Sponsor (July-Dec 1952)

Prizes help build audience for French stations Tips »tt French-Speaking Canada 1 Yes, it's true what they say about French girls. They're interested in much the same thing as American jiirls. They like the same clothes and cosmetics. In the home the housewife is just as modern and wants much the same conveniences. She sticks to the long-established product she trusts, however. If a new one comes along, she has to be sold hard to change. The American advertiser should do his advertising in French to reach the French girls and wives. He should make it a cross between straight translation and a completely separate theme. Soap opera, for example, can be adapted quite successfully. But the French Canadian goes to the priest first, rather than the doctor, when in trouble. And there are never any divorces on French-Canadian radio. Just misunderstandings and separations. MAR'S Moran, Radio Director MacLaren Adv. Co.. Ltd., Montreal 2. Respect the French Canadian. He feels he's more Canadian than the English, for he's been here longer and has severed all ties with Europe. A good many English Canadians still have relatives in England or the U.S.. so their Canadian home is not all-inclusive. We even had a Prime Minister ( R. B. Bennett I who. when defeated for reelection, went back "home" — to England. A French Canadian would never have done that. French Canada is alone in a sea of Anglo-Saxonism. Unlike English Canada, which asks, when stuck with a big problem, how London or Washington would act. French Canada reacts by itself. Our schooling is not the same as the English. We give more emphasis to solid general background in all fields, whereas the Anglo-Saxon specializes much sooner. The church ( Roman Catholic I plays a much bigger part in the life of the French Canadian than among the English-speaking people. Because of his isolation from Englishlanguage books, movies, magazines and radio, the French Canadian spends more time listening to his own radio than any other group in North America. He's more artistic minded. He considers radio more as a form of art. Illiteracy is low and doesn't have anything to do with it. It is higher, in fact, in Nova Scotia and some of the other Maritime Provinces. The French Canadian finally is more stable. He reacts more slowly than his English or American friends. He doesn't panic so quickly. He gets used to the commercials, but often he feels they are too long, too obnoxious. He objects especially to the Americanized high-pressure type of advertising. Ex i What's the difference between Fretteh and English-speuking Canadians? SPONSOR asked one of the top educators in Canada, Dean H. \oeJ Fieldhouse of the Faculty of Arts & Science. MeGill Vniversity, Montreal, to explain the basic differences between French and English-speaking Canadians for the benefit of the American sponsor. Here is his reply. A well known French Canadian writer in the second half of the 19th century once compared Canada to the famous staircase at Chambord which was so built that two people could go up it without seeing each other except on intermittent landings. It was only thus, he said, that English Canadians and French Canadians made contact with each other. If you read the romantic literature about French Canada, or that of the tourist offices, you may easily come to think of Quebec as being only a picturesque old-world enclave oddly set apart from the rest of North America. That kind of Quebec does exist, but it is not all. In the last 30 years, Quebec has been going through the Industrial Revolution. The proportion of its people who live in urban centres is larger than that in any other Province in Canada and there are more people actually farming the land in Englishspeaking Ontario than there are in supposedly rural Quebec. The industrial population of the Province rose by 37% between 1921 and 1931, and by another 16% between 1931 and 1941 ; and there has been another great wave of industrialization as a result of war-time and post-war developments. The transition to an industrial society has spelt growing pains in every country but, in French Canada, the pains are the more acute because the French Canadian has met the onset of the forces of the modern world with a mind which is, to a remarkable degree, attuned to the past. The Abbe Groulx, master of French Canadian historians, has given currency to the phrase — "Notre maitre, le passe" ("Our master, the past" ) , and the very motto of the Province is "Je me souviens" — I remember. This, in brief, is the situation in Quebec today. The Province is undergoing its industrial revolution but it is doing so under two separate handicaps : first , from its point of view, the technical and industrial leadership in the industrial revolution comes from English-speaking Canadians or from Americans, of both of whom the French Canadian has been taught to be apprehensive ; and secondly, French Canada has not yet produced the large middle class which is typical of industrial-democratic society. To sum up, the English Canadian is at home in the 20th century; the French Canadian is trying hard to adjust himself to it. /*>/ 0£ 7Z%,r 78 SPONSOR