Before spending the better part of the last week as a participant in the Bishop’s Forum, Elli Peruch said that she felt pretty alienated by her home province.
“I live in a community that’s predominantly French, and the majority of my friends are English speaking,” she said, explaining that there are many times the members of the English minority in her Montreal neighbourhood feel discriminated against. “We have never had a place to call our own, so a lot of us feel like we’re going to get our degrees and then just leave Quebec because we don’t feel welcome.”
After participating in the forum, however, Peruch said that she plans to bring a different perspective back to her friend group.
“Coming to the forum and meeting all the lovely people here, I realized this is where we live. Why do we have to be divided? We need to have a community,” the youth shared. “Our grandparents didn’t immigrate here for us to just leave again; it’s time for us to make (Quebec) our home.”
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“It’s time for us to make Quebec our home”
By Gordon Lambie, Local Journalism Initiative