For many decades, Francophone regions in Canada have provided language study exchanges for French as a second language (FSL) learners within their own country. At the same time, FSL students and teachers in Canada continue to orient to a native speaker standard associated with European French. This Eurocentric orientation manifested itself in a recent study examining conceptions of authentic language among Canadian FSL teachers on professional study abroad in France. Taking an interactional perspective (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012), this article examines how the teachers negotiated discourses of language subordination (Lippi-Green, 1997) that construct Canadian French as less authentic than French from France. Findings show some teachers drawing on this hierarchization of French to "authenticate" (Coupland, 2010) an identity as French language expert, either by contrasting European and Canadian varieties of French or by projecting France as the locus of French language and culture as exclusively representative of authentic "Frenchness."