Partly it was the only option - French Immersion had *just* started to be offered - the first class was one year ahead of me. And French, because Canada has 2 official languages, English and French. It was kind of weird to be learning French in British Columbia - school was the ONLY place that I would ever be exposed to any French language.

Well, other than every single cereal box and food product, or tags in clothing - I grew up seeing "S/P" (small/petite), "M/M" (medium/moyenne) and "L/G" (large/grande) in every t-shirt, LOL. Everything for sale in Canada, generally needs to be labelled in both English and French.