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Franco-Ténois, originating from the acronym ''TNO'', the French term for the
Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...
of Canada (), refers to the widespread community of francophones who reside in the Northwest Territories.


History

Francophones have a long history in the region. The first person of European descent to reach the Great Slave Lake was a francophone, Laurent Leroux. In 1786, Leroux built the trading post Fort Resolution and in 1790 he founded the original Fort Providence, 20 km from the modern-day city of
Yellowknife Yellowknife is the capital, largest community, and the only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of t ...
. At the time the Northwest Territories were brought under the jurisdiction of the
Government of Canada The Government of Canada (), formally His Majesty's Government (), is the body responsible for the federation, federal administration of Canada. The term ''Government of Canada'' refers specifically to the executive, which includes Minister of t ...
, 47% of the non-native population spoke French. French permeated every aspect of life in the Territories, from commerce to education. However, in 1892, the Northwest Territories (which at the time covered the
Canadian Prairies The Canadian Prairies (usually referred to as simply the Prairies in Canada) is a region in Western Canada. It includes the Canadian portion of the Great Plains and the Prairie provinces, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These provin ...
west of
Southern Manitoba Southern Manitoba is the southernmost area of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Southern Manitoba encompasses the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region, Westman Region, Central Plains Region, Eastman Region, and Pembina Valley Region, as well as the Man ...
) abolished French as an official language. In 1984, its status as an official languages was restored in the Canadian territories.


French in the Northwest Territories

As of the 2006 census, only 440 residents of the Territories, representing 1.1% of the overall population, use French as their home language.Statistics Canada, ''2006 Census Profile of Federal Electoral Districts (2003 Representation Order): Language, Mobility and Migration and Immigration and Citizenship.'' Ottawa, 2007, pp. 475, 479. (Figures combine single and multiple responses. Multiple responses for "French/English", "French/Other" and "English/Other" were allocated with one-half of all respondents placed in either linguistic category. Multiple responses for English/French/Other" were allocated with one-third of all respondents being placed in each of the three categories.) The francophone population in the Territories is very mobile, with many residents coming from more settled Francophone communities across the country and eventually leaving to settle elsewhere. While current figures show the average stay of francophones in the region is increasing, the trend towards outward migration continues. The Franco-Ténois also deal with substantial pressures to assimilate, brought on by the isolation of Northwest Territories communities and the existence of a plurality of languages and cultures there among which English takes precedence. French is currently one of eleven official languages in the Northwest Territories, along with
Chipewyan The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene group of Indigenous Canadian people belonging to the Athabaskan language family, whose ancest ...
,
Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
, English, Gwichʼin, Inuinnaqtun,
Inuktitut Inuktitut ( ; , Inuktitut syllabics, syllabics ), also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line, including parts of the provinces of ...
,
Inuvialuktun Inuvialuktun (part of ''Western Canadian Inuit'' / ''Inuktitut'' / '' Inuktut'' / '' Inuktun'') comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by Canadian Inuit who call themselves ''Inuvialuit''. Some d ...
, North Slavey, South Slavey and Tłįchǫ. In 1984, the
Canadian Government The Government of Canada (), formally His Majesty's Government (), is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. The term ''Government of Canada'' refers specifically to the executive, which includes ministers of the Crown ( ...
, pursuant to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, introduced a bill in the House of Commons, Bill C-26, which would have made the Territories officially bilingual in French and English. The government of the Northwest Territories strongly objected to the proposed bill and the federal government subsequently dropped the measure. The government of the Northwest Territories then adopted an '' Official Languages Act'' in the same year that recognized eight official provincial languages, Inuktitut (which includes Inuvialuktun and Inuinnaqtun), Awokanak or Slavey, Dogrib, Chipewyan, Cree, Gwichʼin, English and French. The government of the Northwest Territories agreed to provide services in French under the condition that the federal government absorb the cost and fund the development of Native communities. In March 1999, a Forum on French in the Northwest Territories exposed a widespread lack of government services in French. In 2000, the Franco-Ténois Federation, the weekly French newspaper '' l'Aquilon'' and five other parties sued the government of the Northwest Territories and the Government of Canada for not adequately applying the Official Languages Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.


