Thursday, May 27, 2010

French vs. English Volume 12

'Fat Cats' Rile Journalist
A Ottawa sportswriter accuses the newest entry into Intercounty Baseball League, a semiprofessional Ontario  baseball called the 'FAT CATS 'of acting contemptuously towards Ottawa Francophones by giving the team a unilingual English name.

Militants celebrate historic victory over  KFC PFK
The Réseau de résistance du Québécois (RRQ) is  claiming victory  over Bay Street and  Colonel Sanders. (notwithstanding that he's been dead for quite a while now.) The militant organization has a history of intimidation by hinting at violence. In a letter addressed to the owners of two Gatineau restaurants, the RRQ demanded that English be removed from any signage in the stores, as well as the removal of a "Help Wanted" sign in English. The letter starts off by invoking the spirit of Camille Laurin, father of the infamous Bill 101
"Your KFC restaurants in Gatineau, on Boulevard St-Joseph Boulevard Greber, have bilingual signs which is contrary to the spirit and letter of the Charter of the French language....
...The RRQ refuses the occupation of Quebec by the neocolonial power in Ottawa and the owners of Bay Street, including yourself...."
 As to the bilingual "Help Wanted sign;
".... by advertising in English that you are recruiting staff, you indicate that you plan to hire people who speak English but not French."

The owners of the two restaurants removed the offending words to much back-slapping and joy over the RRQ. A great victory!!!
St. Lazare stiffs English School Board
"A war of words has erupted over land deals for schools off the western tip of the island that has the Lester B. Pearson School Board suggesting the city of Vaudreuil-Dorion acted in bad faith.

Lester B. Pearson School Board chairman Marcus Tabachnick says when they were looking for land in Vaudreuil-Dorion for a new school, they had asked about the site at Jean Beliveau and Cité des Jeunes. They were told it wasn't available. Flash forward to early last month when that same land was being offered to the French-language Trois Lacs school board."  more at CJAD

Sun Setting on Quebec City
I don't know why some designer proposed this logo for Quebec City entitled "Québec - Capitale française d'Amérique" 
It's a view of the Chateau Frontenac facing the West, where the sun is  clearly depicted as setting.

I'm not sure if the idea of the sun setting on the French Capital of North America is the message that the artists intended. Link 

 
Multiculturalism vs. Interculturaism
I must say, I never heard of the term Interculturalism, but apparently it has become a big topic of conversation amongst the 'you know whos.' We all are aware that French language militants are vehemently opposed to the concept of multiculturalism, where all cultures are valued and promoted equally. This longtime Canadian concept is considered poison in Quebec, where the 'melting pot' theory, where all newcomers are assimilated into the common culture is considered the only politically correct option. Interculturalism is a term now being bandied about and is explained as;
People having the right to maintain an affiliation with one's ethnic group and the right for cultural and religious differences to be displayed in the public domain. However, the entire society must adhere to the same constitution of fundamental rights and obligations, with no exception. Wikipedia
Hmmm...  Just so you know, language militants are dead set against this concept too.....
P.S.  Who has time to think about this stuff??

En nombre de Padre, de Hijo y de espiritu santo.
The diocese of Montreal is no longer able to provide enough Priests for its churches, even considering that church attendance has collapsed to the point that only about 6% of Francophone Catholics attend church weekly. The Church is graduating less than 2 priests on average per year, a calamitous decline that even out paces fading church attendance.
It won't be long before the church will be forced to recruit from abroad, South America in all likelihood.  Spanish lessons anyone?

Anglos squeezed out of Cegep
It seems that demand is so heavy to get into English Cegeps that the selection criteria has been raised considerably.
The increase in applications to English CEGEPs this fall is double the hike at French CEGEPs and schools are becoming more selective. With 18% of the student body Francophone and 25% Allophone, Anglophone students are finding it harder to get in because of increased competition.

