french accents

[Phill Atwood <me@phillatwood.name>]

This isn't debian specific, but I'm wondering if someone could point me
to a good resource for understanding how-to enter french accents into,
for example, emails.  I know that it is probably got something to do
with locales and character sets, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to where
to start.  My locale is english-canada I believe.  Any help is
appreciated. 

Thanks,
Phill