Visit Restaurant Madrid

I've been travelling Autoroute 20, the highway that connects Montreal to Quebec City for the last 30 years. The road is pretty boring with just about the only feature of interest being the flamboyant Restaurant Madrid, perched over the highway on a little bluff with it's eye catching assortment of dinosaur replicas and monster trucks displayed in it's parking lot.

This week I finally decided to stop and was impressed by the lengths that the owners have gone to make their rather ordinary highway restaurant interesting and fun.

The restaurant has an interesting history which you can read on the bilingual web site. I like the respect that the owners have for tourists, being one of the only restaurants along the road offering full service in English.

You've got to admire the spunk, they even have a webcam that shows the inside of the diner. Innovative but not that interesting a sight!

The food was okay, but what caught my eye was a real ZOLTAR machine tucked up against the wall near the entrance.
You might remember ZOLTAR from the Tom Hanks movie "BIG"

This ZOLTAR offered up advice in French with a decidedly Italian accent. He also sported a modern operator's headset!

If you have the time, make the stop.

The restaurant is located just about half way between Quebec city and Montreal

Quebec is 47th out of 60...arghhh!...

In a study entitled "Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States" prepared by the Fraser Institute, Quebec didn't fare so well.

The paper studied;

"Labour performance, such as job creation, unemployment, and productivity, which compares Canadian provincial and US state labour market performance."

Judging the 50 American States combined with the 10 Canadian provinces, Quebec ranked 47th out of 60.

It isn't surprising that Quebec did so poorly, the atrocious placement is largely a result of the province's abysmal productivity rate. The Province's overly generous time-off work programs, such as parental leave, and extended maternity leave, results in Quebeckers working less.

If it weren't for Newfoundland, who were 55th, we'd have the worst performance in Canada.

How did other Canadian province's fare?

Alberta was Number 1 out of the 60 provinces and states.
Yup! - Number 1 in all of North America.

It's somewhat depressing.

The Rest of Canada? Here's how the provinces rank...

Alberta #01
Saskatchewan #08
British Colombia #09
Manitoba #21
Ontario #35
New Brunswick #39
PEI #41
Nova Scotia #45
Quebec #47
Newfoundland #55
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Talk about low productivity, a story about a City of Montreal employee in Saturday's Journal de Montreal may be the worst case of an unproductive worker that I've ever heard of.

Jean-Claude Bourdon, was employed by the City of Montreal since 1990, as an inspector of fire hydrants. His job was to let the water flow out of the hydrant for a few minutes to see if it worked properly.

He was to inspect between 15 and 20 hydrants per day, in a well defined territory. His shift started at 7 AM and ended at 4 PM, four days a week.

Apparantly his behavior came under suspicion and his employer put him under surveillance.

A GPS device was also placed aboard the vehicle, which was provided by the City.

What his bosses found out was much worse than they imagined.

An analysis of the GPS reports showed that some days, he spent 10 minutes at work, others 28, others 30 or 60 minutes.

When confronted, he told his boss,'it wasn't a big deal and anyways he had a house and a Jeep to pay for."

The City fired him in 2005.

Mr. Bourdon then challenged his dismissal, complaining that the city had no right to watch him using GPS and that the City had encroached on his privacy.

It has taken over four years to have that termination confirmed.

It's a good example why Quebec is 47th out of 60.

Mean-Spirited Bus Driver Typical of Language Zealots

Last week's incident wherein a Montreal City bus driver got into it with a visiting student from Pakistan is not atypical when French language zealots decide that confrontation is a good way to defend the French language.

If you missed the story, read about it here.

On a city bus passing through the predominantly English community of Côte Saint -Luc, a visiting Pakistani student studying at McGill, asked the bus driver an innocent enough question- 'What time is it?' in English.

She replied in English, "I don't speak English."

To which he replied, "But you just spoke to me in English!"

The driver became annoyed and stopped the bus and called the police claiming that the passenger was 'aggressive'

To make a long story short, the cops came, emptied the bus and sent the grouchy driver on her way.
Passengers who were put off the bus complained that the next bus skipped the stop, obviously on instructions from the first aggrieved bus driver, further extending their ordeal. As result some were inconvenienced and even late for work. More evidence that the driver was mean-spirited.

Now the driver was within her rights not to speak English, it isn't part of the job description, but....

Clearly she was a xenophobe or a language zealot, looking for a confrontation, rather than satisfying a customer and doing her job, which is serving the public as best she could.

50% on Francophone Montrealers are bilingual and for those that deal with the public, the percentage is much, much, higher. There's every likelihood that the driver could very well have answered the customer's question, had she made the effort.

But let's us assume that she truly didn't understand English. What would a reasonable driver do in that situation?

There were a least a dozen bilingual people on the bus and all she had to do was to call out in French for someone to help out this guy who spoke only English. Easy as pie!

Instead, she chose to pick fight and for that she should be censured.

Her case is rare but not unusual for the minority of French language zealots who validate their existence as language crusaders through confrontations such as these.

Most francophone Montrealers who work with the public are keen to use their English and proud to offer service in English when required. This story shouldn't tarnish the vast majority of Montreal bus drivers who do a good job and try their best to help out customers in both English and French.

