This paper aims to shed new light on the role of the urban milieu in the assimilation of linguistic minorities, drawing on the most recent data from the Canadian census. The idea of the city as an «assimilation machine» is called into question. Using an appropriate methodological framework that takes into account the trends in demographic structures according to age, this study seeks to draw a portrait of the changes in the linguistic behaviour of the French speaking minorities outside Quebec during the period 1971-1996. This portrait was assembled using a comparative approach that distinguishes between two types of milieu - the metropolitan and the non-metropolitan milieu – in seeking to determine whether the trends justify a reassessment of this role played by the urban milieu. The results obtained, although they do not completely confirm this questioning of the role of the urban milieu as an assimilator, do nevertheless indicate that there is still hope for the French speaking communities outside Quebec that are tending toward an increasingly urban and metropolitan existence.