parce que nous autres on a aussi un nationalisme très profond. Mais je n'avais pas compris au début cette affaire : québécois, le fait français, le fait culturel, et qu'ils veulent sortir du Canada pour être un pays et non une province. Moi j'avais tendance a aller dans ce sens la, parce que je sais ce que c'est être un nationaliste.”²

TRANSLATION: "In the beginning, I thought to myself, this reminds me a lot of Haitians, because we, too, feel a profound sense of nationalism. But I hadn't understood, at the beginning of this whole affair, that Québec, the French aspect, the cultural aspect and their desire to leave Canada to be their own nation rather than a province. I had a tendency toward this direction, because I know what it is to be a nationalist."

Many Haitian women were inspired to bring feminist discourse back to their own communities and enact change there. Dr. Grace Louise Sanders’s 2013 dissertation explains; 

“This idea of concurrent feminism and nationalism would be the preoccupation of the next decade. The women were not only drawing from the movements around them. They were slowly establishing their own organisational base. Similar to Haitian women earlier in the century, the women began organising with reading groups.”³ 

While they were often shut down, these women still managed to create their own safe spaces that are still operating today such as Maison d’Haiti and Bureau de la Communauté Chrétienne des Haïtiens de Montréal.

I’d love for the borrowing of kreyòl by non-natives to feel natural or thoughtful even, but it tends to fall short due to the ignorance of the culture. Non-Black people tend to find Black culture entertaining and have no issue using it to further their own self-image, whether that be to seem humorous or to portray themselves as “cool” or rebellious- we can think of Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz era for example. In regards to kreyòl this tends to look like non-Black people using “lakay”(meaning:home) and “kob”(meaning: money) in their speech disingenuously. Disingenuous because they either find themselves hilarious for using foreign words or to project coolness using language that aligns with Blackness. Perhaps the most concerning thing about this phenomenon is that many have no idea of the origin of these words and assume this slang is just a variation of French. I often ask, rhetorically, “Oh! I didn’t know you spoke kreyòl” to which I usually receive a “Huh?”