I also know that I have a different view on heritage than some other people. For me it's a nice to have but it's more important to find common ground than to chase heritage. My language is not my identity and neither are my traditions.

Fair point, but for a lot of people, tradition is extremely important, as seen in a lot of cultures. So which way should we go as a society is up for debate.

I don't know why French is declining. If people choose to speak English because they like it better that's okay for me. If the choose English because of negative consequences that's bad.

The most important reason is that the rest of Canada and the US are English. The pressure is immense by default. There are 8 millions Quebecois (not all of them speaking French) in a sea of 350 million people not speaking French. Our school system is also to blame for many reasons and there are more illiterate persons every year. It is hard to protect and share a language when you can't read it or write it at am efficient level.

There is also the fact that younger generations didn't live in the languages tensions as much as older generations. I was on the tail end of the souvrainistes movement and the tension between Quebec and the rest of Canada was extremely high.

As for the history: I don't know enough about that but I don't think you need to be protected from English but I don't know what else that would have entailed. Honestly I find it odd though that a little part of a country that speaks mostly English, on a continent that speaks mostly English and Spanish, insists that they speak French.

History is exactly why after more than 400 years of being overwhelmingly surrounded by English, we still speak French.

The clergy isolated the Frenchs and French speakers fought back against losing their French, even if that meant theu wouldn't have any work mobility because they refused to speak English.

This is only a tiny sliver of history and there are many more reasons why Quebec still speak French.

Language is for communicating and connecting. If it's used for dividing that is bad. And I think we should acknowledge that English is the easier language to learn. I know both languages have their oddities but from my own experience it is much easier to get to a conversational level in English than French. French has a much more complicated grammar (more irregular verbs, more complicated conjugation, more articles, etc.). So maybe more people are using English because it's easy.

English is the de-facto language of the business world because England conquered and kept control over many countries through different means and throughout history. Simple as that. The influence is still felt today through the US.

English has a lot of irregularities as well and I wouldn't say that it is a lot easier than French. But it is debatable.

In the end I don't want another country to be created and I don't think it will be good for the people of Quebec either. I want people to hash out their differences and get closer together. Share your culture with others and accept other peoples culture goes for everyone. We are all people on this earth and just because of the things we learned when we grew up and what the people before us did on the piece of earth that we grew up on doesn't mean that we have to build a wall to the people that learned something different.

I agree that right now isn't a great time for independence, especially with the tension in the US. But this is only my opinion and other people have different opinions as valid as mine. But there is more than just stubbornness to explain why Quebec is as it is today. There is a long history behind the English Canadians and the French Canadians to explain why independence and language are triggering strong debates.

Quebec culture has been isolated for hundreds of years to protect it because the rest of the country had it out for them and wanted to assimilate them. Some of these conflicts still persist today, so it's not as simple as saying that we should all learn English and be on our way.