For almost two decades the province of Quebec has been sending Bloc
Quebecois members to Ottawa by virtue of a protest vote that grew from
the perceived back-stabbing of René-Lévesque by the other Premiers that allowed a new
Constitution to be created without the province's consent. The story of
that so-called 'betrayal,' known as "The Night of the Long Knives"
was burned into the collective memories of Quebeckers and remained the
primary motivation for soft nationalists to vote for the Bloc, alongside the more
militant, sovereignist element of Quebec society.Ostensibly, the Bloc was created to protect Quebec's interests in Ottawa, but should that have been the case, they'd have been tossed out years ago for non-performance. After almost two decades in Parliament, the Bloc would be hard pressed to describe one single notable achievement. The fact that the Bloc was largely snubbed and ignored by the ruling government of the day, even in times of a minority government, remains an open secret, one which was largely ignored in Quebec.
In truth, the Bloc's ineffectiveness didn't really matter, it's real function was to remain a thorn in the side of Canadian federalism, a symbol that Quebec aspirations remained unrealized. In that respect nobody can deny that the party fulfilled its function rather well, annoying the heck out of the ROC and causing paralysis in Parliament.
And so the Quebec public and more importantly the French press, filled with zero expectations, have given Gilles Duceppe and his party, a twenty year free ride.
This last election signalled that the mood of the province had shifted rather suddenly and dramatically. The Francophone electorate, for whatever reason, decided to seek a new path.
Perhaps voters tired of the separatist debate or perhaps they believed that tangible results were more important than remaining the pouting child of the Canadian federation. At any rate, voters went for a change and that change was the NDP and the pie-in-the-sky promises of Jack Layton and his political henchman, Thomas Mulcair.
But the mandate to represent Quebec's interests in Ottawa and the challenge to keep the electorate satisfied, will be a task much more difficult for Mr. Layton than it was for Gilles Duceppe, as the extended free pass afforded to the Bloc, will not be offered to the Ndp.
Unlike the Bloc who were expected to produce nothing, expectations are running high for the Ndp, who themselves built up hopes by making a multitude of unrealizable promises.
Perhaps wiser than Mr. Layton, Mr. Duceppe never made any such promises at all, other than to offer the old chestnut, of "Protecting Quebec interests'
Mr Layton, as per his usual election style, made these promises, secure in the knowledge that he'd never have to deliver. Now as opposition leader he is faced with the impossible task of making good on his undertakings.
The three major planks that he offered Quebec, application of Bill 101 to presently-exempt federally chartered institutions in Quebec, mandatory bilingualism for Supreme Court judges and the re-opening of the constitutional debate, have as much chance of flying as pigs do.
Mr. Layton has written political cheques to Quebec that are going to bounce.
When it happens, it won't be pretty.
While the Ndp is enjoying a honeymoon with Quebeckers, it is likely to be short-lived. In fact, it may already be unravelling.
The Press has already crucified the absentee, inexperienced, non-French-speaking element of the Ndp Quebec caucus. Ruth Ellen Brouseau, the poster-girl for these unlikely members has already achieved more negative publicity than an opposition back-bencher can expect in an entire Parliamentary session.
In fact, the Bloc-voting, sovereignist-dominated Press is so enraged by the Ndp success at the polls, they have openly mocked the choice that electors made and have gone so far as to characterize the many Quebeckers who voted for the Ndp as naive and stupid.
And so, perceived by the 'intelligentsia' as illegitimate carpetbaggers, the Ndp is in for a very rough ride.
If you think that the Quebec Press has a hate-on for Harper, watch what is going to happen to Layton when he fails to deliver on his promises.
Hoping for failure, the Press waits impatiently to pounce. Gleefully sharpening their knives, their mouths are salivating with cruel anticipation at the fine meal the 'Dippers' will make once the inevitable futility and impotence of opposition is realized.
When the ultimate comedown happens, it will brutal.
Twelve to eighteen months-tops....
