In a lot of ways, I think back to my own experience and my first exchange in Lac Saint-Jean. I always go back to this. It changed my life, being in a family for a couple of weeks and having that recognition that French wasn't just something I was being asked to learn or something to take, like a vitamin. Essentially, the connection was made, and that's the point. How do we build this connection, not only between French and English, but to culture, too? How do we build this connection to the history of Canada?
We can't look at it as a given that many of our students have a good knowledge of our history and Confederation. You're never going to bring every student into Lac Saint-Jean for that discovery. However, I support the idea of social media. I think if it was driven by a theme, led by youth, to engage youth in an inquiry-based model, assuming that they don't know what Confederation is, and they could discover everything themselves along the way—and that goes for all of our cultures—then there's a lot of learning that could be done.
As a communications person, I honestly think it would take some pretty good marketing to make it cool and to engage the youth to want to be part of this. I think that takes a lot of shrewd planning, but I think it's possible if it's done correctly. As an organization, we do have experience in connecting with youth as do Canadian Parents for French and many other organizations.
It's a collective effort, but it should be based on a common theme, one that is youth-led, youth-voiced, youth-driven, to let the youth discover the importance of this for themselves along the way.