Language War - Part Deux

In my last post, I promised a blog piece today, entitled "The Coming Language War," but alas, it seems that events have trumped that prediction and the opening salvo has already been fired.

In both Monday's and Wednesday's posts, I warned both francophones and anglophones that the addition of 26 more employees at the Office québécois de la langue française and the subsequent fielding of many more language inspectors would be the proverbial ill wind that brings nobody any good.
And so it seems that my prediction has unfolded much more quickly than I anticipated!

Montreal sign war hinges on whether 'import' is a French word 

It is a modest sign hanging outside an equally modest fair-trade furniture store in Montreal, yet it has become a matter of great import to Quebec’s language guardians.

Kif-Kif Import, a family-run business that sells furniture and decor knick-knacks from around the world, has run afoul of Quebec’s French-language protection agency over its sign. The problem is not so much with Kif-Kif. It’s the word “import,” which officials from the Office québécois de la langue française insist is not French.

And that, storeowner Elie Bendavid says, is simply off-base.

Mr. Bendavid’s store on Montreal’s bustling Mont Royal Avenue sits next to a Subway restaurant and kitty corner from a Canada Trust, which both affix their English names in large letters on their signs. His establishment is a negligible player in a city whose commercial landscape is dominated by chains like Best Buy, Banana Republic, Home Depot, American Eagle Outfitters – and Pier 1 Imports.

Not only does Mr. Bendavid say he is being unfairly targeted, but he consulted a linguist who insists that the word “import” is, in fact, French; it’s in the dictionary.

“I believe the Office didn’t do its homework,” said Mr. Bendavid, whose mother tongue is French, and who teaches at the French-language Université du Québec à Montréal.                                        Read the rest of the story in the Globe and Mail

And there it is readers, the perfect language storm!

An OQLF inspector harassing a small ethnic merchant over the vagueries of one French English contentious word.. HOW SWEET!

The higher-ups at the OQLF must be sitting around the conference table, banging their heads on the table, agonizing over the shear lunacy and poor decision-making of an over-zealous language inspector picking this type of a fight.
Lost on the OQLF is the ironic fact that KIF-KIF IMPORT is sandwiched(pardon the pun) between SUBWAY and a CANADA TRUST!

While most francophones believe in supporting the French language, most would agree that going after a pipsqueak over one disputed word is the height of stupidity or stupidité, if you will.

As the story goes viral, it becomes more and more an utter humiliation to mainstream francophones.

And of course, the only beneficiaries is the small cadre of language fanatics who embrace this type of confrontation as a desperate strategy meant to poison English/French relations and thus raise the chances of building enough support for sovereignty.

Are we to return to the bad old days of confrontation with language inspectors and clogged courtrooms with recalcitrant Anglos refusing to capitulate?
Will we see a return to scenes of OQLF inspectors being accosted as was the case in Shawville where in 1999, a posse of militant English-speakers chased an OQLF inspector out of town during a showdown over French on business signs?

Methinks, YES.
The addition of so many more inspectors can only be a recipe for disaster.

One thing is for sure. Anglos are not frightened. With social media, outing and humiliating language cops will become the preferred method of defence.
Mr. Bendavid has clearly shown the OQLF what they are in store for.

I'll have a lot more to say about this subject in the future.

Meanwhile I'd like to comment on a newspaper story written by the  insufferable blowhard Jean-François Lisée,

Bank prez tells language militants to buzz off
Whenever companies or government organizations come under attack by French-language militants for being lax in the application of French in the workplace, the usual scenario is for the company to grovel publicly and promise to do better in the future.
That's what happened over at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, when the government agency, charged with investing the public pension plan's nest egg, was found to have in its employ two highly-placed unilingual anglophones.
This set off a short-lived witch hunt which resulted with the outing of one more such boss over at the National Bank, where not only was the head of the IT department discovered to be unilingually English, but also that the whole department operated in English.

The story was the object of a column written by separatist columnist Jean-François Lisée, who called the bank to task for not supporting French in the workplace and living up to its moral obligation to operate in French. As you know, the bank as a federally chartered institution is not subject to the application of Bill 101.