> The story of that so-called 'betrayal,' known as "The Night of the Long Knives" was burned into the collective memories of Quebeckers and remained the primary motivation for soft nationalists to vote for the Bloc, alongside the more militant, sovereignist element of Quebec society.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was odd if not altogether careless that we should use a phrase referring to a few hours of bloody purges ordered by Hitler against paramilitary thugs he had previously exploited to ascend to power to refer to what appeared to Levesque supporters as betrayal. The metaphor, in addition to being disturbing on many fronts, never quite seemed to me to properly fit our situation, try as I might.
Was the disaffected, rebellious, and thuggish Quebec electorate (insulting that separatists should think of us in such terms), who so recently had massively decided to vote for Trudeau (and Canada), being metaphorically executed? Were our own paramilitaries (the FLQ?) being liquidated? Was a longtime vengeance being carried out? Was Trudeau looking to consolidate his own power base, if not prestige, by eliminating Quebec?
> The fact that the Bloc was largely snubbed and ignored by the ruling government of the day, even in times of a minority government, remains an open secret, one which was largely ignored in Quebec.
But that could be a plus for the Bloc too. Being ignored and snubbed could only then be spun to illustrate to impressionable and gullible Quebecers that “Canada” has nothing but contempt for us, justifying the “defending Quebec’s interests” spiel.
> And so the Quebec public and more importantly the French press, filled with zero expectations, have given Gilles Duceppe and his party, a twenty year free ride. This last election signalled that the mood of the province had shifted rather suddenly and dramatically. The Francophone electorate, for whatever reason, decided to seek a new path. […]
…further proof that like uninformed people in most so-called “democracies”, we are much given to the steady stream of pop-analysis fed to us by some pundits and a complicit media. We’re suckers for pretty and self-serving packaging. The media can make or break a story, candidate, or idea. The very same instrument that killed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004 by looping one particularly exuberant campaign clip hundreds of times allowed Bush II to get elected twice.
> Unlike the Bloc who were expected to produce nothing, expectations are running high for the Ndp, who themselves built up hopes by making a multitude of unrealizable promises […] Mr Layton, as per his usual election style, made these promises, secure in the knowledge that he'd never have to deliver. Now as opposition leader he is faced with the impossible task of making good on his undertakings.
If the Conservatives, who now make up a majority in the House of Commons, don’t support the NDP in helping realize those unrealizable promises, how precisely did we expect the promise delivery mechanism to work? The NDP’s electoral promises are based to a significant extent on the hypothesis that there would be a majority government and that Layton would be tapped by Harper for support to allow the government to remain alive.
Alas, had a minority government been elected yet again, Harper might have more likely gone with what he knew and continued shaming the neutered Liberals, whose legendary cuckolded support he could now almost count on getting (on account of both parties wishing to avoid another election, at least while the Liberals re-organized).
This time around, it seems, Layton’s bluff was ultimately – and ironically – called by disaffected Liberal voters in Ontario who switched their allegiance to Harper.
> The three major planks that he offered Quebec, […], have as much chance of flying as pigs do. Mr. Layton has written political cheques to Quebec that are going to bounce. When it happens, it won't be pretty.
ReplyDeleteSure, but the currency he wrote them in is worth less than the paper the check is printed on. Even now, he won’t need to deliver on any of that, save to make the right noises. Alternatively, 2011 is really 1988 part II, with the coalition of Quebec nationalists and disaffected Western anti-Trudeau/NEP conservatives having been re-spun as an umbrella group of Quebec anti-Harper lefties and people from English Canada who believe “cleansing” is a dietary ritual.
When we realize we’ve miscalculated our federal voting strategy yet again, we’ll either blame ourselves for being so stupid and impressionable, or (more plausibly), take the easy route and blame the system that is obviously rigged (if not primarily designed) to perpetually humiliate us and finally leave, if merely out of exhaustion. We can be such a verklempt people, after all.
> Twelve to eighteen months-tops....
Interesting timing. Let’s see what happens in the meantime.
Right on, Editor. Like Ed Broadbent, Layton talked a good game with cakes and ale for all. Ruth Ellen Brouseau is simply a representative of what the NDP is: Just a bunch of bodies to fill those 103 green chairs in Parliament he won by fluke.
