Bienvenue au petit Québec en Floride

Bonhomme Carnaval is far from home. A statue resembling the snowman in the red hat, emblematic of the Quebec City Carnival, smiles in a corner of the courtyard of Richard’s Motel in Hollywood, Florida. It’s early November, the weather mild and calm, except for the music of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” playing over the speakers scattered throughout. Air conditioners turn on and off as I scan the neighboring buildings—the two-story clay-tile building behind Bonhomme, the shingled bungalow to my left—trying to decide where Richard’s Motel begins and ends.

Richard’s Motel isn’t a motel. It’s a patchwork of properties owned by Richard Clavet, who grew up in Quebec City. Clavet’s mini-empire consists of eight properties concentrated in Hollywood and nearby Hallandale Beach, all catering to Quebec snowbirds.

By mid-December, Bonhomme will have better company than anxious geckos and swirling palm trees. Known as Friendship Park, the place will fill with French-Canadian snowbirds toasting another Quebec winter escaped over free hot dogs and French music.

For the guests of Richard’s Motel, this is the essence of Little Quebec. But for the next generation of Quebecers, freed from language barriers and less committed to preserving their culture, Little Quebec is their grandparents’ sunny dream. And it’s disappearing.

Jacques Girard greets me at the check-in desk at Richard’s Motel. He tells me that Clavet is a busy man, but that as an “ambassador,” he’ll show me around.

Girard, a 56-year-old from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, sports a salt-and-pepper goatee and polarized sunglasses. He’s part of the third generation of Quebec snowbirds to make the pilgrimage (his grandmother wintered in Florida from the 1960s to the 1990s, and his father visited in the 1980s). Girard discovered Richard’s Motel in 2000 and has been coming ever since. Having retired last year, Girard, his wife, Nathalie, and their dog, Spike, are now spending six months at Richard’s Motel, starting in November. Girard’s 33-year-old daughter no longer makes the trip. “She used to come down and follow us for a long time,” he says. But it’s different now for snowbirds like Girard. “I see a lot of families come here, but when the kids get to a certain age, they don’t want to come along anymore.”

He leans toward a closet-sized desk filled with television receivers and cables and introduces me to a trio of men, one of whom is named Mr. Legault. In the background, a French news channel is playing. Girard explains that the motel pays for a subscription to French-language channels so guests can watch television in their own language. Mr. Legault makes sure the service is working.

When I ask him if this is his job, Girard stops me. “We don’t work for Richard. We’re here as ambassadors… to make sure this place keeps moving forward. We’re not here to get paid.” Nothing is free for us.”

The hotel will be almost entirely Québécois by December, says Girard. “No Americans, no one else. All Québécois.”

A block further south are Richard’s Pet Friendly Motel, then Richard’s Hotel and the Green Seas Motel, purchased in 2015 and proving that Clavet is done naming things after itself. There are also Richard’s Apartments and Richard’s Motel Studios. A five-minute drive away, Clavet is also home to Richard’s Motel Courtyard and Richard’s Motel Extended Stay. Standard rooms range from US$56 to US$220 a night, among the most affordable in the area.

The properties share an aesthetic continuity: a low-vibrational Québécois frequency beneath the Floridian kitsch of concrete reptiles and earthworks. The fences are adorned with Quebec license plates, and a miniature moose (which Clavet crammed into a commercial van with his children and brought across the border) stands beneath the palm trees next to Richard’s Motel Studios. Then there are the swings, a marvel of patio design with a canopy and two benches with a table attached between them, the entire structure sliding back and forth along rails underfoot. “They don’t sell these products here in the States,” Girard explains. “[Clavet] buys them in Quebec and brings them back.”

In the Richard’s Motel Studios parking lot is Mammy’s Cantine, a food truck run by French-Canadian chef Dany Haman, which sells poutine, hot dogs, and tourtière (a French meat pie). Haman left Quebec in 1992 and opened Le Pole Nord, a French-Canadian café near Hollywood Beach, before rising rents forced him to close the establishment in 2010. Haman says his wife, Monique, helped establish the first branch of the Quebec-based Desjardins credit union in Hallandale Beach in 1992.

