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When Suzanne Weiss’ neighbour in Lorne Park told her about the Clarkson French Club, she was thinking.... probably similar to a book club, reading literature and poetry and practicing the language. After all, her neighbour Alaine Baines’ husband was a retired professor.
“I thought it would be hoity-toity,” the retired flight attendant said yesterday as she stood in the kitchen of the Balsam Ave. home of Cécile Kennedy, who was hosting the weekly meeting of the club that has been churning along for a formidable - make that for-mee-dab-le - four decades.
“But when I went to my first meeting at Laurence’s, there was champagne! Now I regret that I didn’t join three years earlier when I was first asked. It turns out it’s a social group and it’s just so much fun. We really enjoy each other’s company.”
That was obvious from the numerous gaggles of conversation — all in French of course — that the 26 members of the 39-member group were so boisterously engaged in.
They come from 16 different cultural or ethnic backgrounds, some are Anglophone and some are Francophone but they all share one common love, the beauty of the French language.
From their joint experience, they have also come to treasure the joys of lasting friendship.
It was January of Centennial Year when the Québec-born Laurence (or Laurie) Bennett decided to invite four friends to her Lorne Park house for a coffee party, so they could speak their favourite language. “We hit it off and away we went,” said the irrepressible Bennett. “It was a place to keep our French alive. The only rule was that there was to be no English spoken.”
In the early years, the club sponsored pre-school and after-school French classes. Study of French in schools didn’t start until Grade 7 in those days. Now, one of those students from the first classes is actually part of the group.
“It really represents Canada, with all the different people, if you think about it,” says member Germaine De Backer.
Take Elisabeth Evans, who was born in Switzerland, learned German as her first language, French as her second and English as her third. She taught in the school program for several years.
Monique Massue, who is the only one of the five original members beside Bennett still in the group, says the club has been a wonderful touchstone for friends through the years, who have drifted all over the world and drifted back. “It means an awful lot. It means that French is important,” says Massue. “People want to keep it alive. They want to talk. Many of them are not fluent but that does not matter. They try. And this is such a nice way of doing it.”
There is always someone who holds things together in such an enterprise and the members are unanimous (save she herself) that Laurie Bennett not only got it going, but kept it going.
“You couldn’t find a happier group,” says 85-year-old Peg Holloway, the 1979 Liberal federal candidate in Mississauga South, who is a long-time member, “and much of it is Laurie. She’s been the catalyst.”
It hasn’t all been roses, however. There was that short experiment to include the husbands.
Françoise Gravel had her husband Alf, who worked for Bacardi at the time, mix up a lethal rum punch to warm things up.
“It was a fabulous punch,” recalls Alaine Baines. “It was so good that the men all thought they were bilingual. The more they drank, the better they thought their French got,” she laughed.
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Three Mississauga jazz musicians, two of them accomplished composers Pat Collins (bass) and Brian de Lima (piano) are debuting their new trio with local drummer Sly Juhas tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. at Trinity Anglican Church in Streetsville. Guest trumpeter is Mike Malone.
This is a rare chance to see a group of multi-talented local pros take flight. Only wish I could be there.
Tickets are $10 and proceeds go to benefit a group called Handpumps For Hope who are involved in African relief. Their website is at http://www.handpumpsforhope.org/.