Allophones up in West Island boroughs

BY ELYSE AMEND

elyse.amend@transcontinental.ca

Supplementary information released by Statistics Canada last week on languages spoken in the City of Montreal shows the number of allophones in the West Island’s two Montreal boroughs has increased, much like the 2006 census data published earlier this month illustrated many West Island cities are becoming more multilingual.

In Pierrefonds/Roxboro, 33.9 per cent of the total 64,360 residents speak English as their mother tongue. Pierrefonds and Roxboro were counted as separate cities for the 2001 census prior to the 2001 mergers. Their combined numbers in 2001 show a 0.8 per cent drop in English speakers. As for French, 33.3 per cent of Pierrefonds/Roxboro residents speak it as their mother tongue, a 3.4 per cent drop from the two cities combined numbers in 2001.

Arabic, Italian and Spanish are the top three other mother tongues spoken in Pierrefonds/Roxboro. Just under 33 per cent of the borough’s residents speak a language other than English or French as their first language, a 5.4 per cent jump since 2001.

In Ile Bizard/Ste. Genevieve, 20 per cent of the borough’s 17,230 residents speak English as their mother tongue, a 2.4 raise according to the two cities combined numbers in 2001. French speakers are down 8.5 per cent, from 68.9 per cent in 2001 to 60.4 per cent in 2006.

Italian, Arabic and Romanian top the list of most frequently spoken mother tongues other than English or French. In Ile Bizard/Ste. Genevieve, 19.6 per cent of residents are allophones, a 7.3 per cent increase from the City of Ile Bizard and the City of Ste. Genevieve’s combined numbers in 2001

“It’s getting more and more multicultural,” said Pierrefonds/Roxboro borough Mayor Monique Worth. According to Worth, the statistics are something her borough will keep in mind for the future.

“Eventually, we probably should look at our cultural program to see maybe if we cannot add to [it],” she said. “It’s good for us to have other nationalities than French and English to be able to enrich our population.”