"Everybody in the group of English colleges is very, very concerned about how do we ensure that we maximize access to education for kids that have graduated from the English system," said Gilbert Héroux, the director general of Vanier College. Gazette


Coming Soon--More Supreme Court Bashing
It seems that a group of parents in Drummondville who are opposed the the teaching of the Ethics & Religion course in Quebec public schools are going to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn decisions handed down in the same matter by the Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Appeals Court.
Both courts agreed with the government that it was within their right to make the course in religious diversity mandatory for all students.
For the Supreme Court it will be another no-win situation. If the Supremos decide that the Quebec courts were right, parents will hold the "English" court responsible and will likely demonstrate against a foreign court that dictates over religious instruction in Quebec.
If the Court overturns the decision, other groups will take to the streets as well, blaming the Court for denying the will of the Quebec judicial system.

Now Premiere Charest has announced that he will appeal the decision by the federal government to create a national agency to regulate stock markets all the way to the Supreme Court.. For Mr. Charest, it is a win/win situation, regardless of the outcome. A win would please nationalists and a loss would please nationalists, as well. Huh?

Are Quebeckers/Francophones over or under-represented in the NHL?
It's hard to believe, but on one single web page on vigile.net (a nationalist/separatist web site) both arguments are made.
Yup... The top half of the page features an article by Louis Fournier, called "A strong contingent of 91 players from Quebec and Francophones outside Quebec" which details how well Quebeckers and Francophones are doing in the NHL.
"This number (91) represents a high percentage of 11% of the 800 players who participated....NHL"

"15% of the 100 best scorers in the league this season are players from Quebec and Francophones"
Immediately after this article, sharing the page, is an invitation to a  review of Bob Sirois' "Le Quebec mis en échec"a book that details how Quebeckers and Francophones are systematically discriminated against by the NHL.
"The figures  support  the sensitive issue of discrimination against Quebec hockey players "
Yup, I promise you it's true. Go over and check it out. vigile.net

11 comments:

  1. My first response to this article:
    Re Bob Sirois and his Book of Boo-hoo: Sorry, but most Americans are so provincial in their thinking (please pardon the pun) that I don't think most team owners in the U.S. are even aware of the tensions between the two solitudes.

    For example, Daniel Brière, who plays for the Flyers, was offered more $$$ by the Habs, but he chose to pass the team of his "countrymen" for Phillie cheese steak sandwiches and a cracked bell. I'm sure part of the reason for that is to stay away from the relentless media pressure cooker that is Montreal, plus, to be sure, his after-tax income in Penn State is much higher than it would be after socialist Quebec gets its clutches on his paycheques. Many players feel this way, esp. the home-grown talent. They know!

    Former goalie from the early 1980s, Rick Heinz, who now runs hockey schools, wrote a book on his 49-game NHL career and what he endured to get there. He wrote there are three nations in the NHL: The U.S., Canada, and Quebec. Need I say more?

    ReplyDelete
  2. My second response:
    How did this journalist jump to the conclusion the name Fat Cats is referring strictly to Francophones? They're fat cats whether they speak English, French and every language under the sun, with very, very few exceptions. I miss you, Stanley Knowles! I think Ottawa Fat Cats is a DANDY name for a baseball team in that city.

    The Supremes are English? My a _ _! I mentioned previously that Quebec has 33.33% representation in the Supreme Court with only 22.22% of the Canadian population! It's Quebec that is overrepresented. To me it's the "French" court! The nine "great jurists" didn't even have the gonads to shoot down Bill 104 and how unconstitutional IT is! Our Supreme Court is "The Kangaroo Court on the Hill"!

    ReplyDelete
  3. My third post:
    Multiculturalism vs. Interculturaism
    French Quebec society is so convoluted, nobody can figure it out. On the one hand, they IDEALLY want outsiders to fully integrate and live in French, but on the other hand, they don't accept outsiders.

    I am put in mind of an American woman in the 1980s who came to Montreal to visit, and loved it so much there she moved from the States with her children and put them in French schools to maximize their integration. She took those "classes d'acceuil" enabling her to get her French up to speed.

    She moved into a French neighbourhood, but was NEVER accepted. The community ostracized her! She was an étrangère, a foreigner!

    Finally, she had enough, pulled her kids out of the French school, packed up and moved back to the U.S., and she did this very intentionally on June 24th, the separatist holiday.