Two blocks south, in a commercial space within Richard’s Hotel, is Go2Vacations, a travel agency that caters to French-speaking tourists and locals. Owner Jacques Cimetier says he books about 1,000 cruise cabins per season, almost entirely for French-speaking clients. “We don’t accept Americans,” Cimetier explains. Go2Vacations has three employees in Hollywood and three in Montreal. “We close the office at the end of March, when people leave for Canada,” he explains. They reopen in October.

Looking through the properties, it becomes clear that continuity is a substitute for continuity—continuity of identity, community, belonging. For example, Girard explains, once you commit to renting a room for a series of dates, it’s yours year after year until you decide you no longer want it. “No one can rent your place from this date to that date,” Girard says. “Never, never, never.”

It’s a system rooted in preservation and security, elements that take on deeper meaning in a region that has seen tensions over the years between the local Florida population and the French-speaking snowbirds who winter in Hollywood and nearby Dania Beach and Hallandale Beach.

Remy Tremblay, author of two books on the French in Hollywood—Life and Death of Little Quebec in Florida and Floribec—argues that the conflicted relationship between host and guest (to borrow tourism terms) was fueled by the rapid increase in French-speaking visitors to the region in the 1990s. Sunny Isles Beach and Surfside to the south, near the Miami border, had been the destination of choice in the 1970s and into the 1990s. But Miami’s expansion pushed hungry developers north, who demolished the modest hotels, motels, and apartments favored by Quebecois snowbirds and replaced them with luxury skyscrapers. Farther north, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, and Dania Beach became obvious successors for their affordable motels and downtown RV parks. Tremblay explains that Johnson Street, an L-shaped strip of businesses running perpendicular to the Hollywood Beach boardwalk, catered to Quebec tourists. “It was like the epicenter,” he says. Restaurants like Le Pôle Nord and Frenchie’s Cafe and their customers spilled out into the street. “Everyone would gather there,” says Tremblay, who recalls a visit in the 1990s. The bandstand on the beach at the foot of Johnson Street was the meeting point.

But Tremblay says there was a disconnect between what Hollywood wanted to be and what French-Canadian visitors brought to it. “The kind of tourist, like the working class… they have their own look,” says Tremblay. He tempers his remarks, he says, in an attempt to be politically correct. “They don’t go there in Prada swimsuits and Chanel sunglasses. . . . .” This isn’t Hollywood, you know; this is the other Hollywood.”

It seems superficial, perhaps even exaggerated, but Tremblay refers to an incident on January 8, 1992, when the Fort Lauderdale weekly XS (easily available at the time on the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk) published on its front page an unflattering image of a Quebecer sunbathing, with the words “They’re back!” According to a 1992 article by Dan Sewell, who reported on the controversy for the Associated Press: “The contempt for visitors to the Great White North, however, found its symbol in a photograph of a man’s large white belly bulging well beyond his bikini-style swimsuit.” The article also included the response of Quebec’s tourism minister at a press conference a week later: “I’ve seen a lot of American tourists with large bellies in Quebec, including on [Quebec’s] beaches.”

It’s not difficult to understand how places like Richard’s Motel quickly became refuges, enclaves where belonging and identity were never questioned, places where Québécois could be Québécois.

A deeper question about identity and belonging in Little Quebec emerges when I visit Clavet that evening in his makeshift office in a We’re behind the Richard Motel studios. Girard arranges the interview after a quick call with Clavet. He tells me we’re going to see the owner. I’m waiting outside Clavet’s office with Mango, a caged blue and gold macaw that has caught the attention of the game wardens. “He needs to find a sanctuary for himself,” Girard explains.

Clavet crosses the street from the motel to the house, flanked by the staff and his wife, Edna. He’s wearing a burgundy shirt and carrying a stack of papers. There’s something Napoleonic about him—his small stature, his presence, his palpable confidence. I’m both anxious and excited. I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity.

We shake hands, and Clavet leads us into the house, sitting behind a laptop open at the end of a kitchen table covered in piles of papers. Girard plops down in front of the television behind me.

Clavet, who is sixty, loves living in America. “Everything’s not perfect. I can criticize things a lot,” he says. “But overall, I’d say it’s better here.”

For Clavet, however, his French-Canadian heritage is unassailable. “These are my roots, this is my heart. This is where I come from.”