Where the story takes an unfamiliar turn is in the reaction of the bank president, Louis Vachon who  remained uncharacteristically unapologetic and promised only halfheartedly to do better.
To the criticism levelled against the bank, Mr. Vachon remained stoic, diplomatically lecturing those who complained, on the realities of the business world.

"Our business model is highly centralized. We serve our customers from outside of Quebec and internationally from Montreal. We created these jobs in Montreal. Yes, we operate partly in English, but we will not apologize for having created 500 jobs in Montreal! Other companies have branch offices in Toronto. I'm not sure that is to Montreal's benefit " LINK{Fr}

I'm not sure Mr. Vachon was blunt enough, what he was saying is that while other banks shipped off English departments to a Toronto branch office, the National Bank preferred to keep the jobs in its Montreal head office, even if it meant running an English department. He then questions which scenario best serves Montreal's interest, English jobs in Toronto or English jobs in Montreal.

Converting these English jobs into French jobs, as Mr, Lisée demanded, was off the table, in that respect Mr. Vachon was clear, the bank had made a business decision to run the IT department in English, either in Montreal or Toronto, take your pick.

In response to this explanation Mr. Lisée went onto a prolonged done-me-wrong whine, lecturing the bank president why it was a poor business decision to move jobs to Toronto. (because Toronto is too expensive a city)
As if he understood nothing Mr.Vachon said, he went on to advise the president that those who work in Montreal in English and refuse to learn French after a reasonable period, should not have their contracts renewed.
It seems that Mr. Lisée didn't get the memo written by the bank president. Perhaps it was in English.

Maybe this is what Mr. Lisée prefers, its been going on for thirty-five years;

Oct 29, 2011"Air Canada confirmed Friday it will move 130 flight crew scheduling jobs from its Montreal headquarters to a new main operations centre in Toronto due to open in 2014" Link.

Mr. Lisée's prescription to force French upon all head-offices operating in Quebec fails to account for free will.
He, along with his separatist confreres, fail to understand or care, that companies who don't like the arrangements, are apt to move operations to friendlier environs.

Readers how many thousands upon thousands of well-paying jobs have been shipped out of Quebec?

It all started in 1977 when Sun Life, the province's biggest employer of Anglophones, announced that it was moving out of Quebec because of Bill 101, after 110 years of continuous operation in Quebec.
It was the start of a corporate exodus that shifted the financial center of Canada from Montreal to Toronto. In the four months after the imposition of Bill 101, 91 companies moved out of Quebec. Link

While institutions like the Royal Bank and Bank of Montreal officially remain based in Montreal, the reality is that they are empty shells, the real operational center moved to Toronto surreptitiously, just like Air Canada and hundreds of others.

To this, how do French militants like Mr. Lisée react?
With nary a sigh, wishing good riddance to those who won't conform, telling all who will listen that Quebec is better off without these arrogant English bastard companies.

After all, wealth creation and jobs are not a priority in Quebec as long as the bills are paid for by deficit spending and equalization payments from the rest of Canada.

As for the proposed boycott of the bank called for by the separatist Guy A. Lepage, television host of the popular television talk show "Tout le monde en parle," I imagine it would be as ineffective as a call to boycott his show.

By the way, the hoity-toity separatist makes his living on the backs of federalists in the ROC who pay the bulk of his salary at the CBC's French division, Radio-Canada, which is vastly over-funded.


At any rate, Quebeckers are NOT from the big boycotters and have remarkably short memories.
Think I'm kidding?
To Francophones of all political persuasions, Sun Life was the embodiment of a bad corporate citizen for moving out of Quebec so publicly back in the day.

Venomous calls for boycotts of all manner were announced by unions and all manner of associations.
The bad blood engendered seemed to doom the company's operation in Quebec forever.

But forever is a long time. Today Sun Life is back again in the public's good grace.
Without any complaints from the separatist peanut gallery, Sun Life announced last week it would sponsor a project to rehabilitate the vast concrete plaza in front of the moribund Olympic Stadium, to be named... you guessed it...
"l'Esplanade Financière Sun Life"

OQLF Campaign is Based On a Statistical Lie.