Community

The Franco-Ténois Federation (''Fédération franco-ténoise'') is the primary representative body for the Franco-Ténois community. A network of local organizations was created across the Territories in 1988 to band together isolated pockets of francophone settlement. Other than in Yellowknife, where the largest francophone population resides, local organizations exist in other areas of francophone settlement such as
Inuvik Inuvik (''place of man'') is the only town in the Inuvik Region, and the List of municipalities in the Northwest Territories, third largest community in Canada's Northwest Territories. Located in what is sometimes called the Beaufort Delta Re ...
, Hay River and Fort Smith. Initially, many of the local associations were created for the simple purpose of obtaining
Radio-Canada Radio-Canada may refer to: * CBC/Radio-Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation *Ici Radio-Canada Télé, the CBC's main French-language television network *Ici Radio-Canada Première Ici Radio-Canada Première (formerly Première Chaîne) i ...
radio and television broadcasts. The creation of the separate territory of
Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...
has cut off some francophone communities in the new territory from the larger base in the west. The Franco-Ténois community is served by a weekly French language newspaper, ''l'Aquilon'', which celebrated its 20th anniversary in January 2006. The community is also served with French language radio stations in major communities, and many cultural events across the territories. The francophone theatre troupe, '' Les pas frette aux yeux'', is well known throughout the territories. Yellowknife is served by CIVR-FM 103.5, a community radio station; and VF2136 97.3 FM, a local
Ici Radio-Canada Première Ici Radio-Canada Première (formerly Première Chaîne) is a Canadian French-language radio network, the news and information service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known as Société Radio-Canada in French), the public broadcaster of ...
repeater owned by L'Association Franco-Culturelle de Yellowknife.
Ici Radio-Canada Télé Ici Radio-Canada Télé (stylized as ICI Radio-Canada Télé, and sometimes abbreviated as Ici Télé) is a Television in Canada, Canadian Canadian French, French-language terrestrial television, free-to-air television network owned by the Can ...
broadcasts in Yellowknife and Hay River through locally owned repeaters.


Education

In 1988, a group of francophone parents in Yellowknife called for the creation of a French first-language education program. The government of the Northwest Territories asserted that the immersion program already in place was more than adequate. The group of parents sued the government, forcing the creation of the first French language program in 1989, with an initial class of nine children. Similar measures followed in Hay River and elsewhere across the Territories. A French school board was created in Yellowknife in 2000.


The Franco-Ténois flag

The Franco-Ténois flag was created in 1992. It features a
sky blue Sky blue refers to a collection of shades comparable to that of a clear daytime sky. Typically it is a shade of cyan or light teal, though some iterations are closer to light Azure (color), azure or light blue. The term (as "sky blew") is atte ...
background, representative of ''
la Francophonie LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...
'', with a curve separating the sky blue from a field of white in the bottom portion of the flag. A
polar bear The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a large bear native to the Arctic and nearby areas. It is closely related to the brown bear, and the two species can Hybrid (biology), interbreed. The polar bear is the largest extant species of bear ...
posed passant regardant is perched upon the curve, meant to resemble a snowy hill (in an image reminiscent of the official logo of the Government of the Northwest Territories). The curve itself represents the 60th parallel, above which the Territories are located. The bear looks up at a symbol in the upper right corner of the flag, composed of half a
fleur-de-lys The ''fleur-de-lis'', also spelled ''fleur-de-lys'' (plural ''fleurs-de-lis'' or ''fleurs-de-lys''), is a common heraldic charge in the (stylized) shape of a lily (in French, and mean and respectively). Most notably, the ''fleur-de-lis'' ...
(left half) and half a snowflake (right half). This is meant to represent the francophone community and its northern roots in the climate of the Territories.


See also

*
French Canadians French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French colonists first arriving in France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of French Canadians live in the provi ...
**
Acadians The Acadians (; , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French colonial empire, French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, most descendants of Acadians live in either the Northern Americ ...
**
French-speaking Quebecer French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in ...
** Franco-Albertan ** Franco-Columbian ** Franco-Manitoban ** Franco-Newfoundlander ** Fransaskois **
Franco-Ontarian Franco-Ontarians ( or if female, sometimes known as ''Ontarois'' and ''Ontaroises'') are Francophone Canadians that reside in the province of Ontario. Most are French Canadians from Ontario. In 2021, according to the Government of Ontario, ther ...
** Franco-Yukonnais


References


External links


Website of the Francophones of the Northwest Territories (''le site des francophones des Territoires du Nord-Ouest'')

''l'Aquilon'' – the weekly, French language newspaper of the Northwest Territories
{{DEFAULTSORT:Franco-Tenois Culture of the Northwest Territories Tenois Ethnic groups in the Northwest Territories Ethnic groups in Canada French-speaking ethnicities in Canada