Royals Protest by Quebec Miltitants a Crashing Bore

Once more the self-important, paper tigers of RRQ has threatened to disrupt a royal visit, this time that of Prince William and his soon to be wife Kate Middleton, this summer.

Read: Radical Quebec nationalists vow to give honeymooning royal couple a royal pain

The real question is -Who cares?

The Royals are no longer the symbol they once were, not in Britain, not in Canada and certainly not in Quebec.

Fifty-two years ago as a young lad, my mom dragged me off to greet young Queen Elizabeth, who was in the midst of the greatest Royal tour of Canada ever, a 45 day coast to coast visit that brought her to Montreal and a stop at the St. Justine Childrens Hospital on busy Cote St. Catherine Boulevard. The well-wishers were lined six-deep for kilometres in each direction and as her motorcade passed by ever so slowly, I was prompted to furiously wave my paper red ensign. Interestingly, the visit by young Queen Elizabeth went extremely well in Quebec, where she was actually praised in the press and referred to as 'sympathique' by the Montreal Matin newspaper.

Sounds a little ridiculous today.

Few of us care about the Royals, other than those predisposed to celebrity fan magazines, where one can live the glamorous life vicariously.

For many of us, the only time we pay any attention at all, is when a Royal marriage is melting down or when they act rather foolishly in public and then with a cruel sense of schadenfreude, we take perverse delight in the very public humiliation.
There are very few of us left who view the Royals as some sort of dashing symbol of British imperial power or alternately, depending on one's point of view, as a vile representation of colonialist power.
They are in reality just not that important.

Canada's relationship with the monarchy continues to fade and truthfully, we maintain the tradition more out of politeness than anything else.
Like our membership in the Commonwealth of Nations (which has officially dropped the "British Commonwealth' moniker) we can ask ourselves why on Earth we remain a member.
Membership in that organization has us rubbing elbows with tin pot dictatorships and countries that routinely advocate killing  homosexuals (Uganda). The Commonwealth Games is a celebration of also-rans that is embarrassingly un-competitive. The last edition in India was an a utter flop and a considerable humiliation for the host, unable to cope with the complication of holding an international event of that magnitude.

To Canada, the monarchy and the Commonwealth are the past, a historical reminder of the way things were.

So what is it about the royal visit that has the RRQ so annoyed, other than the fact that each Canadian taxpayer (Quebeckers included,) contributes about a buck-fifty each per year for their upkeep. Hardly something to riot over, I'd imagine.
Even the radical Jeunes Patriotes du Quebec said that the royal visit was a non-issue for them.

The RRQ is a sad little collection of coffee house revolutionaries, too chickenshit to cause any real damage and this by their own admission. The fact that they have promised to keep things civilized makes them about as interesting as a bunch of civil servants conducting a protest march over job security.

Its hard for the organization to muster 100 people and so with a little forethought and planning the police could easily deflect any inconvenience the group hopes to achieve.

By picking a large venue, outdoors on Mont Royal or in the old Port, for example, with more than one entrance and exit, the effectiveness of the small demonstration could be neutralized.
Last time the police played right into the demonstrators hands by failing to block off two streets leading to the armoury where Prince Charles and Camilla visited. Ten cops, and correctly placed barricades was all it should have required but alas, the Montreal police are not known for stellar crowd control.

In the old days of the FLQ, Quebec revolutionaries sat in taverns, smoked Gitanes and drank from large brown bottles of Molson. Today our pseudo-revolutionaries sit in Van Houtte drinking $5 Lattes and munching on croissants.
The RRQ are a harmless set of twits, who huff and puff. They should be ignored.

While on the subject of pseudo-revolutionaries, a small article in the news caught my attention.
Do you remember our good friend Jean-Roch Villemaire who was convicted of crimes related to vandalization of anglophone candidates political signs because they were in English?