ReplyDeleteThat dead horse known as DA Bloc proved what it was, as the French language press put it, the candidates of village idiots that the French speaking Quebec electorate are. The sky is blue, the grass is green, DA Bloc Kebecwa are just blocs of wood (from the neck up) and their supporters are dead from the neck up, i.e., meat heads! There is no diplomatic way to put it when they blindly vote for candidates that are only known for the skill of breathing. That Ruth Ellen Brouseau practically sounds like she needs a breathing tutor having vacationed in the middle of a political campaign. It shows her commitment to the campaign. She'll address her new constituents, and they'll be yelling "EN FRANÇAIS!"
Now Layton is going to have a bunch of deadbeats pocketing a half million dollars each when the four years are over. Hopefully most of them won't end up qualifying for the platinum pension (that takes six years), but even then they'll get a lovely parting gift of about $80,000 apiece once they're rightfully kicked out. Lucky bastards...they've won the lottery!
It's not as if Layton will be badly done by in the end because he and his Missus will get THEIR pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Maybe they'll go back to their subsidized home to live out their remaining days. They'll certainly have free housing the next four years at Stornaway.
The other lucky shoe to drop in Layton's lap was the ultimate arrogance of the Liberal Party elite by putting Ignatieff at the helm in the first place. There was NO leadership convention. Like a family business where there is no heir apparent, the empire was left for him to destroy, and he did the job perfectly, à la Sydney Pascal of that long-gone hardware empire and Melvin Doberin of the Steinberg grocery empire. Two very successful family empires GONE because the second generation management didn't bother to invest time in picking an heir apparent or cashing out (i.e., selling the empires to bigger fish).
Now the Liberal caucus is bitterly bickering, and it's a vacuum that could kill the party as the PCs was and the aforementioned family empires. Like the PCs, maybe it's time to say good riddance. They've been around too long, they got too arrogant and this is their just desserts.
Layton and Mulcair are next! Livvie, too!
The NDP will end up being ripped apart much in the same way the Liberals have been. If the NDP pushes Quebec centric ideas in Ottawa, they'll pay for it in the rest of the country. If they don't do the usual Talk & Walk politics in Quebec. Well so long NDP in Quebec.
ReplyDeleteHarper and the Conservatives are going to be laughing for the next four years as they watch the self-destruction of the NDP.
...to Apparatchik:
ReplyDelete"…further proof that like uninformed people in most so-called “democracies”, we are much given to the steady stream of pop-analysis fed to us by some pundits and a complicit media. We’re suckers for pretty and self-serving packaging. The media can make or break a story, candidate, or idea. The very same instrument that killed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004 by looping one particularly exuberant campaign clip hundreds of times allowed Bush II to get elected twice."
Apparatchik, Fred Dalton Thompson is or was a U.S. congressman who threw his hat into the ring for the U.S. presidency last time around. He also dabbled in acting. In his role as D.A. Arthur Branch on Law & Order SVU, there was an episode about a congressman back stabbing his closest aid. At the end of the show, the legal staff discussed what transpired and Branch's last words on the show were: "Democracy is the worst form of politics...except for all the rest." Even democracy has its drawbacks: Ours is da Bloc Québécois!
The problem is that the "Press", or more widely - the Quebec elite, is pathologically ambitious. From these unfulfilled ambitions and the ever increasing insignificance in the context of the federation come resentment and bitterness.
ReplyDeleteMost of the problems this country had to face for the past 50 years came from the attempts of this over-ambitious elite to assert itself. And there may be more to come - after all, the power of francophone Quebeckers will be decreasing, not increasing across the country and even within the province. The beast is insatiable and impossible to appease, and it still has some influence over the Francophone population. It will continue to rattle the cage.
...to Adski: If we just sit around, put up and shut up, you're right. That is EXACTLY what will be the case. That's why I'm proposing a federal political party that asserts the English speaking majority, and, as Robert Libman put it in a recent Gazette article, standing up for the orphaned Anglophones of Quebec. Passive resistance MIGHT work, but who wants to hear the eternal whining, beefing, porking, and poultrying?
ReplyDelete"but who wants to hear the eternal whining, beefing, porking, and poultrying? "
ReplyDeleteBringing a hawkish party on the federal stage would only increase the whining. The whining is caused by the decreasing significance of Francophones in Canada, so only a reversal of this trend would solve this problem.
