Desperate to kickstart my French conversation, I made my way through various websites, “Here are 10 (mostly free) Ways to Learn French in Montreal”, for example, and ended up creating a profile, stating I could help their English in exchange for the chance to speak French, and throwing it out into the world to see what I could catch. 

Men, it turns out.

That’s all who responded. Honestly? I can’t claim it was because of my pretty face, as there is no photo in the profile, but there is a paragraph as to who you are, where you come from and why you want to work on your languages. My sole purpose was to practise speaking French but with this kind of a response, I decided that I wouldn’t say no if some handsome, eligible, athletic man wanted to work on his English with me.

It did not work out that way.

The first connection was quick – we ended up on what’s app (audio, not video) that very evening. It began easily enough, although entirely in French, with general chit chat about my recent move to the city, and the different accents, but shifted quickly into a discussion about the impunity of the government to insist on vaccination, the dire political situation in Canada, and then deteriorated as he expressed his support for the truckers who had descended on Ottawa last winter with their Nazi flags, their attempt to rule by mob, and their insistence that they were freedom fighters.

At this point, as this arrogant, opinionated man kept speaking and speaking and speaking (I was getting good listening practise although my head was hurting by now), I decided to put a stop to it all. I told him that if he was against vaccination because it took away his control to make choices for himself, then he must obviously support the pro-life movement so that a woman would have control over her body, and suggested he join the demonstrations against the striking down of Roe v Wade in the US.

Let’s just say that the conversation quickly ended, and we have not been back in touch.

Friday’s conversation, another man of course but this time in person at a café on rue St Viateur, was much better. Much more egalitarian with a decent and fairly equal mixture of French and English. But after we’d finished the half hour of English, we switched to French, and he was off, mansplaining his way through how to learn a language and his efforts with Spanish. I gather he had had a hard time with the past tense. Perhaps it was fortunate that I couldn’t get a word in edgeways as I’d found Spanish – with all its tenses and nuances – quite easy to learn and had none of his difficulties. But wasn't going to hear any suggestions from me. I pedalled away from there wondering if my French conversation was ever going to be anything other than listening to men.

The third, and possibly final, conversation was done on Skype. I could almost catch a glimpse of a rather swarthy man, although he kept moving his camera so I could only see a stack of what looked like work files. I was gobsmacked to realise that he was speaking to me from Algiers. He was quite pleasant, although he began the conversation with saying how pretty I was, and mentioned at least twice that he was divorced. I think I’m more used to the egalitarian ways of the western world. But he was pleasant, and we were able to talk about the Mediterranean, travels in Europe and family. His English was quite poor, although he reads and writes in English for his work (thanks to Google Translate), so this was a much more even-toned conversation. Perhaps I’ll repeat it for practise as I’m fairly sure I won’t be running into him in the streets of Montreal.

No word yet on whether I’ve got into that online class at McGill that starts tomorrow, so I’ll have to continue with my haphazard attempts elsewhere. Someone did suggest that if I took a job as a barrista somewhere that I would get lots of practise, but…

“Tu veux chocolate avec ton cappucino?”

“Moyen ou grand?”

“Avec carte?”

I think that would be of minimal interest with its limited vocabulary!