The Gazette Montreal
BY MARIANNE ACKERMAN, FREELANCE APRIL 13, 2012
Spring at last, snow banks definitively melted, an intrepid reporter dares leave Mile End to venture into the far west. A squat office building across from the Côte des Neiges Plaza, an orange corridor leading to office number 407, headquarters of Les Actualités, a highly successful bilingual community newspaper in the heart of Montreal’s largest borough.
“The sixth largest city in Quebec,” Victor Afriat points out, as he sets a cup of coffee in front of me at 9 a.m. That is, if Côte des Neiges and Notre Dame de Grâce (pop. 179,000), where he has operated his business for the past 25 years, were actually a city.
Born in Morocco, educated in Paris, Afriat’s perspective on Quebec is both parochial and far-seeing. On a visit to his parents when he was 22, he stayed, and a passionate defender of language rights. But the firestorm unleashed last week around two seemingly contradictory public opinion polls on language left him mystified. He’d thought Montreal had moved beyond the discourse over whether the coexistence of English and French in one city must be bad news for one or the other.
“I live and work in French, and always have,” he says. “But the reality is that there is no future in being only French. The Web is mainly in English, and after that, it’s multilingual. My opinion is not scientific, but from what I can see around me, the French language is not menaced.” His perspective is that of a small businessman who wants to prosper, although elements of his story suggest a personality given more to peace than controversy.
For several years he worked as a photojournalist for Quebecor publications, then in the late ’80s, launched Les Actualités in French, picking up the slack after a Côte des Neiges community newspaper lost its government grants and folded. When The Monitor ceased its print publication in N.D.G. four years ago, he saw an opportunity to attract its advertisers by running stories in English, and spread Les Actualités over the entire merged borough.
“I did receive a few critical letters at first,” he admits, but the opposition blew over. The paper’s policy is to cover news in the language of the community it concerns. If an anglophone asks a question at borough council, the reporter will write the piece in English. On occasion, an organization (such as the Segal Centre) will ask that its event be covered in French in order to increase visibility on the French side. It’s complicated, he admits. But then so is life in the streets.
All of his seven staff members are bilingual; one of them, Marie Cicchini, can write in both languages.
Shortly before 10, the silence of his Spartan newsroom is broken as reporters and the sales staff drift in, smartly dressed youths in their late-20s, people you might expect to find working at Nightlife Magazine or some other trendy downtown publication, not one that covers skating rink closures and the pressing need for a new métro exit. While getting 35,000 copies of the 16-to-20-page newsprint tabloid to all corners of the borough every two weeks is the core mission, considerable resources go into an online version, which in the last quarter sprinted ahead to 13,500 hits. Social media action has just been launched, and a mobile version is in the works. Youth, says the grey-haired publisher, is the key to the future of his business.
“I doubt very much I’m going to have any more creative ideas,” Afriat says.
“That’s why my team is mainly young. Technology is second nature for their generation. It’s completely natural. They bring in the new ideas. I offer my business experience so we don’t also go bankrupt.”
As an immigrant doing business in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood, he is sometimes pressured to become a voice for multiculturalism, but adamantly resists. “I’m not an ethnic paper. I refuse to have a ‘black page.’ I’m not representing anybody, just giving information about life in an area, although I’d be pleased to sell a page to somebody who writes the cheque. I don’t have a message to give.”
Nevertheless, the immigrant experience has guided at least two ancillary projects: Réussir au Québec, a 244-page catalogue of everything a non-Quebecer needs to know about getting an education or launching a career in the province, has just gone into its fifth edition. Plans are in the works to bring out a web version in English and other languages. His tourist guide to the regions of Quebec is aimed at new arrivals.
As for his personal future, the 65-year-old Afriat has a succession plan in place.
When his two daughters pursued medical careers, he took on a young partner, Mourad Mahamli, also from Morocco. “I’m Jewish, he’s Muslim,” he shrugs, with a smile. “But we work.”
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