The most important thing for Canada is not to give in to blackmail anymore, and make no further concessions. Unlike you, I don't want any revenge to be enacted on Quebec. I just want Quebec to be treated as just another province - no worse and no better than the rest. So no more preferential treatment. No more sacred cows. No more bending over backwards. No more "distinct" societies. That's all I want to see before I start taking this country and this province seriously.
Its pretty simple really. Quebec did not vote for the Conservatives and do not deserve to be over-represented in cabinet. Only 6 seats from Kebec, don’t forget that Harper. We outside kebec gave you the majority, not Quebec!!!
ReplyDeleteWe can only hope that finally Quebec will be put in its place. You are just a province like Newfoundland, Alberta, Ontario…no different, nothing special other than the fact that you have spent the last 5 decades wiping out the English language and culture from the province with racist, anti-English language laws such as bill 22, 178, 101…This is a fact. Racism, intolerance, bigotry, ethnic language cleansing and human rights violations still going on in the province of Quebec.
I love the fact that you can have a majority without Quebec. You do not need to pander to Quebec any longer. Enough is enough. This province can not be satisfied period. They are a drain on the country, socially and fiscally. No more pandering to this province period. We are watching.
Majority rules ??? I guess we will see. Here is my wish list to fixing this country. Now let’s get to work repealing decades of bad expensive laws forced upon the country by tax and spend, scum bag, socialist, anti-English language, anti-BNA, bigoted, Quebecers. Repeal the charter, end forced phony expensive metis/french bilingualism, multiculturalism, lower/change immigration, eliminate equalization, ad the 30 new seats in Parliament (Ontario, Alberta, BC), reduce Kebecs seats, elected senate/or abolish – fixed terms (8 years max), fixed terms for MPs as well (8 year max), lower/reduce gold plated MP pensions, end subsidies to parties, lower all taxes, eliminate (not reduce) debt, reduce the size of government/RCMP…eliminate departments, public servant salary cap… Tell unions to rot in hell or Kebec. This would be nice start.
Get to work Harper; you have a majority, do something with it or else…you will lose money, and our votes, I guarantee it.
@Mississauga Guy
ReplyDeleteAt its most base, democracy is mob rule. Others before and better than me have referred to it as the tyranny of the majority. The bandwagon necessarily requires that an appreciable amount of noise first be made, followed by devoted adherence to dogmatic sets of principles whose practical effects we often fail to understand but, to the extreme, are willing to die to defend.
You refer to the Bloc as our problem. An Anonymous commented earlier on how we are a province of douchebags, a majority of which support the continued application of the French Language Charter. I didn’t bite then because I couldn’t find the link to complete a reply, but now I have. What’s interesting to note about our continued support for 101, irrespective of how well we know its ins and outs, is how perception and manipulation can be used to fire up the masses to a fever pitch.
Check out this interesting example for the effects of suggestibility and subtle manipulation on the public.
http://www.vigile.net/57-des-Quebecois-pour-l
This particular study was done by CROP, for MaBeau himself. Have a look. It turns out that people are biased if it is suggested that French is endangered. And they’re even more likely to be language hawks if they live farther away from Montreal (and presumably, much less bilingual and farther away from the evil Autonomous Oblast of Apostrophes S…)
Needless to say, this is an emotional debate whose very existence and survival is predicated on emotion, triumphalism, and spin rather than genuine compromise, inclusive cooperation, and assiduous vigilance.
...to adski: Re additional whining: Let them whine more, have tantrums and still threaten their separation! If they do separate, so be it. It is THEY who will hurt big-time being the sixth most indebted jurisdiction in the world.
ReplyDeleteIf they separate, NOOOOOOOOOOBODY will communicate with them in French. There WILL be an anti-French backlash and Newbies can stand on their heads over it (although I don't wish them any hardships--Atlantic people are good folks and I've had nothing but happy experiences with the people in that part of the world).
If Quebec attacks the ethnics post-separation, their money, business minds and assets will leave Quebec an even emptier shell than the one it has become since the shenanigans of the mid-70s began.
