The bilingual belt (French: la ceinture bilingue) is a term for the portion of Canada where both French and English are regularly spoken. The term was coined by Richard Joy in his 1967 book Languages in Conflict, where he wrote, "The language boundaries in Canada are hardening, with the consequent elimination of minorities everywhere except within a relatively narrow bilingual belt." Joy's analysis of the 1961 census caused him to conclude, Overview The bilingual belt is the frontier zone on either side of what Joy referred to as "Interior Quebec"—the heartland of the French language in North America, in which, in the 1961 census, over 95% of the population gave French as their mother tongue and 2% speak only English. The bilingual belt is, therefore, the "region of contact" between the Quebec heartland in which French is the overwhelmingly predominant language and the rest of Canada, in which English is the overwhelmingly predominant language. When the bilingual belt is added to the French language heartland of "Interior Quebec", the result is: Joy recognized the continued (although diminished) existence of residual French-speaking communities in places like Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and Saint Boniface, Manitoba, but these communities were isolated and very small, and were, in his view, already well on the way to extinction, along with most of the smaller pockets of English-speakers within Quebec. For example, he had this to say about the French language in Manitoba: "The Franco-Manitobans have resisted assimilation more effectively than have the minorities in the other Western Provinces, but the 1961 Census reported only 6,341 children of French mother tongue, as against 12,337 of French origin. This could well indicate that the actual numbers, and not merely the relative strength, of those who retain the old language will soon start to fall." Regions within the bilingual belt Strictly speaking, the bilingual belt has never been a single contiguous region. Instead, the parts of the bilingual belt lying within Ontario and west Quebec form one geographical unit, and the part in northern New Brunswick formed a separate geographical unit. Joy also noted that there was considerable demographic variation within the bilingual belt itself, based on such factors as proximity to the unilingual French-speaking heartland of "Interior Quebec" and the ratio in any particular part of the bilingual belt of native French-speakers to native English-speakers. He summarized these regional divisions as follows: - In New Brunswick: In seven