Clavet arrived in Florida in 1985. He spoke very little English and hadn’t planned to stay long. His grandparents were there, so it was a quick visit, then the plan was to travel around Europe with a friend. When the European trip fell through, Clavet took a job at a Fort Lauderdale motel through a family friend.

In 1990, at the age of twenty-five, he used a loan from his adoptive father to put a down payment on a rundown motel called the Gem, which he renamed Richard’s Motel. “I wanted a name that showed there was someone behind [this place] who cared, a face behind the name.” From day one, he knew that Quebecers would be his main clientele. But he also knew that Little Quebec (a phrase he says he coined) was in decline. “It was much more Francophone before my time,” he says. In the 1990s, Clavet says, it was easy to find French-speaking real estate agents, immigration lawyers, doctors, and dentists. “It’s not like it used to be,” he says. “I see myself as the last, or one of the last, left in the area.”

I ask him if that’s what this is about: preserving Quebec identity in Florida. “What are we trying to preserve?” “Are we trying to preserve something that doesn’t exist anymore? Or won’t exist anytime soon?” ” he asks, turning the question around. He tells me how he took his four daughters to Quebec City. He told them he wouldn’t interpret for them. “We’ll have to find a way to order our own food and communicate with people,” says Clavet. “Everyone spoke English with them. Everyone.” This wasn’t the Quebec Clavet remembered. “There are people who speak English everywhere,” he says. “The new generation doesn’t need this little place anymore.”

Clavet says he doesn’t think much about the future of the business after him. His wife speaks Spanish, his children speak Spanish better than French, and he’s lived in the United States for nearly four decades, longer than he’s lived in Quebec. His trips to the country have become less frequent over the years, though he says he still gets teary-eyed when he visits the place where he grew up. “It’s where I come from; I would say it’s my country,” he says. But he adds that he’s always considered himself American, even as a child. “I live in North America, so don’t tell me I’m not American.”

The next day, I speak with Michel Seguin, publisher, editor-in-chief, and journalist for Carrefour Floride magazine and the Journal de la Floride, which, along with Le soleil de la Floride, is the region’s leading French-language news source. Born in Montreal, Seguin, 67, publishes six issues from November to April and distributes 35,000 copies of the magazine each month. His Facebook group, Les Snowbirds de Québec en Floride, has just over 90,000 members.

Clavet was one of the first people Seguin met when he arrived in Hollywood in 1996, and when he launched the magazine in 2004, Clavet was his first investor.

When I ask him what he thinks of what Clavet has built and whether it’s enough to preserve the identity of Petit-Québec, he tells me that, fundamentally, when we talk about identity in this context, we’re talking about language—and more specifically, a bilingual generation. “If you have a child, at home, you’ll probably speak French with Mom and Dad, but at school, they’ll speak English,” explains Seguin. Petit-Québec was a necessity. “In the past, it was closer to the park We didn’t have the internet. We had to go to different places together to talk, to party together.”

According to Statistics Canada data, the rate of English-French bilingualism among the French-mother-tongue population in Quebec has increased among young and middle-aged adults in the workforce. Between 2001 and 2021, the rate increased by more than twelve percentage points for every five-year age group, from ten to forty-four. But there are fears about what this bilingualism means. A 2024 Léger poll found that 70% of Quebec respondents fear that the survival of the French language is threatened in Canada.

Girard takes me to Johnson Street, the former epicenter of French culture in Hollywood. Aside from a display full of Le Soleil de la Floride and Carrefour Floride in a convenience store, there’s no trace of what once was. The original Frenchie’s Cafe has been demolished, and in its place stands a Margaritaville. Girard explains that parking in the area has steadily increased from $1 to $6 (US), pushing Quebec beachgoers north.

The next night, Girard and Nathalie try to take me to a revamped version of Frenchie’s in Hallandale Beach, but it’s not yet open for snowbird season. We end up at Flanigan’s, a South Florida pub chain with an integrated liquor store called Big Daddy’s. Girard explains that it’s a favorite among the French-Canadian crowd, but it’s still too early for the season. This is the most English I’ve heard in a few days.