Canada is a pluralistic mosaic. Duceppe clearly stated Quebec is the opposite, à la the Americana melting pot. The vision described by Duceppe is "A Quebecker is a Quebecker is a Quebecker". Having been born, raised and educated there, I don't want to be like them...far from it! Same goes for the minorities. The kids who are forced to go to their French schools go, graduate and go study at the English CEGEPs and universities. Too, they read English books and magazines, watch English TV shows and listen to English radio.
This has been discussed time and time again. Despite all the attempted programming of the immigrants by successive Quebec governments, federalist and separatist, doesn't really matter. As Reed Scowen wrote in his book "Time to Say Goodbye" the Quebec government philosophy is immigrants who come to Quebec have NOT come to Canada--they HAVE indeed come to Quebec.
The Anglophone minority has been left to its own devices and this is NOT acceptable. The federal government has done precious little to come to the aid of the Anglophones in fear of rocking the boat and then facing retribution.
Status quo and letting Quebec just be an equal partner (which they don't want to settle upon) is not good enough. They wreaked far too much havoc to forget the past.
"Atlantic people are good folks and I've had nothing but happy experiences with the people in that part of the world)."
ReplyDeleteParce que vous connaissez tout le monde dans les provinces Atlantiques vous?Ben oui...Quel con!
Je ne connais aucun anglo aussi frustré(a vie) que vous de s'être fait montrer la porte de sortie parce qu'incapable ou trop entêté de ne pas vouloir apprendre le français...Tant pis pour vous Mister Donut!Vous méritez d'habiter a Messyssauga un pays de nobody ennuyant a mourir.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the situation is that the people getting the most airtime are the ones who vitriolically spew the most radical theories. The moderates, though considerable in number, are inevitably drowned out by the handful who have outfitted themselves with megaphones.
I’m reminded of extremist-led massacre-orgies that took place in the Muslim world a few years back, and to other similar contemporary manifestations of mortally absurd proportions, and I think a valuable principle emerges. If you cavalierly silence/kill/remove/purge everyone who disagrees with you, all while upping your own dogmatic ante, you’ll soon be left with scant few souls to rule over.
Revenge, often masquerading as a state based on affirmative action on one side while trivializing the nation-building excesses (if not failures) it has brought about on the other, hasn't worked for us thus far, and it doesn't take a scientist to tell you that if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.
Melting pot or mosaic? The paradigm and metaphor really don't matter, and counter-examples abound. Ever been to the southwest (U.S.) and been awestruck by the incredible presence of Spanish? Ever visited English Canada and thought, 'wow this is White as milk'? Ever been amazed at how diverse Montreal is despite our provincial government letting in about the same numbers of immigrants as B.C.?
There are often important discrepancies between how we wish to be perceived and how things bear out in real life.
I share adski's longing for a time when Quebec doesn't seek special treatment as some sort of entitlement or birthright, and can't reiterate enough his sentiment that exacting revenge upon Quebec – whether piecemeal or wholesale – is not the way to neutralize the true opponent we all face, no matter where we live, or in our state of mind.
...to Apparatchik:
ReplyDeleteThank you for your eloquent soliloquy. Like any faithful believer in democracy, I don't agree with all you say, but I'll dogmatically defend your right to say it.
I hope in one way or another the vengeful means Quebec society has exacted on the rest of Canada, especially those within their domain will lead to their ultimate consequence and the collectivity will rue the day for their past injustices.
Their revenge is the product of their own ignorance, an intergenerational collective ignorance they succumbed to for 200 years at the hands of their church and advantage-taking governments, namely the despotic Maurice Duplessis, assisted no less by the equally bigoted Abbé Lionel Groulx who is seemingly so revered he has Metro Stations, streets and mountains named after him.
I have nothing but irreverence for that racist cretin and those who have chosen to revere him.
Too bad the country bumpkins you speak of outside Montreal have the mentality of the American south where some people's heads are still back in the 19th Century, some of whom still wear pointed hoods to go with the points on top of their heads.
Trouble is, it seems they lead Quebec society. Certainly the way its successive governments act, that's the appearance they give the rest of society in far more sophisticated Montreal, but even Montreal is restricted and held back by moronic language zealots.
