well, it's not equally French and english- French was just another class- basically it was given the same weight as- for example - spanish. Unles of course your parents enroll you in a french immersion school. If so it basically flips french and english. English is a class, but only in the same way french is a class in most other schools. kind of stupid. I can see wanting ot learn a language, but practically abandoning one of the more universal languages in the world due to some sort of French Canadian pride issue seems a bit silly.
Of course since it was taught in elementary school as part of the curriculum it's only natural that we'd pick up one or two things. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself bilingual though.
Basically, they teach French in elementary and then in High school they let us choose a second language class as an elective. I managed to eke my way out of having French 8, but somehow they got me into french 9 the next year.
Even somebody who secludes themself from trying ot learn french picks some up without trying- because, as you say- all our signs (well, most of our signs) are bilingual. And I believe it's a law that all information on food labels and merchandise must be in both languages as well. I've never really thought about it, but that would seem weird if I wasn't so used to it. Same with most manuals. For example, my recent acquisition of several Nintendo products has an entire half of the manual in french. Not sure if this is Canada specific or wether it's all of north america, though.
