Hispanic newcomers change Sherbrooke
In recent years I have done business with a Peruvian-born pharmacist in Magog, a furnace repairman from Buenos Aires in North Hatley, an Ecuadorian veterinarian in Rock Forest, and a short-order cook from Mexico serving breakfast near Katevale.
This sprinkling of Hispanic residents in the Townships has scarcely been noticed in the media, even if the federal census reports ongoing growth in the number of native Spanish speakers.
Will Spanish soon become the major third language here? Immigration trends suggest yes. The 2021 federal census section on “knowledge of languages” notes there were 10,930 “Spanish speakers” in greater Sherbrooke, about 4 per cent of the population in a census region of 220,000 people.
Spanish speakers may also work or study here on a “temporary” basis. Visiting the Waterville area in summer, I see many Central American fruit and vegetable field workers. They go back and forth to Mexico and Guatemala, working summers here but also winters in greenhouses and wrapping produce. They often spend barely two weeks a year “back home”.
At the other end of the social ladder, Spanish is regularly heard on campus at the Université de Sherbrooke. Its website now includes Spanish pages alongside French and English. The U de S media office said they “have no figures on the number of hispanophones” registered in 2023. Many pay the high foreign-student fees to earn credentials then eventually gain residence in Canada.
Above: Spanish-language page of U de Sherbrooke website profiles diverse student body.
In Montreal, the growth pole for minority and new Quebecers, Spanish speakers have become the third-largest language group (321,735), jumping ahead of the recent Arabic-speaking cohort from North Africa (304,000). Hispanics now eclipse “old” postwar immigrant groups from Italy and Greece, whose numbers have stabilized.
Ballooning by 10 times
Back in 1983, a writer for a little left-wing magazine in Montreal, Open City, knocked on doors up and down the central-city St. Laurent Blvd. area looking for Spanish-speaking immigrants to profile. That writer (a certain D. Winch) interviewed many Latino artists and entrepreneurs, textile workers and tradesmen who had left Colombia, Chile or Mexico for Canada. The magazine concluded they were “mostly happy” about their decisions.
That smallish community of Spanish speakers In Montreal — just over 28,000 after the 1981 census — has since ballooned to 10 times that number. Word must have spread fast. (Or the magazine had more readers than expected).
In the Townships, Latin Americans are far less numerous and lower-profile. Only occasionally have they been in the headlines. Recently, three Mexican refugee claimants sought shelter for months in Trinity-Plymouth United Church. The Rodriguez-Flores family claimed they were targeted by Mexican gangs after refusing to cooperate with drug dealers. They fled for their lives. Today, after Canadian extradition proceedings were dropped in December, they are back working in Sherbrooke and out of the news again.
While there are many Hispanic individuals around now, there are no broad institutions or visible leadership – yet.
Some new Quebecers are working to change that. Recently, I met with Andres Ramirez Pamplona and Isabel Echeverri in a suitably trendy Wellington St. café. Ramirez is director of Radio Mas Latinos, a lively music-oriented station available online and via YouTube. While “based” in Quebec, its technical guy works from Ecuador.
After listening to a catchy Latin pop melody, Ramirez and Echeverri recounted the steady emergence of the Hispanic community in Sherbrooke: the Colombians, Mexicans, Peruvians and Central Americans, their ethnic groupings and churches, the three Latin groceries, the new restaurant with a notorious (La P*ta Dama) moniker, a 40-member Hispanic dance troupe, and finally, their plans for both a “Plus Latinos” umbrella association and a festival. Whew.
Such an association would give the divergent nationalities more unity, visibility and political clout. Ramirez Pamplona, a Liberal, has already brought federal MP and Heritage minister Pablo Rodriguez to the city for support. Rodriguez is the most influential Hispanic Canadian with links to the Townships. His pathway was pioneering.
Newcomers were often politicized
The son of an Argentinian reform politician, Rodriguez and his family barely escaped politically-motivated murder in the 1970s when their home was firebombed. After settling in Quebec as a child, Rodriguez then studied at the Université de Sherbrooke in the 1980s, graduating in business management in 1989. An avid soccer player, Rodriguez broke his leg twice after being tackled while playing for the Sherbrooke “Vert et Or” squad, personal setbacks that reinforced his belief in team play. He went on to lead a wave of new Latino leaders in Quebec.
Political violence has been a factor for many Latin American immigrants. In the 1970s, thousands of Chileans fleeing repression arrived in Canada. Often university-educated and politicized, several have become senior Quebec academics, union leaders and elected officials. Chileans have gone on to be elected as MPs for the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP, as well as to Montreal city council, with one today an MNA for Québec Solidaire.
Luis Zuniga, a Chilean immigrant who for three years was head of the Hispanic and Latin American Association of Québec, has been anything but quiet and invisible. He faced serious bumps before becoming integrated. After working in a Quebec public-sector post, he wrote a book about discrimination there based on having a strong foreign accent. His book, Ton Accent, Luis!, resulted in meetings with Quebec’s then-Minister of Immigration, Kathleen Weil.
Zuniga has lived mostly in Boucherville. He says the south-shore Montérégie region bordering the Townships is particularly attractive to Hispanics, with less stress but easy access to the big city. Married to a French-Canadian woman, Zuniga finds there is a “natural connection” between Quebec and the broader Latin and Catholic cultures.
That cultural connection may grow in coming decades. As a result, could Sherbrooke eventually be home to 20-30,000 more Spanish speakers? Sólo el tiempo dirá — only time will tell.
Published in Sherbrooke Record weekend supplement, March 31, 2023.