If you never saw it, on YouTube, there is a two-part 60 Minutes segment starring Morley Safer and the late Mordechai Richler, aired in February 1998. Instead of attacking the fascist Quebec bureaucracy in a deservedly vitriolic manner, Safer and Richler, seemingly two old fellow journalist buddies going back several decades, subtlely ridiculed the language police on matters like a parrot talking English, Matzogate (where a container of kosher matzo, an important food product marking the Jewish observance of Passover) and other assorted language fanaticism practised only in Quebec).
Only in Quebec can you find «Arrêt» signs, a noun on a sign that should contain an imperative. Even la République de France erects "Stop" signs. I thought Germany may use "Halt" signs, but they don't! Even the Scandanavian countries seem to use "Stop" signs, as do a host of other European nations.
The editor of this blog collected a series of pictures related to this matter several weeks ago.
Sorry, Apparatchik, it's hard for me to share your sentiments when stupid is what stupid does, and since Quebec DOES a lot of stupidity, then what IS Quebec?
"Its pretty simple really. Quebec did not vote for the Conservatives and do not deserve to be over-represented in cabinet. Only 6 seats from Kebec, don’t forget that Harper."
ReplyDeleteCorrection: Quebec elected only *5* seats for the Conservatives. There was an official recount last week and the NDP actually won in one riding! Not speculation, this is actual fact. Read it here:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Recount+gives+Quebec+seat+nine+votes/4785126/story.html
Now if that doesn't add insult to injury for Quebec.... Bahahaha!
"Safer and Richler, seemingly two old fellow journalist buddies going back several decades, subtlely ridiculed the language police on matters like a parrot talking English"
ReplyDeleteIt's of note that Richler was also a staunch critic of Canadian nationalism and of Zionism. He was despised by Canadian nationalists and Israeli nationalists as much as by Quebec nationalists.
That pretty much every Quebecker back then might have harbored nationalist sympathies is another story. For now, we can put it down to Quebec's precarious geopolitical situation. As the Nobel Prize winning writer of Polish-Lithuanian descent Czeslaw Milosz wrote in The Captive Mind, countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are known for their patriotism and even outright chauvinism but that's because of their unenviable location right next to the Russian giant that's just waiting to swallow them up. Milosz might have been an apologist for his beloved Lithuania, but to me the central question still remains - just because there is an explanation, does it mean that automatically there is an excuse? And just because you have a reason, does it mean that your behavior should be immune from criticism?
@Mississauga Guy:
ReplyDeleteI understand where you're coming from, and share a portion of your disgust.
But I think the last few years of comparative calm on the constitutional question could be put toward a genuine re-examining of our situation. Yes, it's the unresolved elephant in the room, but the less our moderate citizens feel threatened, the better the overall plane for a peaceful next step can be set.
This environment is an anathema to separatist agitators and collaborators, who seek (and often do) exaggerate minor occurrences to advance their cause. Fifty years ago, I would have been somewhat more easily sympathetic to the struggle for emancipation that many hoped the Quiet Revolution would bring to Quebec in general and to French-Canadians in particular.
I've already commented on how I think the Revolution went off the tracks when the nationalist element was allowed to become an integral factor in the mix, rather than a footnote. I stand by the belief that the nationalist agitators that seized the revolution for their own glory (and not the betterment of French Quebec) were not the natural successors of "Maître chez nous" but were rather on the more radical fringes of our society, and who, with the spirit of the time, exploited French-Canadian disaffection and desire for change and came to be accepted if not revered as authoritative fixtures in the "new" Quebec.
Although our political philosophy is driven by pride and emotion far more than it should be, we’re surprisingly more cautious about it than many others give us credit for. Consider how we eventually get fed up and cannibalize our own in a massive backlash. We might dislike the foreigners (i.e. those who aren’t ethnically “nous”), but we have a genetic predisposition turn on our own leadership even more. Witness our propensity to recycle and repackage old elements anew. Witness also the wholesale abandonment of a three-century-long staple that was an inextricable part of our identity, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Church’s stranglehold on our province. It’s the same gene that killed the Union Nationale. That same gene found nationalist expression in the Parti Québécois. It’s also the same gene that terrifies any would-be leader of that party, for he/she knows that the tenure is conditional and whimsical at best, and subject to the vicissitudes of circumstance and history. It’s (interestingly) also the same gene that causes the ultra-separatists in our ranks to label us a condemned and rightly castigated mediocre nation of weak-kneed wusses who are too afraid to tackle the “real challenge” of finally making it to the Promised Land.
