History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 267

choose their mates from associates at school, the workplace, or recreational activities.
The given names of children, once limited to the traditional familial and religious
repertoire, increasingly reflect both North American inventiveness and conformity with
the larger society. The community’s concentric worlds appear to expand with each
succeeding generation.
The openness to other groups has had additional consequences. Flemings have had
a low language-retention rate. Outside Quebec they quickly adopted English because
of its implications for economic advancement and social acceptance, just as in
Quebec in recent decades they have readily integrated into the francophone majority.
The first generation of immigrants maintained active drama clubs, literary societies,
and social gatherings, but these soon gave way to mainstream cultural and social
activities. In the early years of settlement, Flemings in Ontario and Manitoba asked for
the services of priests speaking their tongue, but the hierarchy was only infrequently
able to meet their requests. There is evidence to suggest that parents in southwestern
Ontario passed on the Flemish language to their children, although the children never
learned to read and write it. One survey in the tobacco belt indicated that children
seldom spoke Flemish with their parents and almost never with their peers, but they
retained a sufficient knowledge to communicate with their grandparents. Vlamingen in
de Wereld, which is dedicated to bringing about a worldwide Flemish cultural
renaissance, has been active in the tobacco belt, promoting the use of standard Dutch
at home and in social and cultural events. The Walloons, most of whom settled among
other francophones, maintained French at home and in religious, cultural, and social
activities generally. The Walloon dialects were hardly ever taken up by the youth, just
as until quite recently they were on the point of disappearing in Belgium itself.
The bitter language debates between Flemings and Walloons that raged in Belgium
were seldom taken up in Canada. Walloons in Manitoba did have some reason to
believe that Flemings were insensitive to their demands for provincial services in
French and the restoration of official bilingualism, but there was never open
confrontation between the two linguistic groups. Any difference in views can be
attributed largely to Flemish blending into the anglophone host society and Walloon
identification in most places with the French-Canadian community, rather than to a
perpetuation of the language battles of the home country. In the 1920s the Walloons
shared with other francophones on the prairies the abuse of such anti-French and
anti-Catholic organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the Orange lodges, and the
reactionary wing of the Conservative Party. Politically, the Flemings and Walloons
have supported the same political party – either the Conservatives or the Liberals and
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