The current campaign to force English stores to adopt French names, as well as other coercive language initiatives are not really meant to raise the profile of the French language in Quebec, as we are assured by those promoting the new measures, but rather a program designed to make English invisible, giving renewed meaning to the old proverb "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"
In order to justify the assault on minority language rights and more recently on English signage specifically, the government has been manipulated by language extremists via scurrilous fear-mongering and phony and manipulated statistics.

Over the last couple of weeks I've tried to convey the message that statistics can be manoeuvred in the most egregious manner, spindled, twisted and interpreted to conform to any particular political view.

I don't put much stock in statistics offered by tobacco companies that tell us cigarettes aren't linked to cancer and I don't believe in statistics spouted by Pierre Curzi, Jack Jedwab, Mario Beaulieu, the L’Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique or the B'nai Brith, who all have a particular axe to grind.
When it comes to interpreting statistical data, I'll stick to Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec, two government agencies dedicated to unbiased research.

The most fearful aspect of 'Statistication' is that the promulgator doesn't have to lie, and so cannot be easily exposed as a fraud. Instead subtle interpretations, twisted and manipulated treatments of data give a completely false impression of reality while the appearance of fairness is maintained.  Here is an illustrative example;

I don't know if you can read the explanation in little print under the graph, but the gist of it says that when you display a particular section of the graph (75%-100%) instead of the whole graph (0%-100%) a completely different perception evolves. Both graphs are true representations of reality, the one on the right giving the appearance that there's a large gap between the 'Our' brand, the 'Competitor's' brand and the 'Control' brand.
The graph on the left shows that the difference is actually slight.

One graph shows a slight difference, one graph a big difference, yet both are true.
One statistically correct and honest, the other statistically correct, but misleading.
This is the world of separatist statistics... deception.

By the way, I've actually seen the Journal de Montreal use the above device.

And so in Quebec we have been sold a bill of goods that says that the only data set that counts is the one that tells us that the province of Quebec is 80% French and 20% everything else. Like the deceptive graph above, the ratios are correct, but don't represent the true linguistic story.

If the 80/20 ratio played out in a general manner throughout Quebec, we would be inclined to accept it as a fair statistical base from which to make policy, but it isn't.

The 80/20 ratio does not play out on the island of Montreal, containing almost one third of the province's population.
In fact, of the 13% of Anglophones that live in Quebec, most live in the western neighbourhoods of Montreal, creating an enormous bubble.

In the town of Montreal West, the 80/20 ratio is actually reversed, where 80% of its citizens are English.
Policies and laws based on the preponderance of the French language in the province, have little relevancy here.
In fact, the entire western portion of the island of Montreal, is as far removed from this 80/20 data set as can be, with Anglos and English ethnics actually outnumbering French speakers.
In this part of Quebec, the majority doesn't rule.

Let's visit a mythical sports bar in Montreal West where 100 people have gathered to watch a hockey game. The bartender asks for a show of hands to determine whether the English or French language television broadcast should be shown on the big screen.
When asked who prefers the French language telecast, about 15 hands go up while about 80 hands go up for the English broadcast.

"Then it's settled" says the barkeeper, "We'll watch in French!"

Readers, this is Quebec..

While you may smile at the burlesque example above, most French-language militants will argue that it's completely reasonable, because French is the majority language of Quebec... and besides, it's threatened. (the old chestnut)

And so, because there is an overabundance of French-speakers in  Quebec City, Abitibi, the Saguenay and Monteregie regions, towns that have enormous English majorities in Montreal are forced to treat their majority language as second class.

Here's a list of the English percentage of selected Montreal towns.

The great campaign to impose French signs over English Montreal is an underhanded attempt by language militants to promote the fiction that in Quebec, French is in the majority everywhere.

Like a child covering her eyes and shouting,  "I can't see you,  I can't see you," language militants believe that by eliminating English signs, somehow the English won't be there.

