STUDENT LIFE
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2 2021
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The small pleasure of the postcard
Exchanging handwritten letters bring faraway people and places home Holly Wethey Contributor Every morning, when I wake up, Leonard Cohen stares back at me. So does the Queen of England, a neon pink cat, and a small Tuscan countryside. They are the faces of the many special edition stamps on my postcard wall, a section of my room dedicated entirely to the letters I have received from friends over the years. A variety of postcards grace the wall, from a photo of the waterfront at TroisRivières, to a watercolour painting of various root vegetables with the words “I’m rooting
for you” scrawled underneath. Normally, my postcard wall is a small pleasure, but these days, it has become an especially large one. It seems to quietly insist that there is a wide, expansive world beyond the walls of my Plateau apartment. As it turns out, I’m not alone in my growing appreciation for postcards and letter writing. Alana Dunlop, U3 Arts and Science, also started writing letters to her friend last April, when she moved back to her small hometown in Ontario. For Dunlop, her letter-writing was born entirely from the pandemic. “It made being stuck at home more bearable,” Dunlop said. “I would check the
The holiday season saw record high numbers of stamp sales, in part because of the resurgence of analog mail. (Justyna Stasik / paperole.com)
mail every week to see if there was a letter.” Dunlop and her pen-pal also included trinkets in their letters. “I would put SpongeBob stickers over the envelope and we would include stuff we found in them,” Dunlop said. “She sent me laptop stickers and this little pamphlet with the Mont Royal cross on it.” With nearly all of our social interactions taking place online now, it is refreshing to communicate through pen and paper. “It’s a lot more exciting to physically open something than to get a text,” Dunlop said. “It’s a great way to practice writing. In letters, there’s a lot more emphasis on writing well.” Shelly Bahng, U2 Arts, shares a similar experience, having also taken up letterwriting during the pandemic. “[Before the pandemic], I would only write letters on special occasions,” Bahng said. “When the pandemic started, I made the decision to start writing more.” Bahng explained how she agreed with friends to write letters to one another instead of text. The proposition was born from a desire to eliminate the stress of having to text someone back immediately. Indeed, exchanges through letters can take us away from our screens, where we tend to spend a great deal of time these days. “There’s so much pressure [with texting],” Bahng said. “I suggested letter writing because there’s a smaller expectation of any reply because we wouldn’t know when
we sent it or if the post office was busy.” Bahng wrote letters to her friend who had moved back to Toronto, sending stickers and any flat object that would fit in an envelope, including a key chain from Korea. For her, letters are valuable because they serve as a record of messages that might otherwise be lost. “I have often thought about how these days, because everything is online, we don’t really send letters to each other so all of our conversations aren’t being archived [on paper],” Bahng said. “I was reading a lot of authors who had letter correspondences with each other. I wondered [if there] would there be any physical proof of the exchanges between my friends and I.” As our time in isolation stretches on, people are sending more and more letters. A headline from CTV News Montreal announced an unprecedented increase in stamp sales over the holidays. It turns out that the 14 Christmas cards I mailed to friends and family this previous holiday season were only a few of the thousands of cards Montrealers were sending. The letter in the mail—no longer a relic of the past—is making its great comeback. As I drop my Mexico City-bound postcard into the mailbox, I join my fellow Montrealers in our excessive consumption of postage stamps. I gained a final glimpse of that small stamp that appears to have a certain kind of power we do not: Unlike us, it can go anywhere it wants.
French at Work seminar series expands students’ linguistic horizons
FLC’s seminars are intended to help students navigate the French-speaking job market Maya Mau Staff Writer For students with French as a second, third, or fourth language, navigating Montreal can be challenging. Although McGill is an anglophone university, the ability to speak some French is useful when exploring other parts of the city, since it has been the official language of Quebec since 1969. Gaining sufficient conversational French skills to make the most of living in the city can be difficult, but navigating the Quebec job market is another challenge entirely. Luckily, the French Language Center (FLC) seeks to help students develop their French language skills so they can navigate Quebec’s job market with ease. The FLC’s “Series French at Work - Français au travail” seminar series helps students with intermediate to advanced French backgrounds develop their verbal and written French while also connecting them with employers throughout the province. The series is organized in collaboration with McGill’s Careers Planning Service (CaPS) and participation in the series appears on students’ official McGill co-curricular records (CCR). Recognition on this document
provides both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for students to attend the seminars. French Studies lecturer Joannie Proulx is confident that the FLC’s services are meeting a student demand. “The French professional communication workshops were strongly motivated by concrete needs expressed by our students,” Proulx wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Many of our students want to remain and work in Quebec after their studies, but have expressed not feeling prepared enough to transition into the French workplace.” Marion Vergues, Faculty of Arts lecturer and the director and academic coordinator of the series, believes that the ability to speak French is invaluable to students seeking a job in Quebec after graduation. “Being able to work efficiently in a multilingual environment [provides] more confidence in one’s ability to adapt to an ever-changing job market, as well as more opportunities [for] growth,” Vergues wrote. “French plays a major role in this part, of course in Quebec and in all Canadian provinces because of bilingualism requirements, but also in our globalized world.”
The series provides students with the tools necessary to develop a profile, write a CV, and participate in interviews in French. Vergues has enjoyed leading several of the seminars. “I find them nurturing,” Vergues wrote. “I have been teaching French for Professional Communication for a while. It allows me to interact with students by teaching French for specific objectives, which is still underrated in language curricula at university level [compared] to literature for example.” Like most events, the seminars have had to take a different form since COVID-19 hit in March 2020. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, the French Language Centre has had to adapt to remote teaching and learning to ensure access to high-quality courses and activities,” Vergues wrote. “It has been both a challenging and rewarding process due to a unique pairing of self-driven and skilled instructors and engaged students.” Although the “Series French at Work - Français au travail” seminars are geared towards students who already have an intermediate or advanced background in French, the FLC’s offerings are diverse. Proulx helps ensure that there are
The seminar series will be held from late January to late February. (Arindam Das / The McGill Tribune) opportunities for beginners to enjoy being in a bilingual city and become familiar with the French language. “I coordinate a team of amazing French language assistants (monitrices de langues), who create and facilitate fun pedagogical activities for students learning French, such as field trips in Montreal or Quebec [City] (before Covid), French meetups, a language partnering program, game nights, and a tutoring service,” Proulx wrote. Both Vergues and Proulx emphasized the importance of engaging in the FLC’s events. “I would encourage students
to try and participate in a French activity, whether it is a game night or the language partnering program,” Proulx wrote. “Since we all shifted to remote [...] interactions, I think it’s now more important than ever to connect with people. Why not pick up some French in the process?” Vergues described the benefits of student engagement with the FLC. “Take advantage of all opportunities to engage in activities offered in French on the campus,” Vergues wrote. “Get to know [the] Francophones of McGill. They are proud ambassadors of the French [language], and passionate about it!”
