The Franco-Calgarians: French Language, Leisure and Life-Style in an Anglophone City byRobert A. StebbinsReview by: Christopher McAllThe Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer,1996), p. 441Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3341781 .

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need. The needs of our children, our elderly, our sick, our disheartened unem-

ployed becomes the privatized, invisible, unpaid work of wives, homemakers, and mothers. This intensification of our caretaking role places in "bold relief' the paradox of women's lives, our caring work, so fundamental to the one's we love, is the source of our dependency.

University of Manitoba E. Jane Ursel

Robert A. Stebbins, The Franco-Calgarians: French Language, Leisure and Life-Style in an Anglophone City. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 152 pp.

The life-styles of French-speakers living in the large Canadian cities outside Quebec are under-researched. The way in which these populations adapt, assimilate, or struggle to survive in the English-speaking contexts in which they find themselves has only been looked at closely in one or two outdated studies. In The Franco-Calgarians, Stebbins seeks to explore this little known territory. After several years of participant observation in Calgary and sixty semi-directed interviews, he comes to the conclusion that Franco-Calgarians may be declining as a proportion of the overall population of the town, but that their growth in absolute numbers (14,490 at the last census) is accompanied by an increasingly lively pattern of educational, cultural, associational, and organizational activity.

Whereas the information provided in the book is adequate to support the thesis that many of his respondents want French to survive and flourish in the relatively hostile soil of an anglophone city, the real issue - what happens to the second generation - is largely neglected. What we are provided with is a parents' eye view of what they hope their children will end up doing, and an optimistic view (on the author's part) as to how children react to their parents' wishes. Stebbins succeeds in describing the day-to-day difficulties of trying to maintain one's native language as a francophone in the private domain of family-life and leisure activities, when everything from the world of work to the world of the media is overwhelmingly English. His optimistic conclusion (as to the maintenance and transmission of the use of French), however, is less convincing.

Departement de sociologie Christopher McAll Universite de Montreal

need. The needs of our children, our elderly, our sick, our disheartened unem-

ployed becomes the privatized, invisible, unpaid work of wives, homemakers, and mothers. This intensification of our caretaking role places in "bold relief' the paradox of women's lives, our caring work, so fundamental to the one's we love, is the source of our dependency.

University of Manitoba E. Jane Ursel

Robert A. Stebbins, The Franco-Calgarians: French Language, Leisure and Life-Style in an Anglophone City. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 152 pp.

The life-styles of French-speakers living in the large Canadian cities outside Quebec are under-researched. The way in which these populations adapt, assimilate, or struggle to survive in the English-speaking contexts in which they find themselves has only been looked at closely in one or two outdated studies. In The Franco-Calgarians, Stebbins seeks to explore this little known territory. After several years of participant observation in Calgary and sixty semi-directed interviews, he comes to the conclusion that Franco-Calgarians may be declining as a proportion of the overall population of the town, but that their growth in absolute numbers (14,490 at the last census) is accompanied by an increasingly lively pattern of educational, cultural, associational, and organizational activity.

Whereas the information provided in the book is adequate to support the thesis that many of his respondents want French to survive and flourish in the relatively hostile soil of an anglophone city, the real issue - what happens to the second generation - is largely neglected. What we are provided with is a parents' eye view of what they hope their children will end up doing, and an optimistic view (on the author's part) as to how children react to their parents' wishes. Stebbins succeeds in describing the day-to-day difficulties of trying to maintain one's native language as a francophone in the private domain of family-life and leisure activities, when everything from the world of work to the world of the media is overwhelmingly English. His optimistic conclusion (as to the maintenance and transmission of the use of French), however, is less convincing.

Departement de sociologie Christopher McAll Universite de Montreal

441 441

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