The worst of it all is that they drape themselves in the cloth of righteous indignation, crusaders battling the scourge of the heathens, when in reality, they are nothing but ethnic cleansers, bound and determined to 'disappear' the English from Montreal.

Everyday, more people speak French in Quebec than the day before. The fiction that Quebec is in danger of losing its French is the mantra that is repeated daily to justify discrimination.
Demographers tell us that Quebec has long surpassed the critical threshold required to maintain its language and culture.

Portraying itself as a society under attack from foreign influence is the same device demagogues around the world have used to discriminate against minorities to sell an unpopular agenda.

Here in Quebec the tradition lives on, where the agenda is sovereignty and where the  English are the scapegoats.

By promoting the fiction that French is on the cusp of annihilation, all manner of restrictive and discriminatory practices can be justified and made more palatable to a public frightened by lies and misinformation.

Let me be as clear as possible.  Montreal is not a French city and never was, despite the propaganda.

Montreal is a bilingual English/French city and always was.

Great swaths of the island of Montreal are so English, aside from signs one would think they are in Ontario. This is the reality that militants want to obliterate.

Demanding that French signage be adopted in the Montreal on a superior basis, is a question of unfairly imposing ones will on another, because one can.


And so language militants, now with the blessing of the government, are hell bent on pursuing confrontation, hoping that it will be a positive step towards sovereingty.

But times have changed, Montreal Anglos are unafraid and when challenged will push back with a vengeance.

To French militants, I repeat what I warned my English brethren in my last post;

Be afraid, be very afraid.....

Friday: The Coming Language War.

OQLF SET FOR REIGN OF TERROR!

The future? OQLF enforcement officer pepper spraying protesters protecting an English sign.**

Last week's witch hunt of unilingual anglos at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, by an angry mob of language militants supported by a sensationalist Press, was the culmination of a well-orchestrated campaign to pressure the government to act against the perceived rising influence of English in Quebec.
The embattled and bewildered Liberal government of Jean Charest, looking for any glimmer of approval, caved into this extremist pressure by announcing a crackdown, with the hiring of a bunch of new employees over at the Office québécois de la langue française.

The Oh-feece currently has about 200 hundred employees on staff and as you all know, with Quebec bureaucracy, it probably includes about 150 bosses. That has left the department with only about 3-5 inspectors for the island of Montreal, who despite their meagre numbers, still wreck plenty of havoc.
Adding 26 more employees will send a frightening number of inspectors out into the street, ready, willing and able to confront recalcitrant anglo and ethnic businesses who have the audacity to post hand-written unilingual signs like "Dishwasher  Wanted"

For French language militants, the decision by the government to gird up for battle is music to the ears of those who have for years dreamt of a Crusaders-like engagement against the heathens who dare to make a life for their non-francophone families within the realm of the hallowed French soil of Quebec, without due respect or obsequeence.

For them, if all goes as planned, the news media will be filled with linguistic war stories with the resulting tension, hopefully a kick start to the moribund independence movement.

In making its decision to acquiesce to the militants demands, the government  has opened a Pandora's box of linguistic strife, in a vain and futile gambit to somehow breathe life into a government destined for the scrap heap.

The government's announcement of an increase in manpower at the OQLF is a not-so-subtle, de facto, message that the rising attacks against English signage, English clerks, English bosses, English schools and English store names, is now to be fully sanctioned by a government, desperately trying to be seen battling English dragons that don't exist.

Readers, I'm not willing to call separatists Nazis, because Nazis they are not. Far from it.

That being said, it does seem that language militants/separatists are taking a page out of Herr Hitlers playbook in creating a scapegoated minority as a misdirection device, meant to enrage the masses and turn the anger into popular support for a separatist agenda, otherwise unsellable.

The targeting of the Jews and communists in pre-war Germany was nothing but a ploy to divide Germans into an 'Us versus Them' dynamic, with the Jews and communists portrayed as the oppressors of the natural ruling people of Germany.
Once this conflict was established and the German people convinced that they were under attack by impure elements, Hitler was able to lead the Germans into a war of adventure that ultimately led to the demise of the Third Reich.

And it all started with attacks on 'impure' stores, with rocks thrown through windows and calls for boycotts.

