Montreal — Quebec native Yvan Tessier was only too happy to sign on for an English-immersion course in New Brunswick this summer. But he hadn't anticipated that his guide dog, Pavot, would effectively have to take English classes too.
Now a storm has erupted at the University of New Brunswick over its iron-clad rule that no one — not even a dog — may be addressed in a language other than English.
The conflict stretches Canada's bilingualism conundrum to new lengths, since Pavot is unilingual. Trained to understand commands in French only, he responds to “Pavot, reste!” but not “Pavot, stay!”
Mr. Tessier, 39, blind for 20 years because of a degenerative illness, wants to file a complaint with human-rights officials, arguing the university is discriminating because of his disability.
“My dog doesn't understand English at all,” he said yesterday from Fredericton. “If I give him commands in English, he could get confused. I'm worried about my safety and the safety of my dog.
“My dog is my eyes, my autonomy, and my independence. He represents everything to me. I knew [when signing up] that I'd have to speak English to people. But I thought I could speak French to my guide dog.”
The school is adamant about its English-only policy, saying it is a key to its success.
Students in its 52-year-old immersion program — who have included MPs from Quebec and CEOs from around the world — sign a pledge vowing to utter not a word of another language.
Some students who come from other countries beg to speak by phone to their non-anglophone parents in their native tongue. They're not allowed.
“There's a lot of pressure on the students and they have to survive,” Brad Janes, a spokesman for the university, said from Fredericton. “You're put on the spot, you have to think on your feet. It's all about learning.
“There's no out. You have to fend for yourself in the English language, and that's why this thing is so amazingly successful year after year.”
University officials said one other student completed the course with a guide dog after pledging to address the animal in English.
The Quebec-based Mira Foundation, which trains guide dogs, said it would take between two and three weeks to train Pavot — a Labrador-Burmese mountain dog — to become bilingual. Guide dogs learn no more than 14 commands in all, from “heel” to “forward.”
Pierre Noiseux, a spokesman for the foundation, said a dog trained in a second language would eventually drop the first language. But language is less important than other forms of communication. Dogs really understand commands by the modulation of their owner's voice and by hand gestures, he said.
Mr. Noiseux said the real issue is not Pavot's language skills, it's the university's treatment of Mr. Tessier's disability. He charged that the university has been trying to stymie Mr. Tessier ever since it discovered he is blind, and are using the guide-dog rule as a pretext.
Mr. Tessier, who is completing his master's degree in pastoral counselling at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, hoped to learn English to build a career in the nation's capital. Late last week, he travelled by bus from Ottawa to his mother's house in Trois-Rivières. Then he showed up at the University of New Brunswick on Sunday, only to discover he wasn't registered for the course, which began Monday.
He and the university are at odds over who is to blame, and they disagree about several aspects of his application. The university says it believed that he had withdrawn his application and switched to Dalhousie University, while Mr. Tessier insists he wanted to attend the University of New Brunswick all along. (He even obtained a $1,665 subsidy from Heritage Canada to enable him to attend the five-week course.)
The university says it made its English-only rules clear as soon as he applied in March; Mr. Tessier says he found out only two weeks ago. He was ready to sign the pledge but refused after being counselled by the Mira Foundation that it could be a safety hazard.
“I really thought they could be flexible about my guide dog,” Mr. Tessier said about Pavot, who has been his guide dog for two years. “My dog represents the confidence I need to get around and push forward in life.”
