MillieF

Oh Alex....yes, it's very annoying at times. The 'be in this place' drives me nuts, as for Fredericton's new poster in all of our windows is "we speak welcome" WTF? It's wrong in English and the French is embarrassing! We are meant to be welcoming newcomers

All of the restaurants are a shade of Brewbakers TBH, nothing better and they think that's good....and it's pricey

BristolUK

Isn't that about welcoming immigrants, perhaps specifically the influx of Syrians.

It's been reported that far fewer of them have any level of English or French than originally thought.

Perhaps it's done deliberately so as to be understood by those who might recognise a couple of basic words. Speak and Welcome are fairly recognisable in many languages for example.

I'm just guessing.

MillieF

Odd thing is...I can read Arabic, and it says "allhan wa Shalwen" or "welcome" which is just what you want....but "we speak welcome" in English is bad grammatically and in French it says "nous savons être accueillants"....it wouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to do it properly

I feel soooo sorry for the people who are arriving here full of hope and they are going to have it generally gently eroded....it just will happen I fear.....

scrubbedexpat133

I remember when I first arrived here I was sitting on the bus. In the seats in front of me were a couple speaking Chiac. Pigeon English Pigeon French mish mash. I honestly thought that I had had a stroke

The terrible English and French does make me shake my head at times. Hardly surprising when you read articles stating that 2/3 of the adult population in NB is functionally illiterate.

scrubbedexpat133

I have not heard that many positives from the locals about this at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Sadly in a lot of cases its pure racism. I was in Walmart last week waiting for the checkout and there was what appeared to be a Syrian family being served when I heard the bloke behind me say 'Great more F ing Immigrants. I turned around and he asked him if he had a problem with immigrants and if so I would love to hear it. Im 6'4, 18 stone and Rugby player shaped He was decided to be quiet.

Tangram

There lies your problem. The outside of Walmart always reminds me of low tide.

Partially discharged

I've been in a similar situation. I came here for good at age 17 and had also lived in the US when I was 5-7 and then Canada from 9-10 and now any 'foreign' accent is quite diluted and not really specific to anywhere (other than semi-rural Cheshire).

I've heard people complain about immigrants and then told people 'hey I'm an immigrant' to which they usually reply by saying 'yeah, but you don't count, you're one of us'. At this point, I usually like to probe further to figure out exactly what 'one of us' means....at the end of it all, I often tell them that I don't want to be 'one of them'.

My wife's family is from NB (Moncton and the upper St John River Valley) and I've seen small minded attitudes and generally poor spoken english often. My F-I-L left NB about 55 years ago and I've noticed when he is with other NB people or is in NB he slips into NB speak...i.e saying "I seen" instead of "I've seen"

GC44

So basically to sum this all up, if I am looking for a more cosmopolitan society than we have here on the prairies then I may be dissapointed by what I find in NB. Eh!

BristolUK

I don't have anything like these negative experiences out and about. Of course, I'm not in a workforce so there's no co-workers to pick up negative vibes from.

But I don't hear these things out and about, in stores or from taxi drivers even.

The media may be biased but it all seems positive with very good responses to all the collections for things to support refugees.

When we dropped off a bunch of clothes for them last week, the taxi driver was nothing but positive and said he'd get something together too.

The kids aren't in school anymore but when they were there, the school hall had flags from countries the students were from. Scores of different flags were hanging. Just one school.

Every reason to think there are more.

It's not the melting pot you'll see in Montreal or Toronto but the Multi-Cultural Association and the immigration agencies will probably tell you there's far more of a mix in this town than you might think.

GC44

If the subject of refugees / immigration is ever brought up with the people that we know out here you could be forgiven to think that you are listening to an episode of Love Thy Neighbour! Except it would appear for white Europeans who are obviously okay cause we are from the "old country".
The locals just seem to be in the main ignorant (and happily so) of the world beyond a 100 mile radius of themselves.

Shirtback

There is a lot more overt racism here in Qc than I would have expected when I came here, yes, even in Montreal, supposedly a multicultural city .

We've done the "I'm an immigrant too you know" discussion more times than I can remember, to no avail - it always comes back to "we don't mean you [because you're white]" .

I think the worst encounter was when my then 11 year old daughter took on a bunch of adults openly swearing about and insulting "effing Chinks, bloody foreigners, should learn our language" in a playground. The children they were insulting are trilingual Inuit/white... As my daughter pointed out, switching from English to word & tone-perfect Joual, the only "foreigner" in range was me.

Perhaps it's a generational thing: above mentioned children, & son's Moroccan origin (but born & bred Montrealer) GF all say they don't/didn't experience racism at school, only out & about & from adults.

As for Syrian refugees, I'm hearing a lot of NIMBY sentiments here in my town, from people I didn't expect .

BristolUK

This is kind of what I'm getting at. These sentiments are there - as they are in the UK, where you can elect people standing on such a platform - but probably not at a level worse than other places.

Shirtback

I do "kind of" see what you mean, I suppose I am/was just shocked at how open it is. Perhaps it's better "out in the open" than unspoken? At least then one gets a chance to challenge it, even if one knows it won't change minds?

MillieF

Certainly for us in the East, the problem is that the 'west' closed up their oil fields and we had to return home to no jobs. It's hard because there are a great many people who didn't have a huge skill set to fall back on in the first place. They aren't racist, they are just stuck and scared, they turn to the first differentiating feature they can think of. A hundred years ago it would have been, Irish or Scottish and now it's Syrian!

cxx

Yes, especially where you are planning to visit. There really isn't very much of anything except trees between St Stephen and Saint John, and neither "city" could be described as cosmopolitan. I'd say the most cosmopolitan city in the area would be Halifax, but that's only when compared to the other cities in the area.......