Read my post; Quebec Radical Admits to Crime, Then Pleads Innocent

Well after lying low after his conviciton, he re-emerged as the head of the Mouvement Nationaliste Révolutionnaire Québécois (MNRQ) a neo-fascist movement, which proposes the elimination of English from Quebec as well as an end to immigration. Thrown in for good measure is a heaping helping of anti-Zionism.

Recently his announcement that his organization would participate in the boycott of Le Marcheur freaked out the PAJU, who didn't want to be seen allied with the right-wing supremacist organization.
They issued this press release which referred to MNRQ as Nazis, and called a temporary halt to the boycott. LINK

Following virulent denunciations in the press, including that of Francoise David of Quebec solidaire, Mr. Villemaire announced that he was tired of being vilified and misjudged. In a final statement before shuttering the organization the MNRQ announced.

"We can draw the necessary conclusions from this adventure. The forces of status quo are powerful. The demonization campaign orchestrated by the Zionist lobby towards Jean-Roch Villemaire and MNRQ has unfortunately been victorious. We lost a battle but we have not lost the war! "

Good to his word, the website has been shut down and hopefully Mr. Villemaire will fade to black.
He was a dangerous little fellow.

Not so the RRQ, a harmless group of wannabee revolutionaries who are about as popular as they are dangerous. They are actually amusing casting their empty threats with mock indignation. Perhaps when they are finished with the Royals they can launch a protest against the Catholic Church, the Equality Party and other irrelevant and spent forces.

By the way, when they do protest the Prince's visit, I hope they will improve on the poor syntax displayed on the protest placards (see above) they brandished last time. Maybe they should hire someone who could advise them on the proper use of English!

Péladeau Slays the Union Dragon

It took two long years, but the Battle for the Journal de Montreal is over.

This weekend the union finally admitted what everyone already knew, that they were toast.

Deciding to put an end to the agony, the union accepted by a margin of 64% to accept an offer they rejected by 90% last October.

For the 265 workers locked out, only about 65 will return to work, the others made redundant, but walking away with around $100,000 in termination payments. Still not bad for getting crushed.

Dejected union leaders sounded like the late Ayatollah Khomeini who in accepting Iran's ceasefire and end to the hostilities with Iraq, described it like 'Drinking a cup of poison.'

Union leader, Raynald Leblanc, described it as a day of mourning and André Fortin, a CSN representative blamed the scabs that were permitted to work by crossing the picket line electronically.

But his bitterest denunciation was aimed at the public which refused to heed calls for a boycott of the newspaper, which actually saw circulation and advertising revenue increase during lockout.
To the union, it seemed that the public was siding with Pierre-Karl Péladeau but truth be told, most people didn't give a hoot, one way or the other. It was perceived quite rightly as a battle between a powerful union and a powerful corporation and so to the public, it seemed that they had no dog in this fight.

The reality is that the JdeM has become a better newspaper with the 'professionals' gone.

Before the lockout, the focus of the newspaper was to bash anglophones with such wonderful articles such as this pearl; "Sorry I don't speak French," an article wherein the paper sent out a reporter pretending to be unlingually English, to apply for about 20 minimum wage jobs in Montreal's downtown. Since the reporter landed 16 of the jobs, it was determined by the newspaper that French was on the decline.
A Montreal Gazette reporter Andy Riga countered the article with his own unscientific test which proved quite the opposite. It's a good read.

But back to the knitting.....
Ever since the employees were locked out, the paper has improved dramatically.

The QMI agency that PKP set up to provide alternate, content has done a bang-up job and the stories are crisper, the graphics more exciting and the exposés balanced and devastatingly on point.

The younger Journal writers sensed what the older locked out veterans hadn't noticed, that bashing anglos was no longer something that most readers were particularly interested in. Truth be told, other issues have long surpassed the traditional anglo/francophone chicane, which has, over the years considerably weakened. The old stories of 'Speak white' and Simon Legree English bosses are gone and no longer a fair representation of every day Montreal life.

Perceptions have changed and if anything the new 'persons of interest' are the immigrants who 'appear' to be taking over the city and those religious-nicks demanding reasonable accommodations.