Is it too extreme to say that we are headed down the same road?
Already French language militants are calling for boycotts of English business that don't conform to their demands. Link

We've already seen a march down St. Catherine Street in Montreal with militants demanding that stores 'Frenchify' their names, even those already in compliance with the law. The mob invaded at least one store to verbally abuse minimum-wage clerks, as if they were somehow responsible for perceived language slights.
Not cool!

Is this a watershed? A turning point that represents a dangerous 'virage' not dissimilar to 'Kristallnacht' back in 1939 when Germans attacked Jewish stores violently, calling for boycotts and closures of business run by a minority that had lived peacefully among the Germans for centuries.

The new rise of extremism that we are in store for, will be a direct result of a government unwilling or unable to confront or ignore a radical minority that is overly exposed in the media.

That the government has given in to the campaign of misinformation, demagoguery and manipulation by a small cadre of dedicated anglophobes, represents a new page in Quebec history.
And so, we may very well be in store for state sanctioned oppression of Quebec's English and minorities.

How this plays out remains to be seen, but the Charest government has clearly been played and perhaps for the very first time, the separatists have out-manoeuvred the government.

Be afraid, be very afraid.. .


Wednesday's Post: Why the language campaign is based on a lie.  


**  By the way, the illustration at the top of the page  is a parody. If you don't 'get it,' go here. Link   Link

French Versus English Volume 40

Flag Controversy Spins out of control

"A resident of the municipality of St-Denis-de-Brompton, in the Eastern Townships, has lodged a complaint to the Quebec Provincial Police after he was bullied for flying the Canadian flag.

Jean Sanson saw his Canadian flag ripped down from his flagpole and hung upside down on his fence. Above the maple leaf, vandals scrawled the word "traitor," with the name of the victim in the middle of the emblem.

The incident comes just one week after a hundred citizens presented a demand to elected officials to return the flag in the Council Chambers.

"I think it's cowardly to come here and damage my property , said Sanson, who said it is his right to display the flag. We are in a democratic system here. "

Readers will recall that the elected officials of the town, led by the separatist mayor,  decided in the wake of municipal elections in 2009 to remove the flag and fly only the provincial Fleur de Lys.

In a meeting in a closed session Thursday night, elected officials voted for the reinstatement of the Canadian flag in the council.

Earlier today, the mayor of the municipality and PQ member, Claude Boucher, condemned the vandalism, even if he himself had supported the decision to remove the Canadian flag.

"We received so many hate messages from English Canada, I understand the frustration of people, he said. Except that this is unacceptable. In a democracy, we speak and we try to understand." he had stated.  LINK {FR}

Partial language victory for Montreal family

That family from Mexico whose children lost their eligibility for English school have won a partial victory. One of the children will be able to return to the English sector. Read the rest of the story

Language issue on backburner?

A prominently placed opinion piece in Quebec City's LE SOLEIL had me scratching my head over the shear absurdity of it all. LINK{FR}

First the author informs us that the language issue must be returned to the front burner...
I'm not kidding, according to him, in Quebec, language is on the back burner!

Then he claims that statistically, immigrants find English nine time more attractive then French.
His reasoning is that while French outnumber English eight to one provincially, immigrants choose to assimilate to the English side of the language equation half the time.

Ergo, English is nine times more attractive. (seems to me, even by his reasoning it should be 8/1)

But of course when you start with bad assumptions, you get the proverbial garbage in/garbage out scenario.

The author uses the total population of the Quebec demographic as a base, but immigrants don't live in the Rest of Quebec, over 90% settle in the western side of Montreal where the language dynamic (in spite of what French language militants tell us) is closer to 50% French and 50% English.
By falsely expanding the base to include francophones in regions where immigrants don't live, the results are easily manipulated.
By the way, if I were to expand the base to include all of Canada, where the English outnumber French by about four to one, I could deduce for immigrants in Quebec, French has a language attraction four times as large as English.

Ah Statistics!......Bouncy, bouncy bouncy....