Afterward, we drive around Hallandale Beach, and they point out buildings that were once RV parks frequented by French-Canadian snowbirds. We pass through a parking lot behind the Big Easy Casino, which Girard says once housed a pop-up market frequented by Quebecois visitors before it closed “somewhere during COVID.” Girard laments the closure of the Greyhound trail in the Big Easy. Another blow to identity. Things change too quickly.

I think back to the day before, when Girard and I chatted over beers at his room table at the Green Seas Motel. He had brought a few cases of Alpine Lager, the pride of New Brunswickers (Girard’s mother is from New Brunswick). I asked Girard what might happen to Richard’s Motel and Little Quebec when Clavet is gone. He took a sharp breath. “I hope there’s a way to preserve it, but honestly, I’m not sure,” he says. Girard highlights Clavet’s penchant for micromanagement: every item he brought, from the swings to Le Bonhomme; every phone call he received during our interview to verify individual reservation rates; every time he glanced at the security screen to confirm a guest was who they said they were because he knew many of them by name.

“He built this empire all by himself, and I don’t know… I don’t think so,” Girard says. “And that scares me sometimes, because I want to spend the rest of my life here. I love it here. I can’t see myself going anywhere else.”

We build our entire world out of small comforts. For Clavet, Girard, and the Quebec snowbirds, it’s French television channels and tourtière that remind us of our country. But despite all the talk about preserving identity, about creating a space for French-Canadians in Florida, it seems to me that, deep down, Little Quebec has always been synonymous with escape. And more specifically, escape from that indisputable attribute of Canadian identity: winter. This was the common denominator for the majority of guests I interacted with: they weren’t there to build a community, but to escape the snow.

Perhaps Little Quebec is disappearing. Perhaps this version of escape has served its purpose for the last generation of snowbirds who need it. There will always be another generation that will give up on winter. And when they arrive in the sunny, affordable, and snowbird-friendly paradise they find, there will always be little comforts they’ll miss and snowbird friends to toast what they left behind. If they’re lucky, another Richard Clavet will come along to pack it all up.

Link to the original article

Hollywood Gets a Makeover

Jean Maurice Duddin – Journal de Montréal:

A few years ago, Hollywood Beach began a major restoration of its broadwalk, its public squares, and its arts park to revive its infrastructure and revitalize the tourist destination, which, even today, is undoubtedly the most popular pied-à-terre for Quebecers fleeing… winter. The number one destination for winter visitors.

The Broadwalk is made of interlocking stones, with an integrated bike path, a jogging trail, and, on the other side of the low wall, the sand forms a wide beach stretching four kilometers to the sea. The sun is round like a balloon, the sky a bleached blue, the sea roars, and people live in slow motion.

While Hollywood is the number one destination for the famous winter residents, the thousands of retired Quebecers who flee the snow each winter for the warm Florida sun, the coastal city is also a wonderfully landscaped beach vacation spot.

These improvements are welcome for Hollywood, which is best known for its famous Broadway, erected in 1925 by the city’s visionary founder, Joseph Young. He wanted to make this corner of the country the upscale center of the American East Coast, like the film capital of the Pacific coast, the original Hollywood.

Its pedestrian walkway along the beach is the only one along the hundreds of kilometers of beach in Florida. Quebecers who regularly stay there will appreciate the $14 million investment made to renovate the Broadwalk, entirely made of interlocking stone, formerly asphalt, with a bike path, a jogging trail, and a pretty low wall with 1920s-style lampposts, which separates the beach from the immense pedestrian walkway.

Although before the high season, you sometimes hear French spoken on the beach, Hollywood becomes the American capital of Quebecers from mid-December until the end of winter.

“On the beach, you’ll only hear French spoken,” notes Québécois, owner of five motels in Hollywood.

Hollywood, more than any other destination in Florida, is undoubtedly the most popular pied-à-terre for Quebecers escaping winter.

Our journalist was the guest of the Florida Tourism Board and WestJet.

A peaceful place

Jean Maurice Duddin – Journal de Montréal:

>Near Miami, Hollywood hides nothing but a quiet place where it’s good to relax in the warmth, at the leisurely pace of vacation, with good restaurants, motels with perfectly adequate kitchens, near the sea and golf courses.

No major museums, no major concert halls, nor major theaters, although there is a casino and a racetrack.