But by far the biggest change in the JdeM is balance, with the paper hiring columnists that are separatist, right wing 'tea party conservatives,' as well as middle-of-the-roaders. It's an eclectic mix that has Gilles Proulx writing opposite Eric Duhaime and it makes for good reading.

That being said, nothing but nothing, signals the new direction of the paper like the very popular and almost daily attack on government waste and all manner of politicians. Nobody is spared.
Each week, we are treated to delicious stories of civil servants wasting our money. Unionized government workers are given a very special rough ride with stories showing them loafing, sleeping and attending unproductive feel-good events on the public dime.
Politicians of all stripes are mocked with a decidedly sarcastic tone which the public seems to adore! 

A new an wildly popular feature is the weekly list of grants given out by the ever generous provincial government.

GREAT STUFF!

Pierre-Karl Péladeau has proven one thing with his lockout. That a better product could be put out for less money, once the union is busted.  It's a dangerous precedent, even with Quebec's anti-scab laws.

Bosses stuck with unproductive, overpriced unionized shops will look to win some sort of relief.
Although they can't hire replacement workers, there are other strategies.

I recently visited a friend's factory where he proudly told me that his union problems were a thing of the past. When threatened with unionization he fired all the employees and contracted out. Now the workers belong to another company. If they go on strike, it's not against his business and he's free to hire another sub-contractor.

I know of another factory that hires two different ethics group that compete with each other for jobs in the factory. The internal competition between the groups for supremacy keeps the union at bay. Any unionization threat will be countered by more jobs going to the ethnic group that promises loyalty.

The new Quebec......

Further reading;
Pierre-Karl Peladeau Poised to Become Canada's Next Media Scion

Pauline Marois' Losing Conditions and Other Nonsense

So it's Friday and perhaps time to wrap up the week with a couple of mini-stories that don't have enough girth to merit a separate post. 

Pauline Marois Declares negotiating strategy

One of the most basic rules of negotiating is not to let your opponent know your strategy beforehand. It's something Pauline Marois apparently never learned, but perhaps should have, considering that her strategy to win support for sovereignty is so ridiculous.
Madame Marois has told a PQ meeting that since 'winning conditions' don't seem to be in the offing any time soon, she'll boost support for sovereignty by entering into bad faith negotiations with Ottawa, the purpose of which is to end up in protracted arguments that will somehow fuel support for sovereignty.

"....she intends to make demands for new powers within Canadian federalism in such fields as culture in the hope they will be refused, provoking crises in Quebec-Ottawa relations that will boost support for secession.
"We're finished with the winning conditions," she told a PQ regional convention," LINK

Pauline Marois: "Mr. Harper, I demand that we enter into negotiations to return more power to Quebec and I'm telling you right now that I won't agree to anything, no matter what!"

Stephen Harper: "Hmm...."

Anybody else see any problem with this plan?

Language cops get new Boss

The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) got a new boss Louise Marchand who is promising renewed vigor and more transparency in protecting the French language.
What's interesting about this?....nothing at all.

But I wanted to publish her picture because she looks like a corpse and has a smile worthy of the WAX museum...... eeeks..

Amir Khadir gets a taste of his own medicine

For someone who has tried to  have a myriad of anti-Israel motions passed in Quebec's Parliament, the  Assemblee nationale, Amir Khadir felt the sting of being the object of just such a motion himself.

A motion put forward by all three of the other political parties representing all the members of the House except for Mr. Khadir, condemned the boycott of the shoe store by the left wing organization PAJU.

To add insult to injury the motion reiterated the Parliament's support for the cooperation agreement with Israel signed by the government of Israel several years ago. LINK

"Although blocked by the sole member of Québec solidaire, "said Director General of Quebec/Israel Committee, Luciano G. Del Negro, "this motion is not only a stinging disavowal and consensus of the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel promoted by Mr. Amir Khadir and his political party (Quebec solidaire), but a rejection of the Zionist ideological war that Mr. Khadir has brought to the National Assembly and into the street. ""

Mr. Khadir was forced to deny the unanimous consent required to debate the motion, the only member to do so. It was a humiliating comeuppance.

