Stuck in the past? Change, stability and contact in Québec English

What accounts for variation in Canadian English: participation in worldwide changes in progress, contact with French, or other processes? The past temporal reference system of the English of Montreal and Quebec City is an ideal venue to investigate these issues. Past temporal reference is implicated in described mainstream change processes, such as the growth of the progressive (1) and variation in the present perfect (2), as well as being a potential locus of French influences, such as levelling of the present perfect and the preterite (3), or expansion of the progressive into contexts usually expressed by preterites or habitual markers (4, 5). (1) Sometimes our school beat Saint Pat's at whatever the game they were playing at the time. (Québec City 013) (2) I've gone shopping in Paris and I've had no trouble at all. (Québec City 005) (3) So he showed up at school and he had decorated the whole car with balloons. (Québec City 021) (4) We would go over and lyke, steal their underwear and stuff. (Montréal 023) (5) As a kid I used to work in Ogilvy's. (Montréal 006) To test who participates in which changes, we stratified 48 sociolinguistic interviews selecte