But the charm of the place, as the Quebecers you meet there will tirelessly tell you, lies in its ease of travel, both in terms of getting there, living safely, peacefully, and without too much of a change of scenery, as much because it’s a lifestyle similar to ours as because of the presence of so many Quebecers.

Retirees

“We come here like we go to the cottage,” says a Quebecer we meet on the boardwalk.

Distance plays a big role. Leaving Montreal in the morning on a direct flight, you’ll be in Florida by afternoon.

By road, even if the trip takes two to three days, Florida allows you to use your vehicle there all winter.

The clientele tends to be older, often retired.

In the heart of Quebec

Jean Maurice Duddin – Journal de Montréal:

In less time than it takes to say “poutine,” you’re in the heart of Quebec, even if you’re 2,645 kilometers from Montreal when Linda Lessard says “hello.”

It’s hard to be more Québécois than her. From Quebec City, she speaks English with difficulty, but at 47, she was tired of winter, and so was her boyfriend. The last one, particularly snowy, was “the cherry on the sundae.” They sold everything and headed for “Little Quebec.”

This is Richard Clavet’s expression for Hollywood, where he has lived since 1990 after buying a dilapidated motel that became a success story, his realization of the American dream. Today, he owns five establishments with more than 100 rooms and lives with his partner, with whom they raise their five daughters. A host of Quebecers have adopted Florida, and especially the Hollywood region, to spend the winter.

The tone has changed

With the economy In a struggling world, Americans are also doing everything they can to support their tourism industry, a guarantee of foreign investment and economic recovery.

While a few years ago, some American columnists denigrated Quebec winter residents, portraying them as “fat, bare-chested people, always holding a bottle of beer,” the tone has radically changed. Authorities welcome Quebecers with “open arms.” Both Julie Erickson, from Hollywood, and Jessica Taylor, from Fort Lauderdale, praise the presence of Quebecers and the cultural richness they bring to their region.

It must be said that with the economic recession hitting the United States, all tourists are welcome. Even more so, those who establish their winter quarters there, like Quebec winter residents.

Little Quebec in Hollywood, Florida…

It’s at Richard’s Motel that it’s happening…

When winter arrives, it’s here, at home, that Quebecers meet. Our gardens, patios, pools, swings, and porches fill with cheerful French-Canadians, all happy to be together under the warm South Florida sun.

It’s here in Hollywood that we have the famous “Boardwalk” where you’ll find the beautiful beach, a favorite of all Quebecers.

Near our establishments, you’ll find truly Quebecois businesses where everyone speaks French:

1) Le Frenchie Bar & Grill where you can find all the good food from Quebec.

2) La Clinique Soleil to receive the services of doctors who speak French and who are associated with hospitals that have special programs for Canadians.

3) French-speaking dentists are also located nearby, such as Manon Bourque’s clinic.

4) The STAT clinic and the CLSC have their offices on Hallandale Boulevard.

5) Desjardins Bank, NatBank, and the Royal Bank of Canada all have branches near Richard’s Motel.

6) Four French-speaking media outlets have their offices in Hollywood: Carrefour Floride, Soleil De La Floride, L’Écho Vacances, and Quoi Faire en Floride.

7) The Can-Am Golf group offers discounted rates for Quebec golfers.

8) Jack’s Dinner and Dairy Belle are also two Quebec restaurants on Federal Highway.

9) French-speaking travel agencies are represented with Transat Holiday USA, Voyage Galaxy, and Go 2 Vacation.

10) There are a large number of real estate brokers of Quebec origin who will be happy to talk to you about the famous “Sales.”

11) For your legal needs, in Hollywood you will find lawyers like Nancy Lapierre (accidents) and Marcelle Poirier (immigration).

12) Social clubs are represented with the Can-Am Optimist Club and the Richelieu Club.

13) In the area, you will find hair salons, mechanics, car rental agencies, insurance agents, chiropractors, accountants, etc., and all of them share French.

14) Even the local church, Little Flower, celebrates mass in French every winter.

15) You will also find many French-speaking homeowners in the area, especially condos and mobile homes.

In short… Little Quebec in Florida, it’s Richard’s Motel’s turn…

Looking forward to meeting you there, Richard and his team.