Although French speakers are in a minority language situation nearly everywhere in Ontario, and therefore constantly exposed to English, the influence of this dominant language on the lexical choices they make is not well-known. Apart from works on particular borrowings and code-switching, little has been published on the lexical borrowings used in the French-speaking community, especially from a diachronic point of view. In an attempt to fill this gap, a study on the perceptions of the use of borrowings from English in Northeastern Ontario was conducted. The study was done using a questionnaire, administered to French speakers of the region, that involved nearly 200 words and expressions chosen from a Franco-Ontarian novel that features borrowings from English prominently. Results reveal interesting intergenerational differences that point to an apparent time evolution of the local lexis and indirectly provide information on the attitudes of an important French-speaking minority towards the dominant language of Ontario.