With the unprecedented collapse of the Montreal Canadiens, out of the playoffs before the snow even falls, a dejected and angry Quebec media has turned instead its attention to the blood sport of bashing Anglophones, which has reached a dangerous tipping point sparked by the CEO of Air Canada's lack of French during a yearly review.
The visceral outrage in the French media is wholly disproportionate to the slight and has engendered nothing less than mass language hysteria.
Politicians have piled onto the wagon of righteous indignation led by our illustrious Prime Minister calling it "an unacceptable
situation,'' noting that the minister in charge of official languages is
''following up.''
The irony of Trudeau's complaint represents the ultimate hypocrisy, having himself appointed a Governor-General who cannot speak French either.
Why a non-French-speaking CEO of a for-profit company is less acceptable than a non-French-speaking Governor-General begs a response.
The apoplectic French Quebec media reaction can be understood by the very painful truth that was laid bare by Mr. Rousseau,
Firstly, that Air Canada is an English corporation, run completely in English and a company that would have decamped its head office to Toronto years ago had it not been blackmailed into staying in Montreal by the Caisse de Depot.
The second painful truth laid bare is that yes, you still can live and work in Montreal without speaking French.
The Horror of Horrors.
Mr. Rousseau can be credited, like the fabled little boy who declared "that the emperor hath no clothes" in exposing the obvious language reality, one that nationalists refuse to face by pretending it isn't true.
It is the same nonsense whereby eliminating English signage in Montreal is meant to foster the fiction that Montreal is other than a bilingual city.
The echo chamber nature of Francophone media is best demonstrated by the universal adoption of the word "Rhodesian" to describe Anglos like Mr. Rousseau who don't speak French or activists like myself who speak French perfectly but who reject the notion that Quebec is a "nation," and that Quebec is a "French Nation" or that everyone living in Quebec is "obliged to "Respect the French majority"
Journalists and opinion writers have invoked the scourge of "Rhodesian" an alternate term for "White Supremacist" to describe Anglos and ethnics who don't abide.
My favourite "Rhodesian" reference comes from the tiresome ethnocentric blowhard Mathieu Bock-Coté, who referred to the black Mayoral candidate Balarama Holness as a white supremacist... "a Neo-Rhodesian." no less! He also wrote this:
"Sadly, it is an old habit among radical Anglos, who have always behaved like local Rhodesians, to criminalize our collective aspiration to protect our language and place it at the heart of collective life."All of these journalists have no problem describing Quebec Anglos as toxic white supremacists but paradoxically whine about Quebec-bashing in the English media.
I wonder if they'd be okay with the Montreal Gazette or the National Post publishing an opinion piece where Quebec language militants were described as "fanatical language Nazis"
Quebec is living a language fantasy, one woven by nationalists and sovereigntists which the media and its populist politicians have wholeheartedly embraced.
Quebec is a nation
Quebec is a French nation
Minorities owe the francophone majority respect
The French language is in decline.
Not speaking French is contemptuous of the majority
Ottawa mistreats and disrespects Quebec
Quebec culture is superior.
The English media bashes Quebec
blah...blah blah.
I'll counter these arguments in a future post but let me leave with a fanciful opinion piece written by Marc Bellemare, an ex-Justice minister under Jean Charest who demonstrates the ability to completely spin reality.
After 1976, several Quebecers boycotted Sun Life, which had announced the transfer of its head office to Ontario in response to René Lévesque's rise to power. In 1978, the boycott of confectioner Cadbury, who moved production to Ontario after 60 years in Montreal, hurt and served as a warning to many others.
Like me, will you dare to boycott Air Canada whenever you have the chance? Marc Bellemare
Unlike Sun Life most slinked out of the province quietly and without fanfare, unnoticed and unremarked upon by a government and media that wished to whitewash the exodus.
The next time a language hardliner takes a less convenient or more expensive airplane to Miami in order to boycott Air Canada, they'll be doing it board an airline that cares even less about French.
And we all know, it ain't gonna happen, anyways because talk is cheap.
At any rate, the language delirium has struck our Premier rather hard.
Buoyed by the enthusiastic embrace of his hard-line and discriminatory policies Legault has lost his marbles and channelled the mythical King Canute who set his throne by the seashore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes.
Our illustrious Premier has complained that there aren't enough Quebecers (read-Francophone Quebecers) in the National Hockey League and has hatched a plan to change the situation.
