@PerfMonk
From scratch reinstalled to another SSD. Selected:
French (Canada) Default keybouard
migrated to systemd-boot as in section 8 here above
ran mkinitcpio -P
locale-gen sees only 2 lines
# Locales enabled by Calamares
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
fr_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
cat /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=cf
FONT=
FONT_MAP=
HOOKS line both default and yours are OK
upgraded to 6.1 both versions accept @@@ passphrase by hitting AltrGr+2.
cat /etc/default/keyboard
# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE
# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.
XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="ca"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""
BACKSPACE="guess"
What else should I do?