In a statement released on the Quebec solidaire website, Khadir complained that the motion was flawed;

"The motion by the member for Shefford in support of Le Marcheur shop was misleading in consideration that the boycott of the store by a group of citizens ended two weeks ago."

But alas, Amir couldn't even get that right!

PAJU, the group organizing the protest is back outside Le Marcheur once again, after taking a two week break.

Separatist online petition's ignominious end

The over-hyped online petition demanding Premier Charest's resignation came to an ignominious end when the government refused to table the printout. Pierre Moreau, the brand new  Minister of intergovernmental Affairs refused to accept the petition because according to him, 'it contained a fatal flaw' in that it demanded that the parliamentarians do what they could not legally do, that is, fire  Premier Charest. The opposition parties were furious to see the petition dumped so frivolously and lashed out angrily. LINK

Asked to comment on the petition Premier Charest shrugged it off, remarking; "Didn't Rick Mercer get 600,000 names for Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris?"  LINK

The PQ and the Bloc solidaire were all agog over the 250,000 signatures, but considering that over a million people voted for the PQ in the last election, getting a quarter of them to sign a partisan petition online was not much of an achievement.
The petition was, so to speak, not worth the paper it wasn't written on!

Steve Brosseau, the organizer of the petition promised to also organize a demonstration in front of Parliament. After testing the waters to gauge how many people would actually show up, he backed off when he realized very few would actually attend. LINK

Earl Jones likely to sit in jail....

Passage of the government's crime law Bill-C59, which I've affectionately dubbed as "Earl's Law" has raised a level of controversy between legalists as to whether the elimination of the 1/6 provision for parole can be applied retroactively to Earl Jones.
According to a bar expert, Stephen Sineberg, the law's retroactive nature may be anti-constitutional in that it modifies an already existing sentence. Prisoners who accepted a plea 'deal' in exchange for an expectation of early parlole are now seeing the government modifying that possibility after the fact. LINK{FR}

But a criminal lawyer aware of the Earl Jones case has told me that he is pretty sure that the law will hold up and poor Earl will be incarcerated in the big house for at least 44 months.
His interpretation of the effect of 'Earl's law' is somewhat different from Mr. Sineberg's. Here's what I've been told.

A prisoner's sentence cannot be modified once handed down. That means, should the law change and the amount of jail time for a certain crime be modified, it cannot affect the previously convicted.

That being said, how a prisoner serves his sentence is flexible and to some extent up to the parole board. A prisoner who has been given a 10 year sentence may serve 5 years in prison and 5 on parole. Another may serve 3 in prison and 7 on parole. In both cases the criminals will be deemed to have served their entire sentence.
If Earl Jones serves 1/6 of his sentence in jail and the rest on parole or if he serves 2/3 of his sentence behind bars and the rest on parole, he will he have been deemed to have fulfilled his sentence, as well.

Many criminals that go into jail don't know exactly when their parole will start, or if they will be getting parole at all, and Earl Jones is no exception.
The key is, that he'll serve his full original sentence, but how many years on parole or in jail, is up to authorities.
And so the new provisions of the law do not modify his actual sentence. They modify parole conditions which are at any rate flexible to begin with.

