Dany Laferrière’s itinerant writing:from Port-au-Prince to Montréal

The social and cultural fabric of Québec has been profoundly transformed for about twenty years. Québec, and in particular Montréal, have now become increasingly plural. Law 101, which requires compulsory attendance at French language schools for immigrant children or those born to immigrants, has produced a real and unexpected exchange. On the one hand, immigrant children have learned French and have become more familiar with the French-speaking culture of Québec, on the other, some Francophone children have demystified their rigid and preconceived image of the foreigner and thus feel less fear; they have learned about differences directly and not through the intermediation of family and social prejudices. Certainly, in the younger generation, as in the previous ones, identities are still only defined by starting from a pre- established cultural and family background, perhaps Québécoise, but perhaps also Haitian, Algerian, Chinese, or Polish. In an almost irreversible way, the borders move or are reduced. It is necessary to remember that integration is created slowly, like stratifications that are layered one on top of the other.