Anglophone Performers Pulled from Fete Celebration

Two Montreal English bands may be dropped from a St-Jean-Baptiste concert after one of the backers threatened to pull out over language issues.

The about-face comes days after the concert's producers announced the show, billing it as an indie band alternative to the huge official musical bash featuring French-Canadian superstars, as well as a celebration of the Quebec's cultural diversity.

But the idea of a bilingual concert celebrating Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, a public holiday in Quebec dedicated to the province's French-Canadian culture, proved too much for one of the organizers.

The event - dubbed L'Autre St-Jean - was to be held on June 23 in the up-and-coming and majority French Rosemont neighbourhood.

But in an email sent to organizers on Thursday, the production company says one partner informed them they disagreed with the show's "philosophy" and that, because the French-language is under constant threat in Quebec, they refused to endorse the programming and may block its financing.

Further, the partner threatened to protest to the event.

Read more of the original CP article

Nowhere on the web site of the L'Autre St-Jean event is it mentioned that the St-Jean-Baptiste Society, (an ethnocentric French language supremacy lobby group) is an organizer.

It name is suspiciously absent from the list of partners

Yet it seems that it's president Mario Beaulieu is the one pulling the strings. He advised the English artists that they aren't welcome and that they should sing in English neighborhoods and that if they performed they'd be subject to a protest.

According to the article the SJBS is a principle backer of "l'association culterelle louise-Hebert"

The next time that these type of sovereignists tell you that the movement is inclusive, ask them exactly what they are inclusive of.

How do you spell these type of sovereignists;

R-A-C-I-S-T-S