    People of colour in Quebec are persecuted disproportionately by the police, and now that Arabic is the second most spoken language in French schools, overtaking English, a $5 million Commission was formed by the Goldilocks Quebec premier because he didn't have the political or manly gonads to face the people of Hérouxville and admonish them for being the bigots they are! Instead, like a wildfire in a dry forest, the heat and flames of bigotry spread fast consuming and burning the time and taxpayers' money spent on the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.

    Quebec wants everyone speaking French, but doesn't want to give those who are not «pur laine» their fair piece of the tortière!

    ReplyDelete
  4. My fourth post:
    Re The [Roman Catholic] Church can't recruit enough of its own:
    Serves 'em right! The Roman Catholic Church is a self-serving body of corrupt perverts! Who in his right mind would want to be associated with that rabid herd?

    Why is the Church so successful in Central and South America? My guess is it's a complete continent run by dictators and other corrupt individuals, esp. the druglords, who constantly stick their fists fully in the till rendering the general population poor. The druglords have their own armies and police to protect themselves! 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth! The people of those godforsaken nations have nothing left but their faith, even if the people whom they put their faith in are false idols!

    In Michel Gratton's book French Canadians, he writes extremely scathingly about the Church, their teachings, their seminary schools, and their feared rather than revered leaders.

    Based on my many readings, I squarely blame the creation of two solitudes in Quebec on the Church that focused on unaffordable gigantic families and being the "small bread" of society while the non-Catholic minority, especially the so-called WASPs who adopted a work ethic of "work hard and prosper".

    The Church kept them pregnant, and the corrupt politicians kept them ignorant. THIS is why French Quebec was primarily lower working class while the minorities made up the so-called Westmount Rhodesians!

    This went on for 200 years, this is why there was finally a Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and this is why language and culture in Quebec are the new Holy Grail. The trees bearing fruit for over 200 years are dead, and it is the Roman Catholic church that is squarely to blame for doggedly, brutally, mercilessly and deliberately over exploiting them. I have zero sympathy for the Roman Catholic church, and I thank God I was not born a Catholic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My fifth and last posting:
    The CEGEP Problem: Make a policy of accepting Anglophones first and foremost. The zealous separatists want their own to be forced to go for French post-secondary education.

    I don't imagine there is ANY political will within the Quebec government, even by Premier Goldilocks, to expand the English CEGEP system. Quebec mostly has a policy of «francophones d'abord», so let's play their game of "Anglophones First" in the English CEGEP system. I went through the CEGEP system decades ago, and it was a joke! I may have spent two years in suspended animation comparing what I learned in CEGEP compared to university!

    The PFK story: A broken record [YAWN!]
    St-Lazare: ditto!
    The sun and Quebec City: Stupid marketing ploy.

    NEXT!

    ReplyDelete
  6. My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP.
    I have always disliked the idea because of the costs.

    But he's tryiong none the less. I've been using Movable-type on a variety of
    websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform.
    I have heard good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I
    can import all my wordpress content into it? Any kind
    of help would be greatly appreciated!

    Here is my homepage success internet business

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you a lot for sharing this with all of us you actually know what you're talking about!

    Bookmarked. Please also discuss with my web site =).
    We could have a link trade arrangement between us

    my webpage :: tips to lose weight

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi, all the time i used to check webpage posts here early
    in the dawn, as i enjoy to find out more and more.

    Look at my blog post: title loans phoenix

    ReplyDelete
  9. I read this post fully regarding the comparison of latest and previous technologies, it's amazing
    article.

    Here is my web-site - best weight loss program

    ReplyDelete
  10. Have you ever thought about writing an ebook or guest authoring
    on other sites? I have a blog based upon on the same ideas you discuss
    and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know
    my subscribers would appreciate your work. If you are even remotely
    interested, feel free to send me an e mail.

    my website: no 2 extreme muscle

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hey I know this is off topic but I was wondering if you knew of
    any widgets I could add to my blog that automatically tweet my newest twitter updates.
    I've been looking for a plug-in like this for quite some time and was hoping maybe you would have some experience with something like this.
    Please let me know if you run into anything. I truly enjoy reading your blog and I look forward to
    your new updates.

    My webpage muscle gainer supplements

    ReplyDelete