This week, The Truth in Sentencing Act, which came into effect last year survived its first judicial challenge. An Ontario judge ruled that abolishing the 2-for-1 sentencing credit that offenders received for time served before their sentence was constitutional. LINK

Montreal City councillors vote in favour of boycott

In reaction to a motion put forward by the Montreal mayor opposing the boycott of the Montreal shoe store LE MARCHEUR, for selling Israeli shoes, Louise Harel and her gang voted in favour of those persecuting the small Montreal merchant. She repeated the hackneyed leftist position that Israel is comparable to apartheid South Africa. Her opposition to the motion was supported by her entire Vision Montreal team as well as about half the councillors on Projet Montreal team..
The motion passed 38-16, but not before some heated debates in council.
In supporting a stupid and meaningless assault on a small merchant, Madame Harel has validated Montrealers view that she remains a dangerous leftist ideologue bitch politician.  LINK

*********************************************************

Let me end the week on a bit of a humorous note.
Failqc.com is a relatively new website that you should click on at least once a week to get a nice laugh.

Inspired by the FAIL genre that features the less than successful achievements, it focuses on the dubious  aspects of Quebec life. I've pulled out a few examples that are somehow related to language and the French/English thing. Enjoy.

By the way, for those who don't speak French I've provided an explanation when necessary.

Seen in Ottawa. Sorry, if you don't actually speak French, I can't help you with this one. Ha ha!!!!

Translation FAILS are more common than you'd think, especially when the manufacturer uses GOOGLE to translate or some other online translation software. Hey, don't laugh the RCMP is no better... LINK

This last video is just plain devastatingly funny. For late-nighters, Call-TV is a mind-numbing time-wasting television show that is best watched under the influence. The presenters try anything to get people to participate in the moronic games meant to suck you in to making a toll 1-900 call.

Here, the hostess pretends that she is pissed-off that nobody is calling in and exhorts the audience to call-in to express displeasure with the producer, who she purportedly wants to have fired for coming up with such lame games.

It's a great example of why Quebec French is as expressive as any language in the world.

This piece is appropriately called;

"On peut-tu crisser le fucking producteur dewors?!"

Have a very good weekend!

Quebec Shale Gas Hullabaloo Worth Paying Attention To

Generally speaking, when environmentalists start in on another tiresome harangue that global warming is going to destroy us all, I generally switch my brain off. While there's likely a measure of truth in what they are saying, my heart tells me they exaggerate their position for effect and at any rate I truly don't believe that there's anything we can do about it.....Sort of like promoting an end to war. A good idea but....

I don't want to get into a global warming debate, especially on this blog which is oriented elsewhere, but there is a local  environmental question that has peeked my interest of late, the exploration of shale gas and its very real effects on our local environment.

A year ago I never even heard of shale gas, shale gas exploration, its French appellation 'gaz de schiste' or the word 'fracking'

If you live outside Quebec (in Canada,) the issue is hardly making the news as there are only a few of these shale gas fields and of them, few are in such a densely populated area, as here in Quebec.

When the issue first surfaced in the news I arrogantly assumed that it was more environmentalist doomsayers warning of yet another impending catastrophe and so I cast my attention elsewhere, that is, until I saw a documentary on the subject on HBO entitled 'Gasland, a documentary film describing the dangers of this type of gas extraction. It was an eye-opener to say the least.

For those of you unfamiliar with the issue allow me to offer the Reader's Digest explanation.

Unlike crude oil which is hard to find, but relatively easy to pump out, shale gas is relatively easy to find, but hard to extract.

There are a massive amount of shale gas bearing fields across North America, but almost all are in the United States, as indicated on the map on the right. As you can see there is a pocket in Quebec that runs along the shore of the St. Lawrence river, but unfortunately in the most populated area of Quebec.

Extracting this gas is a mighty difficult affair. It involves pumping millions of litres of water laced with a secret chemical cocktail deep into the earth to ramp up the pressure and fracture the shale formation, releasing the trapped gas. Thus we get the term FRACKING.

If you think the process sounds complicated and dangerous you are probably correct. The effects of so much chemical laced water pumped underground is not understood at this time, in spite of assurances from the industry that the process is safe.

The United States is years ahead of us in terms of shale gas development. Tens of thousands of wells already exist and the process of extracting the gas is well-established.  

That being said,  problems with groundwater, air pollution and other environmental consequences are just now becoming a subject of extreme public debate.