I guarantee you that for every negative French/English story as described above, there are thousands and thousands of incidents where francophones offer superb service in English.

My 80 year old plus mother was recently rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night by the publicly-run Urgences Santé Ambulance service. The francophone attendants did a fabulous job of ministering to her and they did so in English, as a matter of routine. Bravo! Fantastic!

Unfortunately, there's a small group of French language militants who religiously seek out violations of the language law and 'illegal' use of English with a dedication and passion that would make a Spanish Inquisitor blush.

My first experience (rather my future wife's) with just such a language zealot was over 35 years when she bought a train ticket in Montreal's Central Station.

When she asked for a ticket to the 'Two Mountains' station, (a railroad stop near Ste. Eustache), the ticket agent turned surly and lectured her harshly that even when speaking in English, the station is properly called 'Deux Montagnes.' "Proper names" he sneered, "are never translated literally."

"Great!" I thought, when she told me the story "A language lesson from a ticket agent!"

I told my wife to pay no mind, the agent was just another language crusader who exemplifies the principle that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He was not only rude and disrespectful, but also dead wrong in his assertion.

"You should have asked the idiot ticket seller, if he admonishes francophones when they request tickets to "LES ETATS UNI", because in accordance to his own criterion only "THE UNITED STATES" is proper!"

haha!!!!

UQAM To Offer English Courses

Unable to attract enough foreign students for courses in French ( Why? One may ask) the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) is trying a novel approach. This fall the university's l'École des sciences de la gestion (ESG) will be offering six science courses in English.

Get ready for a new skirmish in the eternal Quebec war to defend the French language.

Already Mario Beaulieu of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste (SSJB) has said that 'the bilinguisation of UQAM is unacceptable.'

Michel Laporte, first vice-president of the Syndicat des professeurs de l'Université du Québec à Montréal (SPUQ), the union that represents the school's professors, says that the move contradicts the mission of integrating immigrants to francophone culture.

Look for fireworks before this one is over, it's happened before.

When John Abbott College decided to abandon courses in aeronatics, CEGEP Édouard-Montpetit in Longueuil decided to offer English language courses in aircraft maintenance as well as French at it's affiliated school based at St. Hubert airport.
l'École nationale d'aéronautique de Saint-Hubert will offer English courses to English students only, those coming out of the English school system.

It seems like a sweet arrangement, the school could use the extra students at the underused airport. The whole arrangement makes eminently good sense. But for language crusaders it was a dastardly attempt to pry the door open to bilingualism.

Back to the UQAM offering classes in English;

Is it an admission that foreign students just don't see French as useful in the business world?

It is a sad commentary that the school can't even attract foreign French students to the business program, considering that they benefit from reduced tution, because they are francophones.

Michelle Obama - This Empress Has no Clothes!

It's bad enough to see the American media write fawning and flattering articles about Michell Obama's supposed good looks and fashion sense, all of which is patently ridiculous, but when Canada's own Globe and Mail runs a front page photo spread (last Friday), it's time for bloggers to say what the mainstream press won't.

Michell Obama is not pretty.
Michelle Obama is not fashionable.

Pretending that she is what she is not, is a dis-service to the public who look to the media for honest reporting.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really care about her looks or lack thereof, but when the Globe presents her as a fashion plate, someone has to call them out. Why on earth did this monstrously ugly photo end up on page 1 of the Globe and Mail and why is the newspaper giving so much free publicity to J.CREW.



I had to scan this image from my morning newspaper because the online version of the Globe and Mail had the good sense not to include the picture with the story, a wise aesthetic choice but a bit strange considering that it is key to the story.

Globe retailing reporter Marina Strauss has written one of the worst puff pieces I have ever seen and the newspaper should be ashamed to foist this garbage upon us.

I'm no fashion maven, but any red-blooded male can tell what is pretty and who looks good in their clothes.
Take a look at France's first lady Carla Bruni;

That's more like it. How about a photo spread on her? By the way, I bet she doesn't wear J.Crew

How does this picture of Spanish Princess Letizia and Carla Bruni walking up the stairs of Zarzuela Palace outside Madrid strike you?



Ummmm! Talk about poetry in motion. Now go back to the picture of Michelle Obama at the top of the page.

I rest my case....

Still don't believe me?
Show the above picture of Michelle Obama to any 10 random men and I bet not one of them will tell you that the package is the least bit sexy, flattering or appealing. Not a chance....

If anything the photo convinced me to dissuade my wife from ever donning anything offered by J. Crew. argh.......

At any rate, why the Globe would write a fashion story about the US First Lady is beyond me. They'd be better off writing a story on the keen fashion sense of Stephen Harper's wife, who's name is.....?

I make no apologies to Michelle Obama for the insult, she has portrayed herself as something she clearly isn't. The doting US press reminds me of the famous fable of The Emperor's New Clothes. Why on earth is the Canadian press complicit in the illusion?

If the Globe and Mail is keen on writing these stories, may I humbly suggest their next subject, a woman who is already inspiring others to copy her keen fashion sense.


 
See:

Michelle Obama Needs First Lady Lessons

Michelle Obama is a Plain Jane