Then, in complaining about immigrants that don't speak French, the author launches this pearl;

"Quebec is one of the few countries where you can settle and even become a citizen without knowing a word of the national language..."....

"...A dozen European countries require candidates seeking permanent resident status to take language tests"

Hmm readers, as they say in French,  trouver l'erreur
 

Compulsory French during recess

"Conversations in English or Arabic could be banned from school grounds and school cafeterias. The  Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM) is considering requiring students to speak French in all school spaces.
It would be a way to improve the success of the French at school, believes the CSDM, which also receives the approval of parents, a survey reveals that the press has obtained." LINK{FR}

The article goes on to say that over 70% of parents agree with this initiative, leading us to believe that it is widely popular.
But once again dear readers, I must call out another instance of 'bouncy' statistics.
Although not as an egregious misuse of numbers as the statistical gobbledygook that I highlighted in the story above, there remains a  basic problem with the 70% approval rating.
The survey included francophone parents whose children speak French in the schoolyard as well as parents of those students who speak English or Arabic.
Obviously all the French parents are in favour of this French only initiative, hence the high approval rating. If we consider only parents of the non-French speaking children, it's a different story and interestingly the story offered the data necessary to figure it out.

It seems that when you poll only the parents of these non-French speakers, that is, only those affected  by the initiative, only 44% are in favour, quite a difference!
That being said, even at that much lower approval rating, I'm surprised at how high that percentage is as well. Go figger.....

Aside from all that, can the state actually dictate the language of a private conversation, even that of a child under its jurisdiction?
Methinks it cannot.....

More fun from vigile.net?

It's good to see that the falling popularity of sovereignty hasn't affected two of vigile.net's most devoted separatists, Frick and Frack, whose prolific articles drip with the tears of the agonized suffering of the frustrated.
Their bitterness and exasperation perk me up every time I read another of their done-me-wrong screeds.

The always entertaining  Jacques Noël has created a separatist ENEMIES LIST, just like Richard Nixon. 
Read his piece entitled  L’adversaire HERE {FR}.  It's a jewel!!!
Here it is;

1.   The government of Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper

2.   The Quebec Liberal government and Premier Jean Charest

3.   The Supreme Court

4.   The Federal Liberal Party

5.   The United States Government

6.   Quebec's English minority

7.   Quebec's Immigrants

8.   Quebec's Jews

9.   Quebec's Natives

10. Gesca (Paul Demarais' media empire which he considers federalist)

11. The Montreal Gazette

12. Big Money

13. Mayors of the Province of Quebec (who he claims are all federalists)

Then there is the Frack, the insufferable Réjean Labrie, from Quebec's National Capitale who has ripped a page out of the book of old southern racists who kept Black voter registration down by means of literary tests. Link {FR}
Mr. Labrie suggest that in any future referendum only the pure at heart should be allowed to vote.
He suggests that every voter be subjected to a purity test, that will determine a person's eligibility.

1. A minimum number of years of residency (10, 15 or 20 years)

2. An examination to see if the potential voter uses the  French language in public and at home

3. A written test (given in French only, because language proficiency is essential to demonstrate membership in a society) to determine if the potential voter has sufficient knowledge of the social, historical, cultural, political reality of Quebec

4. A review to ascertain a potential voter's successful integration into Quebec society (insuring that he/she is not practising communalism or self-ghettoization) (in other words, Jews living in Cote Saint Luc, Chinese who live in Chinatown or Brossard, Greeks who live around Park avenue, Hasids anywhere, Blacks who like reggae music, Haitians who listen to Creole radio, those who shop at Adonis, anyone who wears a Sari, turban, yarmake, hijab and of course the hated niqab! -editor) 

WONDERFUL STUFF!!! For Mr. Labrie's benefit that, here is an example of a literacy test imposed upon Alabama voters back in the early sixties. Translate the document into French and make some minor modifications to make it more Quebecois and it's off to the races. SEE THE TEST HERE

By the way I think 75% of potential voters would flunk the third hurdle, including francophones.

GENTLEMEN, KEEP UP THE ENTERTAINMENT!!!

Quebec mayor complains about English signs in Paris?

