Dominique Michaud, my colleague

Quebec is a province where there are a lot of immigrants. They are mostly in Montreal, known to be a multicultural city with a lot of activities and festivals from different cultures. Here in Rimouski, we don't have a lot of ethnic groups yet, but more and more have been coming over the years. Just like my colleague, Dominique Michaud, she is an immigrant from Reunion Island, she is 29 years old and she arrived in Quebec 6 years ago.

She came to study in Quebec because life here was better and, in Matane, there was a multimedia program that really interested her. She moved to Rimouski to be with her fiancé and she now has a little girl of 3 years old. The first thing she noticed of Quebec was the weather, in the Reunion Island, there is snow but like once every 5 years, so, when she saw the big amount of snow that we had she was pretty shocked. She is still not used to the cold, she always wears too much clothes until it's 15° outside.

She really likes Quebec and its people, she wants to have the same accent that we have, but unfortunately for her, she still has her accent from Reunion Island. She adapted well to our style of life, even if sometimes, she still has difficulties to understand us when we talk too fast or when we talk with a really strong accent. Last time, when she was cold, I told her that she should buy a “casque de poil”, but with my accent it sounded more like “cass de poual” and she didn't know what it was until I described it to her, she calls it a “chapeau russe”. It is a really popular expression here in Quebec and even after 6 years here she didn't know it. Except from the cold and the language, I believe that she is well adapted to Quebec.

She will take the exam to be a Canadian citizen in a few days and she needs to study all of our history. After that, it will make it obvious that she is well adapted to Quebec.

Québec, my beautiful country, was hit with the Charest syndrome. We all have a cold now.

The strike here in Rimouski started on February 29^th 2012, a day, I will always remember since it was the start of the “school of life”. I think I changed a lot during those 5 weeks and I’m still changing. Many things happened during those 5 weeks and it was such an amazing experience in my life. I really liked to go to demonstrations and to sing slogans with my friends and other students that I didn’t know and that had the same goal as me.

It feels nice to think that I was part of history, because we made history. We were 200 000 in the streets of Montreal on March 22^nd, it was the biggest demonstration in the history of Canada. In Rimouski, we had the longest strike of the history of the Cégep of Rimouski, in the past, the strike only lasted for 2 weeks.

I’m proud of what we did and if I could change only one think, it would be to be more involved in the strike and the actions that were planned. I’ve met so many people during the strike, all of us were joining hands to achieve our goal: stop the increase. Now, we have a new goal, we still want to stop the increase, but we also want to change our society and our government who is corrupted and unable to govern.

I strongly believe that everybody who was involved in the strike have learned many things, because it was my case, I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve learned a lot about life.

I’ve learned a lot about myself.

I’ve learned a lot about our society.

I’ve learned a lot about politics.

I’ve learned how to speak my mind about something and to give my opinion.

I’ve learned what real respect is.

I’ve learned to think as a citizen of the province of Quebec.