ROTHENBURGER — One word makes big difference in stop signs

COLUMN — Bilingual stop signs aren’t such a bad idea.

They aren’t meaningless. They aren’t token.

Some people, judging by conversations on social media, think they are.

Coun. Donovan Cavers has been taking flak for suggesting stop signs in Kamloops should include the Secwepemctsin word “Estil,” pronounced “esteel,” for Stop. A staff report said the City doesn’t have the authority to change the wording on stop signs, and recommended against it in any case because it might cause confusion.

The latter rationale is pretty thin, since stop signs on the Tk’emlups reserve and on TRU campus are bilingual and I’m pretty certain no accidents there have been attributed to anyone not knowing the meaning of the signs. TRU put up 33 of the signs in 2010 as “a visual gesture of respect for Secwepemc language and culture.”

(TRU, in fact, has an admirable policy of recognizing aboriginal heritage in various ways.)

Bilingual stop signs are in lots of places. In Louisiana, and in Ottawa, for example, they’re in French and English. You’ll see bilingual stop signs in Korea, China, the Middle East, South America. There are crazy drivers in some of those places but the stop signs aren’t to blame. The stop sign is a universal symbol.

Council could have done a couple of things with the idea instead of rejecting it. One would be to ask Transportation Minister Todd Stone to get whatever legislative amendment is needed to allow municipalities bilingual options. Another would be to take the idea forward to a Community to Community meeting with First Nations reps (the so-called C2C meetings are a provincial initiative to bring local government and First Nations together to discuss issues of mutual interest).

And if you say, “Oh, yeah, I suppose you’ll want French on the signs, too,” I will say, “This wouldn’t be the first place on Earth with three or more languages on stop signs.”

Changing the signs all at once isn’t particularly practical, and it would be costly. But they could be changed gradually as old signs are replaced with new ones, or new roads are built.

What would be wrong with that? The wording would be different, of course, depending on which part of the province you’re in, which would actually be pretty cool.

People who oppose an idea tend to argue in terms of absolutes. So, in the case of the stop signs, opponents argue there are better ways to respect First Nations. The art and displays at the Kamloops Airport are one example of an appropriate and informative recognition of our region’s First Nations roots and continuing importance in our culture and economy.

But there’s never just one good way of doing things. The greatest threat to the preservation of native history and culture is the loss of language. Culture and language are inextricably tied, and B.C.’s First Nations are struggling to keep their languages alive.

A report says B.C. is home to 60 per cent of First Nations languages in Canada with 32 languages and about 59 dialects. But it says state-sanctioned policies of assimilation adopted in the late 1800s began a dramatic decline in the number of fluent speakers.

“Today only 5.1 per cent of the B.C. First Nations population are fluent speakers of their language.”

Bilingual stop signs a meaningless gesture? I don’t think so. Rather, one that would remind us every time we pull up to a traffic stop that we live in a place that was home to a founding language and culture thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

Unilingual stop signs aren’t racist, nor are they disrespectful. But adding just one short word, Estil, to those signs would, as TRU says, be a “gesture of respect.”

Mel Rothenburger can be reached at armchairmayor@gmail.com, http://www.facebook.com/mel.rothenburger.7 or on Twitter @MelRothenburger.