Visiting Paris, Quebec City's mayor  Regis Lebeaume was shocked by the amount of English signage in the City of Lights.
Unable to contain himself, the mayor unloaded at a press conference for a meeting of mayors

"We'll have to become concerned that at some point. It is astonishing to see the ads here," he said Tuesday at a press briefing at the end of a series of meetings on the International Association of Francophone Mayors (AIMF).....
"We can not have a healthy Francophonie if we do not decide to think about it. French politicians I talk to, whisper in my ear that I'm right, but it's a taboo subject...." 
 Asked about the growing use of English in his city, the mayor of Paris expressed concern about the phenomenon Tuesday.
"Sometimes when I listen to the radio or watch TV, I don't understand certain words," acknowledged Bertrand Delanoe after  a meeting with Regis Labeaume. "Particularly for new technologies that bring new words, a kind of language that is being created," he said. calling for vigilance, too.
"Language is something very precious...​​." LINK{FR}

Briefly... Quebec launches $100 fund to export its culture LINK{FR}
Mouvement Montréal français  calls for a boycott of stores that don't respect Bill 101  LINK{FR}
Official-languages czar scolds Tories for unilingual appointments LINK

Lastly... I'm thankful to a faithful reader who sent in a link to some recently uploaded photos of Montreal circa late fifties to seventies.

The colour pictures are especially outstanding and once again put paid to the lie that Montreal was always a "French" city.

The realty is that during my childhood and up until the Parti Quebecois was elected in the early seventies, the city operated bilingually and English signs were as prevalent as French.

I've included a couple of pictures to whet your appetite and even if you are not of a certain age to relive a precious era, you'll appreciate the beautifully English/French character of the city that was massacred by French language militants eager to re-write history.

Here is a link to the URBAN PHOTO website that first described the story of Alfred Bohn, the photographer. 

Here is a link to the photographer's 162 pictures of retro Montreal on flickr.

Here are two of the pictures that touched me personally.

The Van Horne shopping centre in the late fifties, looking East towards Victoria Avenue. 

My Dad took me shopping in the DUSKES HARDWARE store partly visible on the left. Aside from the stores which have all changed, the shopping centre looks remarkably unchanged.

If you're over 50 years old and lived in Montreal in the sixties, you've had to have eaten at the Woolworth's counter. I used to take my little sister out for lunch and we each had a hot-dog, French fries and Coke for 90¢ plus a 10¢ tip!

Can you get more bilingual than that!

Please visit the links above, even if you are young, some of the pictures are just outstanding! 

Have a great weekend!

English Witch Hunt Fizzles Out

You'd think the outing of two unilingual anglos working in upper management at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, was the outrage of the century, generating no less media hysteria in Quebec than that surrounding the treachery of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. in the USA back in the fifties.

"It is the ultimate symbol of Quebec pride — of francophones exerting influence within their own economy.

So there was some surprise in the news Tuesday that two senior managers at Quebec's Caisse de depot et placement can't speak French." Link

Yup, the Quebec media was certainly en maudit, the Caisse being a national pillar, a symbol of Quebec emancipation and financial independence. To many, the Caisse represents the potential financier of an independant Quebec.

Ever since Premier Charest placed an anglo in charge of the faltering Caisse over two years ago, after the disastrous run led by Henri-Paul Rousseau, which saw the fund lose one-quarter of its value in the great financial meltdown of 2008, French militants have been doing a slow, angry burn over the appointment.
That simmering rage has now exploded, triggered by the announcement that two unilingual Anglos have been toiling unchallenged, at the highest levels of management.

To paranoid French militants, it's a nightmare come true, a vindication of their deepest fears, that the insidious Anglo influence, if not held in check, will take over Francophone society.

English unilinguals in the beloved Caisse!!!!!

Inconcevable!!!!!..... pas des maudits blokes ! ......Aggghhh!!!!

By the way, (and completely beside the point) under the tutelage of Michael Sabia, the Caisse has rebounded nicely, although not spectacularly. The Caisse is back making money that is well within the acceptable range of return on investment.

