This week, I thought I’d introduce you to the francophone environment in my home community, Nelson B.C.
There is a small but very active francophone community in our area. Nelson’s population is about 11,000 people. About 12% of the population speaks French, and about 2% have French as their mother tongue. This is similar to the percentage of Francophones in B.C. as a whole.
Our regional Francophone Association (the Association des francophones des Kootenays Ouest, or AFKO), offers a variety of services in French. These include weekly radio shows on our local community radio station, quarterly newsletters, summer day camps, a directory of French-language services, and annual events. I wrote a blog post recently about AFKO’s 35th birthday celebrations.
There is also an active French-language homeschooling community, and a bilingual daycare in a nearby community, Castlegar. There is also an elementary/secondary French language school, école des Sentiers-alpins just outside of town. The school has a special program for its grade 8 and 9 students which gives them the opportunity to take regular courses, innovative electives, and then to decide between four “streams”: a leadership and community engagement stream, an outdoor stream, a textile arts and cooking stream, or an art stream.
At the moment, high school students attend a hybrid program at L.V. Rogers, our local high school. The program offers Francophone students two to four courses in French per year, with the rest of their courses in English.
Image: école des Sentiers-alpins
Catherine Fisher, blogger
