What's It Mean to Be a Bill 101 Kid?

This story originally appeared in a special edition The Main x URBANIA Micromag. Read the full collection here.

When Stephanie Valenzuela was elected mayor of the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough in Montreal’s 2025 municipal elections, she became the first Filipino-Montrealer to serve as a borough mayor in the largest francophone city in North America.

For Valenzuela, who grew up speaking English and Tagalog at home, it was a symbolic milestone. One, she says, she owes to Bill 101, Quebec’s landmark Charter of the French Language that mandates children of immigrants attend French schools.

“I’m really grateful for Bill 101,” says Valenzuela, “because if my parents had the choice at the time—because of convenience and fear of not being able to help us with our homework—they would have probably put us in the English system.”

Valenzuela attended French school and later rounded out her education by graduating from Vanier College and McGill University. Today, the multilingual public servant credits the legislation for ensuring she communicates effectively in French which, she says, widened her prospects.

Engaging with the public

In his current role as chief of staff to Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Glenn Castanheira spends his days listening to citizens’ concerns.

His 9 to 5 at City Hall is spent almost entirely in French, but at home, Castanheira speaks mostly in English with his wife, a cardiologist who works at a French hospital. With their two children, the multilingual parents speak either French or Portuguese.

And as he grew up in his family’s chicken rotisserie restaurant Coco Rico, Castanheira spoke only Portuguese with his parents and grandparents.

“I was never meant to do what I’m doing today,” he says. “I grew up behind a restaurant counter and thought I was going to do that my whole life. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I can’t emphasize just how much being fluent in French and English (as well as Spanish and Portuguese) opened doors for me.”

Being able to communicate with people in their own language, he believes, has been a game changer. “It’s a huge asset,” Castanheira says. “When people know they can speak to you in their language, that they feel you understand them, it breaks down barriers when it comes to trust.”

A trilingual generation

Valenzuela and Castanheira are typical of generations of allophone Quebecers entirely or partially educated in French since Quebec adopted Bill 101 in 1977, making French the default language of business, communication, and culture. That legislative decision forever changed the face of this province –and by extension the linguistic and cultural identities of non-francophones in Quebec.

From author Kim Thúy to comedian Sugar Sammy to Montreal’s current mayor, generations of immigrants and allophones in Quebec may have started life speaking everything from Hindu and Greek to Vietnamese and Spanish, but have now mostly adopted French as their primary language of life and work.

Even if many continue speaking their mother tongues at home, or English with friends, French is the language they routinely work and live in. They’re also the reason why Montreal has the highest rate of trilingualism in Canada.

A period of upheaval

It's hard to imagine another city where policies had such a dramatic effect on a person's development, creating what Montreal documentary filmmaker Anita Aloisio refers to as “chameleons” or highly adaptable adults, open to cultural and linguistic plurality.

Much of Aloisio’s research as a filmmaker focuses on the difficulties in carving out an identity in a place where language politics take up so much space. Her 2007 documentary, Les enfants de la Loi 101 explores linguistic policy and its impact on second-generation immigrants such as herself.

“How Bill 101 impacted me has been a lifelong question that has been nourishing my work throughout my life,” she says.

But French-language protection didn’t happen without growing pains.

Aloisio grew up speaking Italian at home and started school mere months after the legislation was passed. “Educational institutions weren’t prepared for the changes or the influx of new students,” she says. “It lead to a lot of confusion and upheaval.”

While she agrees acquiring French was beneficial to her, she says it came at a cost.

During six years of elementary, Aloisio was forced to change schools four times because of a lack of space. “Our generation was thrown into a new system that wasn’t ready to welcome us, and so much was still left to figure out,” she says. “If French is prospering in Quebec today, it’s because of our sacrifices, too.”

A burden or a blessing?

Eftihia Mihelakis acknowledges that a certain level of violence is inevitably required when legislating and enforcing any law meant to control a population. The author and associate professor of Francophone Studies and Languages at Brandon University in Manitoba grew up speaking Greek at home in Montreal but received a trilingual education.