But before I continue, I want to congratulate those readers who enriched the debate with a plethora of thoughtful comments yesterday. I do believe it was the best batch of comments ever written on this blog and no, it had nothing to do with the fact that 'ALLCAPS' was silent!!
Unfortunately I deleted an important comment from 'Appartchick' by accident. Too bad, it was excellent. How about a re-post?
Onward!
I read with amusement a post by Quebec City blowhard Rejean Labrie on vigile.net who wrote a pathetic lament about what he perceives as the sad reality of English in Montreal. He reluctantly admits that Montreal is what it always was, a bilingual city, something he abhors.
Read;
Perhaps the language militants are finally accepting reality.
He makes the point that immigrants can easily assimilate into the English cultural community without any difficulty and that they can successfully function without French.
While it isn't easy for anyone to function without French in Quebec, his point about many immigrants adopting the English culture is quite valid and while for him it represents a sad reality, I'm reminded of the old adage- 'One man's meat is another man's poison.'
"...you can never count on these people to join the nationalist cause that drives us, this is a very unfortunate fact, but a fact. And it's not because we haven't reached out to them generously. No, they have no intention of joining the majority culture of Quebec, it's just that there's no incentive for them to do so. In one word or a thousand, they couldn't care less about preserving our culture."
As for our English community, which has lost 300,000 members through emigration over the last forty years, survival is based in renewal. It's a fact that immigrants have rallied to help save the English community. As a grateful anglophone, I welcome them to our ranks!
As for Mr. Labrie, I'm sure he was rubbing his hands in glee, all those years, watching the anglos leave his beloved Quebec, purifying the population as they left.
The pain that he manifests so clearly in his post, over those cursed immigrants that ruined his separatist plans, can only bring a smile to my face and perhaps to yours.....
But enough of that, I said humorous!.....
Mr. Labrie added a photo collage of store signs showing an arrogant use of English to the exclusion of French.
Yup, never mind bilingual, these signs showed an utter contempt for Bill 101 in that nary a word of French was to be found.
But there's something wrong!
The longer I looked at the pictures, the more I believe them to be fraudulent.
Can you play detective and spot the giveaways?
Here's some 'think music' to help you concentrate, click on the arrow and study the pictures. Then scroll down to compare thoughts!
spoiler alert.....scroll down..
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- The bottom right hand photo is what got me started. It has a date of 2004, indicating that these photos are seven years old! Who uses seven year old pictures to prove a point about today?
- It also seems that all the photos seven years old, too. Why? Because two of the signs have a 473-XXXX telephone number, indicating that they were both taken in the same neighbourhood. Then there is no area code in front of the telephone number. Today we use 10 digit dialling in Quebec, so these pictures are were probably snapped at the same time and place as the photo with the 2004 date.
- The "473=XXXX numbers would put the business' in the francophone dominated town of St. Eustache, Quebec, where trust me, no business would dare post in English exclusively.
- In Quebec, even in English the word is spelled "CENTRE" when referring to a place (Shopping centre) and "CENTER" when referring to the middle of something (like a target.) The use of "Center" to denote a place is used in the USA and in the Maritime provinces in Canada.
- The signage is just too amateurish or corny to come from Montreal.
At little research shows that most or all the photos were all taken in Grand Falls, New Brunswick.
The giveaway was the phone number and business name, "473-4644 +Speedy Auto Glass" which is easily be traced back to Grand Falls via a simple Google search. Some of the businesses seem to be closed, but at least two others also trace back to Grand Falls!
Mr. Labrie you are so BUSTED!!!
