Montreal Police Get the Respect They Deserve

Lately the Montreal Police have been complaining that they are not getting much respect from the public and have stooped to begging authorities to make the practice of insulting them illegal. If the request wasn't so sad it would be laughable. Perhaps they should be reminded of the old adage that says that respect can only be earned, not demanded.
Most large metropolitan police forces are not wildly popular, but most are respected as tough, businesslike and for the most part professional. Unfortunately our Montreal police force cannot make that claim on any level.
For several months now they have been wearing camouflage pants and red baseball caps as a pressure tactic in their ongoing labour negotiation.
If the Police brotherhood thought that the public would be so offended by the garish wardrobe that they'd demand a settlement, they must have been smoking some of the stuff that they sometimes confiscate.
Truth be told, we couldn't care less. Montrealers look upon their police as clowns and if they want to dress the part, so be it. Disrespecting their own uniform is the clearest of signals that the cops themselves have no respect for their organization.
Why should we?

Whenever I see a Montreal cop wearing camouflage, I am reminded of the burlesque, clichéd scene in the movies wherein a Mexican Federale cop stops the innocent tourist. You know, the overweight, badly groomed, sweaty cop with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, wearing a slovenly uniform and driving an equally beat up police car.

"Señor Gringo, pleease step out of the car."

Think about the pang of fear that we whites associate with that type of a stop and now picture our very own police in camaflauge, rousting a group of blacks for committing the dangerous crime of shooting dice. There's little doubt that had the group been white and in an east end park, the cops wouldn't even have gotten out of the car. At worst they'd have rolled down the car window and shouted at the group to beat it.

Yes there is crime in Montreal North and yes blacks are involved, but it doesn't mean that every black is a criminal and should be treated as such.
It is a fact that our police stop and harass black people at an inordinate and unacceptable rate. It's sad that black mothers must school their children in how to behave when stopped by police. Did your mother do that?

Looking 'suspicious' is enough probable cause for our boys in camouflage when you are black. Ask the two Montreal Alouettes, defensive-end Alain Kashama and cornerback Mark Estelle, who were driving one evening on Notre Dame St. when they were stopped for allegedly failing to use a turn signal. Of course, the situation escalated when the two men furiously objected to the frivolous stop based on their colour. Does it sound disturbing familiar to the Villanueva tragedy?

I ask myself when I was last stopped for failing to make a signal?.....Never.
I've driven the city street for forty years and cannot recall one time having been stopped for no good reason by the police.

The Montreal Police will not earn public respect until they start acting in a professional and dignified manner and by treating all citizens equally, regardless of ethnicity, language or colour.
It's as simple as that and no legislation is going to change it.
The Montreal Police force's treatment of blacks and ethnics is not the only reason they are widely disrespected, but it is the most egregious.

Habs Meltdown Painful

It's probably a sign of the times but in the old days a car on Sherbrooke St. adorned with a Bruins flag wouldn't last long before being vandalized.
Never mind the world economic meltdown, the Canadiens collapse hurts a lot worse.

If you are, or know a true Canadiens fan, (and who doesn't) these last two weeks have been particularly painful. Watching the Canadiens perform recently is like attending the proverbial train wreck. Problem is, the consensus around the water cooler is that things are not looking to get better and this year's season looks grim with a distinct possibility that the team won't make the playoffs.
Mind you, not everyone is upset about the situation. Commentators at the Toronto Sports Network (TSN) are enjoying a healthy case of schadenfreude, recounting in delicious detail the problems that beset Nos Glorieux.

Pierre McGuire's colour commentary on last week's broadcast of the Canadiens/Avalanche game was particularly painful. True the Canadiens played poorly, but they did win the game and while they deserved to be called out for poor play, his comments were beyond the pale. This from a Maple Leafs fart-catcher who once put a positive spin on a 5-1 Leafs loss.
Why are the Canadiens so bad? Except for the injured Lang, they are essentially the same team that played so well for the first forty games. This usually means that there is either dissension in the ranks or that the coach has lost control of the team or can no longer motivate them.

Turning to Gainey and Carbonneau, it's plain to see that they are in total panic (though you'd never know it from Gainey's poker face), making moves that even a part-time fantasy league coach can recognize as dumb and desperate.
Their latest move is sitting the struggling Alex Kovalev. Do they think this will improve the motivation of this moody Russian or increase his value on the trading scene? Look how well the exercise worked with MICHAEL RYDER!
Next, the logic in acquiring Mathieu Schnieder, a player past his prime and incidentally one whom they traded away while in his prime, is to say the least, somewhat suspect.
And finally, using the Hamilton Bulldogs as punishment for under-performing players doesn't seem much of a plan either.
It's hard to say if management will last the season. Montreal's jock-sniffing sports writers have always acted as an extension of the team, choosing to report the positive, lest they be banished from the dressing room.

