When Kristy Findlay moved to Quebec City after her American-born husband accepted a job there, she soon developed a longing.
“I would go to parks with my young children, I would hear a little English spoken, and I feel like: Oh my gosh, I’m hungry for it,” said Ms. Findlay, who was raised in Ontario.
As the capital of a province that vigorously defends its use of French from the sea of English that surrounds it, Quebec City has become a place where Canada’s otherwise majority language is almost an afterthought: Just 2.3 percent of its population, about 17,000 people, identify as primarily English speakers in Canada’s census.
A series of provincial laws enacted over the last five decades that were meant to assert the dominance of French, along with Quebec’s separatist movement, prompted an exodus of many English speakers to other parts of Canada.
But even in this Francophone redoubt, Ms. Findlay was ultimately able to find a place where her craving for conversation in her native language could be sated.
At a former jail and Presbyterian college standing amid the cobblestone streets of the city’s historic Upper Town, a discreet sign above the entrance, reading simply “Morrin,” gives no hint of the linguistic heterodoxy taking place inside.
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