The two unilingual managers involved, work in the Caisse's real estate subsidiary, the result of a merger between two Anglo companies that the Caisse acquired, Oxford-Cambridge Realty, originally based in Toronto and Ivanhoe, the real estate arm of the old Sam Steinberg empire, once one of Quebec's largest food retailers.
The new company became Ivanhoé-Cambridge (complete with an added accent 'egu') and the original Anglo staff were slowly replaced by Francophones when the head office was consolidated at the Caisse's head office in Montreal.
The new company Frenchified it's pronunciation and Ivanhoe became Ivanhoé, pronounced "EE-van-away."....Really.

Incidentally, insiders have told me that there was a massacre of senior personnel at Ivanhoé-Cambridge recently with forty employees, many top mangers let go suddenly and without warning, some with over twenty years experience.
The outing of the two unilinguals sounds like a settling of accounts.

Now the reaction in the mainstream press as well as the militant websites seemed to be eerily in sync.

"Et ce n’est que la partie visible de l’iceberg !"Mario Beaulieu

"Mais tout cela n'est que la pointe de l'iceberg."Joeseph Facal

'Patrons unilingues anglais à la Caisse de dépôt: la pointe de l’iceberg! Ameriquebc.net

I haven't translated the quotes because all that's interesting is that they all make reference to the  'tip of the iceberg!' an analogy that means that there's much more beneath the surface.
I wonder if they held a conference call before filing their stories.

"All the sophistry in the world will change nothing, we have too long looked away and retained the unacceptable institutional privileges granted to the historic English history minority, which in fact is about 3% of the Quebec population (Anglo-British-born Quebec)." LINK

Readers, I included this last quote from the insufferable Mario Beaulieu because "3%" represents a new low in the ever-fluctuating figure of that invented separatist term 'historical Anglophones'
Mr. Beaulieu doesn't even  follow his own own script. 
The rest of screed was a rehash of dishonest and misleading statistics contrived by the insufferable, Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique, a tiny separatist lobby group masquerading as a legitimate research 'institute' 

At any rate, the three stories that included the reference of the 'tip of an iceberg' all hinted that this was just the beginning of an insidious plot by anglophones to take over Quebec.
Here's a more complete quote from Facal;

"Unilingual anglophones appointed to the Supreme Court, the Auditor-General and top jobs at the Caisse. Illegal signage everywhere. Our  Parliamentary weight falling in Ottawa.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. "LINK

That's a lot of ominous hinting, but no suggestions.
What's next? Arcade Fire at the Fete Saint-Jean?
 
Mr. Facal even suggested that Francophones were 'cuckolds,' actually enjoying having their language screwed over by the dastardly English.....
All this over two English employees in a company of 880 that supposedly operates on an international level.

"La chasse à l'anglouille est ouverte! "

Reading the story and then watching the hysterical reaction in the press had me concluding sadly that we were in store for a witch hunt by French-language militants in search of other unilingual English speakers in high positions.
It's the type of issue that French language militants love to sink their teeth into, rooting out and denouncing offending Anglos, a passionate labour of love.
And so I imagine they took to the task with the same passion and conviction of those who chased down the Salem Witches!

It didn't take long, by Tuesday we had our next denunciation, a highly placed member of management at the Banque National was outed, this time surprisingly by the generally conservative /federalist La Press newspaper from Montreal. LINK
By the way, I've omitted naming  these so-called offenders for obvious reasons.

And so I expected more and more denunciations in the coming days as inspired militants rose to the challenge of denouncing their colleagues like Judas betraying Jesus.

But readers, it didn't  happen......

Shock of shock, no more revelations!
Why had the hysterical zeal and anglo bloodlust dissipated so quickly?

That, gentle readers, is because there were no more witches to be found.

Yup.... Try as they might, French militants couldn't come up with any other names and so these three poor saps who were outed, actually represented the exception that proved the rule... that Anglophones need to speak French in Quebec to succeed at the higher levels.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is the lesson that French language militants will pull from the story.

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To American readers of this blog and the many Canadians celebrating with their family and friends visiting from the States, Happy Thanksgiving!