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Originally Posted by SteelTown
Ottawa is the national capital so yeah I expect it to be bilingual. Though I'm sure things has drastically improved since the 60's when Ottawa was pretty much all English.
I can't imagine what it would have been like for someone from say Gaspe and no one would provide French language service in the national capital.
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That's a good question. Certainly for public services (especially federal ones) it is better today. But you don't go to a federal museum or renew your passport every day.
Ottawa in the 1960s had a whole bunch of neighbourhoods that were francophone or at least bilingual in their everyday functioning: Vanier, Overbrook, Lowertown, Sandy Hill, LeBreton Flats, Cyrville, Hintonburg-Mechanicsville...
None of these areas has a very high francophone presence today with the possible exception of Vanier, and even there francophones are in the minority and English is the main language on the streets.
The francophone population of Ottawa is about the same but it is more spread out all over the place, and the non-francophone population has grown a lot.
And also the Gatineau side in Quebec has grown a lot and there is less reason for people from there to cross over to Ottawa for various stuff, which means fewer visible and audible francophone customers for Ottawa businesses.
Service in French in Ottawa is a matter of ''happenstance''. There don't seem to be many businesses who make it a point of offering bilingual service. A number of people in Ottawa are francophone or bilingual anglos, and so if you happen upon one of them, you get served in French. If not, you gotta speak English.
Just as an example: based on a dozen or so visits with my kids I don't think there is a single soul who speaks French at the Apple Store in the Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa. And Gatineau doesn't have an Apple Store so this is the closest one for us. That store's catchment area includes several hundred thousand francophones, but they don't seem to care about serving them in their language.