Montreal is not Toronto, one thing is sure, soon the knives will be out.

Anglo Montreal Blog -First to Predict Cancellation of Battle Re-Enactment

Anglo Montreal's first prediction of the year comes true.
In a post on January 31 ,2009, Anglo Montreal was the first blog or newspaper to publicly predict the cancellation of the re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham next year.

"Someone in Ottawa will get the message, the event will be canceled, it is a matter of time. Let's hope it's sooner than later."

Celine Dion - Francophone Impersonator

Celine Dion has begun another set of sold out concerts at the Bell Centre as described in the review in by T'CHA DUNLEVY in today’s The Gazette. The show is reported to be the same one she gave last year and one that I had the dubious pleasure of attending.

My wife is a fan and when her friend offered up a gracious invitation to a corporate box, I could only smile and accept my fate.

Music aside, my dislike for Dion goes back to her behavior at the beginning of her career and her performance at the concert last year confirmed that she is the same two-faced person she always was.

After her early success as a French artist, her manager, Rene Angelil sensing her world-wide potential, positioned her to conquer the North American market. After learning English and releasing her first English album “Unison” she became a bona fide rising star on the English language pop scene.

Some of her faithful Quebec fans called her a sell-out and Dion defended herself with an unpardonable insult to the English.

The annual Félix Award show salutes Quebec artists. The gala event is a big deal in Quebec, but nowhere else. It is shown exclusively on the French language network and in 1992, it was there where she decided to show her “French” face by pulling a grandstand stunt. After winning the 'English Artist of the Year' for her English language album, she marched up to the stage and refused to accept the award, claiming that she was and forever would be a French artist, not an English one. Hmmm.
Guided by her astute manager Rene Angelil, her career exploded after an association with fellow Canadian super producer David Foster and she quickly became what she promised she would never become - an English artist.
Her album art work reveals the transformation from French artist to English. She dropped the accent ‘egeu’ (‘é’) in her first name and adopted the English pronunciation of her name- ‘CEE-LEAN- DEE-ON’ from the French version- ‘SAY-LEAN DAY-ON’

After an exhausting career, the Angelil family settled down to family life in a luxury Las Vegas estate as Celine fulfilled a five year run an an Anglophone artist at Caesar Palace. She became the darling of entertainment media and cleverly pushed her career onto the world stage.

Each year, she returned to perform in Montreal, where she would magically transform herself back into a unilingual Francophone.

Notwithstanding the sizable percentage anglophones in the audience, the Montreal concert is a uniquely French affair with nary a ‘how-de-do’ in English.
The opening opening act, an impersonator who did a take on various French artists, was the harbinger that English is not welcome. Opting for a bunch of weak French songs instead of her mega English hits and her exclusive French interaction with the audience is meant to maintain the fiction that she is a francophone artist.

That ship sailed long ago.

Viewing Patterns of Anglophones vs. Francophones

This week's debut of the latest round of 'Star Acadamie' (a Francophone American Idol) on the TVA network drew an amazing 1,700,000 viewers. It means that almost one out of every four Quebeckers watched the show.

Looking at the ratings for both English and French shows reveals some interesting facts.The penetration level of Quebec produced shows is startling compared to the English side.
There are three English Canadians for every French Canadian, but francophones in absolute numbers watch more locally produced content than anglophones.

Using statistics for the week of January 26 to February 1 we see that;

• Nine out of the ten most viewed shows by Francophones were produced in Quebec. The only American show to break the top ten was a dubbed version of 'HOUSE'
• The ten most viewed shows by English Canadians were all produced in the USA.
• The top 10 shows produced in Quebec all drew over a million viewers.
• Only two Canadian produced shows (Rick Mercer & Corner Gas) drew over a million viewers.

Francophones have more choices when it comes to Canadian programming. Amazingly, in absolute numbers, a Canadian production company would be better off producing a show in French rather than in English, they will generally have a larger viewership.

Of course the wide variety of programming available on the English side splits the audience, but the penetration of local programming on the French side makes those shows much more influential. A prime example is the Sunday night talk show called 'Tout le monde en parle'. Artists, athletes and politicians face a round table panel and discuss current events. The show generally pulls in around a million and a half viewers and may be the most influential show in Canada.