The question remains as to whether the whole shale gas extraction thing is a blessing or a Pandora's box. Nobody is sure and that is what is scary.

Here is a report about shale gas exploration from an industry point of view; Shale Play Extends to Canada

Here is an excellent news article by Monique Muise writing in the Montreal Gazette;
A guide to Quebec’s shale gas controversy

I urge readers who are unfamiliar with the issue to spend the eight minutes or so to watch this rivetting video which I found on YouTube;

 

The issue is complicated by the fact that the gas could provide a vast amount of tax for the Quebec government and we cannot discount that the government could use all the money it can get it's hands on. Estimates are that the gas may be worth over 200 billion dollars.

That being said, I believe that a go slow approach is required. The EPA in the USA is set to release a definitive report next year on the impact on shale gas extraction and it would be prudent to put things off until then.

"Michael Binnion, CEO of Calgary-based Questerre Energy Inc., characterized resistance to shale gas development as largely being driven by uninformed opinion circulated on social media." LINK

With arrogance like that it's no wonder the  industry has hired Lucien Bouchard to be their point man   probably realizing that the public is waking up to the potential dangers.

How much confidence do you have that the Quebec government can safely regulate this industry?

Hmmmm........Don't answer that!

Further reading; 

Opposition to shale gas drilling unexpectedly strong

Quebec should 'go slow' on shale gas: expert

The Two Montreals

Charter of Ville de Montréal

CHAPTER I

CONSTITUTION OF THE MUNICIPALITY
1. A city is hereby constituted under the name “Ville de Montréal”.

Constitution.

Montréal is a French-speaking city.

Language.

Montréal is the metropolis of Québec and one of its key actors as regards to economic development.

Metropolis.

There it is, written for all to see, the declaration by the city itself that Montreal is French, a declaration which was untrue when it was written and which remains an outlandish lie today.

The uncomfortable reality for those who propagate this myth is that Montreal was conceived and built by the Scots and the English, with the Irish contributing most of the heavy lifting. Strolling down Ste. Catherine Street, it's no accident that almost all the cross streets honour those Anglos who built our metropolis.
Bishop, Crescent, Mountain, Drummond, Stanley, Peel, Metcalfe, Mansfield, McGill, University, Union, Phillips, Aylmer and City Councillors.
Fourteen streets in a row, representing the heart and soul of downtown Montreal and every one of them named for our historical Montreal Anglophone community. How come?

The great lie that Montreal is a French city rests on faulty statistics and decidedly wishful thinking, propagated by language fantasists living in unreality.

Pumped up artificially by coercive language laws meant to hide Montreal's true English face, separatists cannot stomach that the English language and its culture endures and thrives.

As these language militants they themselves admit (when they have the crying towel out), Montreal is made up by about 50% of its citizens whose mother tongue is French, with the balance split almost perfectly between English native speakers and ethnics speaking a variety of languages.
As for cultural assimilation, the 'ethnics' split their loyalty (much to the chagrin of French language militants) about 50/50 between the English community and the French community. The real language demographic has the city about ⅔ French and about ⅓ English.
This is the reality of modern Montreal.

But consider this;
Montreal is really two cities living side by side. There isn't a Berlin wall bisecting the two, but the division is as real as can be.

Running north/south is the boundary street of St Lawrence Boulevard, splitting the city rather neatly into two  halves. On the east side, you'd be hard pressed to find an anglophone. It's a part of the city that few tourists visit, because quite frankly, there isn't much to see or do over there. As I said, the population is almost completely francophone (except for the Italians in St. Leonard and Anjou.) Here francophones live with those ethnics who have assimilated into the francophone side of the language equation, the Arabs from the Mahgreb, the creole speaking Haitians and various French African immigrants, as well as a small peppering of South Americans who seem as a community to have chosen French.

Olympic Stadium-A mediocre symbol defining its neighbourhood

I won't spend time running down the east, suffice to say it is the denizen of the Mario Beaulieus and Louis  Prefontaines. It is the Plateau Mont-Royal and Amir Khadir. It's one recognizable symbol, the monstrous Olympic stadium, is a testament to hubris and incompetence and everything else that's bad about Montreal.