I think our overcompensating (occasionally manifested in our traffic signage) is a natural reaction to our own insecurity. But rather than punish it, as you suggest, it benefits everyone to hasten the very real examination of our collective conscience – an exercise that I believe is forty years in coming – rather than find false comfort in imposing wave upon wave of crass partisan dogma on a population that is clearly less and less interested in the traditional political offerings.
to Apparatchik: There are times I wonder if this is your alias and you're really Rex Murphy! A very eloquent journalist, he is!
ReplyDeleteI suppose I can conclude you are a far more generous person than I am. I feel like a victim in all this. I wrote Prime Minister Harper recently about my "recommendations" for lack of a better term re Quebec. I noted at the end I may make this an open letter and am thinking of asking Editor to publish it.
I specifically reminded the PM how John James "Goldilocks" Charest duped Harper into helping his election cause last time around to the tune of $700 million and "Goldilocks" took this money to which people in Victoria, St. John's and yours truly in Mississauga and people from everywhere else in Canada ended up paying for in what proved to be a $700 million tax break for Quebecers. I certainly hope the next Equalization Payments review upcoming in 2014 (when Harper will have COMPLETE control over it), Charest's shenanigans will be remembered, and every dime of it recovered, and THEN some.
In that letter, I described how my grandparents who left sociopolitical persecutors in Eastern Europe (Russia and Poland) for the peaceful grounds of Montreal and the Eastern Townships. Both my grandfathers were self-employed most of their working years taking jobs away from nobody. My maternal grandfather hired locals in the Eastern Townships when jobs were very hard to come by. He died smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression, leaving his 22-year-old son with business assets pledged to the hilt.
With complete devotion, my uncle put his heart and soul into the interprises having himself and six other people to support. He turned the businesses around, employed «pur laine» Francophones during the Depression, ran them very successfully, but it all cost him a good two decades of his life. He worried and wondered at night how he would get through the next day.
My paternal grandparents at one time worked in factories to supply armaments for WWII, my father ENLISTED at the start of the war, and eventually my paternal grandfather became a self-employed shoemaker after the war ended until his retirement and passing not long thereafter.
All told, both sides of my family came overseas wtih very little, yet they didn't take jobs away from ANYBODY, except when my paternal grandparents collected paycheques contributing to the war effort. Their services at that time were badly needed. In peace time, they were self-employed, even employing others when jobs were very scarce. They were upstanding, law-abiding citizens who all contributed to the greater good of ALL Quebeckers.
In the meantime, too many Francophones used conscription as an alibi to (oh, yes) run and hide from doing what should have been their patriotic duty. HOW DARE they refer to WWII as "Britain's War" when it was THEIR former country that was captured and occupied by an evil, oppressive regime, yet it was Bratain, Canada and other allies that liberated THEM!
Sorry, pal, but MY family fully carried its weight and then some sacrificing for the greater good of Quebec that its majority inhabitants seem too preoccupied to show a single shred of gratitude!
The ingratitude, their making scapegoats of those who succeeded when they failed or were being duped by their church and despotic politicians don't enable me to turn the other cheek unlike you. NO WAY!
As far as I'm concerned, they're downright sick with envy because they were a failed, lost and digraced people, while those who managed to succeed were not the exploitive conquerors they were made out to be by the revisionists, but people who were not led astay by the exploitive leadership of the church and state. Enough is enough, for heaven sake!
"...Abbé Lionel Groulx who is seemingly so revered he has Metro Stations, streets and mountains named after him..."
ReplyDeleteEt que pensez-vous d'amherst le sanguinaire?
Lionel Groulx n'a jamais massacré personne!
...to Indigène: "Lionel Groulx n'a jamais massacré personne!"
ReplyDeleteNeither did Adolf Hitler, but he ordered and led an anti-Semitic charge that led to the death of 6,000,000 Jews. Groulx created Nazi sympathizers in Quebec, including H.R.H. P. E. Trudeau who was known in his youth to go around riding the mortorcycle his rich daddy bought him while wearing swastikas on his clothing.