This year’s Les Rendez-vous de la Francophonie (RVF) podcast series features conversations with eight bilingual and multilingual guests.

Many of this year’s guests have worked or volunteered in campus and community radio.

Rendez-vous de la Francophonie is hosted by Catherine Fisher, and is syndicated from RVF and the NCRA, and airs on CKMS-FM on Sundays from 3:30pm to 4:00pm during the month of March 2024.

List of podcast guests

• 3 March: Dr. Claire-Marie Brisson hosts the North American Francophone Podcast and is a Preceptor in French at Harvard University. In this conversation, Claire-Marie talks about growing up in Dearborn, Michigan in a bilingual family, sharing her love of language through teaching and her podcast, some Franco-American history. She also offers insights about her upcoming book, Michiganaise.
• 10 March: Amélie Sauquet-Davidson is the Sponsorship Coordinator at Kootenay Co-op Radio, a community radio station in Nelson, BC. Amélie talks about growing up in France, learning Spanish and English, coming to Quebec, and finally, coming to British Columbia, where she lives and works in English and French.
• 10 March: Shelley Robinson is the executive director of National Capital Freenet in Ottawa, Ontario, and the former executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association. In this conversation, she speaks about how anglophones can support bilingualism, being a life-long French learner, and her experience working and volunteering in community radio in Canada, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.
• 17 March: Francella Fiallos is a Program Officer and Communications Director at the Community Radio Fund of Canada. In this conversation, Francella talks about speaking Spanish and English as a child in Ottawa, her experience of learning French, and her history working and volunteering in community radio in Halifax, Montreal, and Ottawa.
• 17 March: Kallee Lins is the executive director of the West Kootenay Regional Arts Council/Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance. She talks about learning French in school and living and working in French and English in Montreal and Ottawa.
• 24 March: KL Kivi is an author and activist living in Sinixt tmxʷúlaʔxʷ (homeland) in the Columbia Mountains of British Columbia. KL grew up speaking Estonian and English. They learned French in school and then spent a year in southern France as a young adult. In this conversation, KL speaks of their love of learning and language and how different languages open us up to new perspectives and ideas.
• 24 March: Victoria King is a manager at the Executive Office at The University of Winnipeg Foundation. Victoria talks about growing up in an anglophone family, learning French in Canada through her school’s late immersion program and working and volunteering at CKUW, a campus radio station in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• 31 March: Ness Benamran is a manager at Kootenay Career Development Services in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. In this conversation, Ness talks about his childhood living in France, England, and Cyprus, learning and then relearning French, living in Barcelona, Spain, as a young adult, and immigrating to a majority English-speaking region of Canada, where it is sometimes difficult to use his other languages.