The western part of the Island is a completely different story. It's the Montreal that owns the downtown core, great universities and colleges, Mont Royal Park and quite frankly, anything of value that is Montreal.
It is as different from East Montreal as one can imagine.

Here the Anglos exist in numbers equal to the French speakers and it's where the ethnics are aligned with the English. The Indians, Tamils,  Pakistanis, the Jamaicans and others from the islands. From the downtown core out to the western tip of the island, its a whole other ballgame.

This is the Montreal that the world sees and understands, a cosmopolitan, bilingual and exciting urban scene that is by any standard, world class.

Our Montreal - the west

This Montreal is unaffected by dimwit language purists, it is a place of innovation and experimenters, both English French and ethnic. It is vibrant and exciting and most Canadians will admit that its the most exciting place in the country.

One Saturday night as the hockey game, at the then Molson Centre let out, the crowds surged out of the building onto the surrounding streets as per usual.
At the corner of Ste. Catherine and Metcalfe a left-turning cab cut me off as I was crossing the street and immediately got snared in a jam. As the cab sat in the middle of the intersection, the back window rolled down to reveal two fans bedecked in Maple Leafs jerseys, obviously in town for the hockey game. The one sitting by the open window looked out and sheepishly apologized for the driver's rudeness.
It bowled me over.
"Wha??..." I retorted, "Listen, friend. This is Montreal. You don't apologize!"

This Montreal has its very own rules. Pedestrians jaywalk and cars run through red lights. Crosswalks exist, but like the batters box in major league baseball which are duly painted before each game, only to be erased by the umpires, don't count on anyone respecting them. Montreal must be the only place on Earth that has signs under the traffic lights, reminding drivers to wait for the 'green.'

There's an edginess to this Montreal that is hard to describe. This Montreal, contrary to what we are told, may be the most bilingual place on earth, where locals flick between French and English depending on whom they are addressing. It isn't only a place where people can speak two languages, it is a city that actually operates in two languages. Bar conversations are bilingual, even among friends. The intermarriage (or shacking up) rate is high.
No Anglo would ever use the word 'corner store' when 'depanner' is so much easier and it's where francophones describe those whom they dislike as 'loosers' (notice the anglicized and francized spellings of both words.)

If you want perfection, go to Toronto, a city described to me once, quite appropriately by a Montreal expat as the "Kraft Dinner City" (for its originality.)
Almost everything great in Canada originated in Montreal. No doubt Toronto can do it bigger and better and I'm sure that one day they'll have a BIXI system that will outstrip ours. By then we'll be on to something else. We are the innovators.
Before you detractors out there say it, I'll admit, we can't run a hospital decently and have a dysfunctional government to boot.
Montreal isn't easy.
Detractors will remind us about  potholes, riots, the disorganization and the tension.
But the Chinese have a saying- 'In danger there is opportunity'. In Montreal, we can say that "In chaos there is creativity."
Montreal endures as the greatest place in Canada for creativity and innovation and in two languages to boot. Hip and cutting edge.

This is the Montreal that is Arcade Fire.

When French language militants say the the music group isn't representative of Montreal, they are talking about the Montreal on the other side of St. Lawrence Boulevard. In that respect I agree with them.

But Arcade Fire is exactly what our Montreal is.

When language hardliners cross the border from the East into downtown, they are outraged. While forced artificially to adopt a French face because of Bill 101, the reality that English dominates becomes self-evident rather quickly. For French language hardliners its a hard pill to swallow.

The hotels, the restaurants, the hospitals, the schools, the bars, the stores, the airport.
English, English, English ......Too bad for French language fantasists...

Next time you hear a language militant complain that Arcade Fire doesn't represent the true face of Montreal, point them to the East, kick'em in the arse and tell them to get out of our Montreal...