Separatist Gathering on Plains of Abraham A Bust

A search of google news (Moulin à Paroles) last night showed over five hundred original newspaper articles and over 31,000 blog references to the separatist love-in that took place this week-end on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City.
Last night's articles in the French press were uniformly complimentary and the whole extravaganza was declared an overwhelming success.

I read over sixty articles and could not find one reference as to the number of people who attended. I became curiouser and curiouser.

On Saturday, the Montreal Gazette listed the attendance at somewhere around 1,200, but it was little hard to accept. All this hoopla and publicity and a paltry 1,200 people showed up?

Perhaps it was just wishful Anglo thinking on the part the newspaper, the number couldn't possibly be that low. Or could it?
Crowds are awfully hard to estimate and a lot has to do with the eye of the beholder.

Finally I found a story in Le Devoir, a Montreal French newspaper, known for it's nationalist bent, so if there was to be any fudging, it was going to lean towards inflating the number of participants.

"A quiet crowd, at times exceeding a thousand people who listened religiously to the 156 texts selected for the occasion"

Whaaaaat!!!!

One thousand people!!! --- That's it!

If you subtract the family members who were forced to show up just to support the 140 readers (like a ballet recital), you might cut the actual attendance in half!

I get the feeling that the whole thing was a complete con, a manufactured story. That nobody is willing to point out that fact is sad and dishonest.

By the way, on the same afternoon as the 'wildly successful' separatist happening on the Plains of Abraham, a minor league exhibition baseball game played between Quebec City and New Jersey at the city's Stade Municipal, attracted close to 5,000 people.

I don't think the newspapers are going write 500 articles about that event.

Here's a little more context. Sunday was the 7th annual open house at over 100 Quebec farms in an event organised by the farm trade association (l'Union des producteurs agricoles). Over 135,000 people across Quebec took the opportunity to visit.

Separatists Giddy with Excitment

This weekend sovereignists will be holding a commemoration of the 250 year old defeat of the French forces and the loss of New France at the hands of the dastardly English on the Plains of Abraham. The event is presented by nationalists under the umbrella organization Le Moulin à Paroles as an alternative to the re-enactment of the battle itself which was cancelled due to threats of violence.

They will be reading poems, letters and historical accounts of Quebec history, all which will serve to foster the notion of Quebec as a victim.

• Conquest
• Colonialism
• Victimisation
  
• The Evil English
• French language
• Evil Federalists
• FLQ
• Sovereignty
• blah.....blah...

While the province is abuzz with heated discussions, the rest of Canada remains snorefully oblivious to the serious debate surrounding the scheduled reading of the terrorist FLQ manifesto by Haitian born Quebec artist Luck Mervil.

Black sovereignists are precious and rare commodities in Quebec, so it's no wonder that Quebec's most integrated and inclusive of sovereignist organisations, Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste slapped him with the title of "Patriot of the Year" in 2005.

That means of course that Maka Kotto, the other visible minority of the separatist movement is sure to called upon to give a reading as well.

It's too bad that the event is coming so soon. For sovereignists, the run up is likely more exciting than the actual event.

For organisers, deciding to read the FLQ manifesto was a stroke of genius. When Premier Charest and Quebec City Mayor Regis Lebeame denounced the decision, it was sweet music to sovereignist ears.

Defending the honour of the event has been a labour of love with separatist bloggers cracking out 3,000 word pieces in defence of the sacred manifesto.

After all they remind us, history is history and deserves to be celebrated, warts and all.

Since there are few anglophones scheduled to read at the event, I offer my very humble services which comes complete with a wriitten text that just cries out to be heard.

On the off chance organisers refuse my generous offer, I include this important piece of Quebec history below, for your perusal.

It is the suicide note of Marc Lépine, the chap who murdered 14 women at the in the famous École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal back in 1989;

Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this.
Would you note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons.

Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker.

For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé, I have decided to put an end to those viragos. I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal and precede Lortie in a raid. They refused me because antisocial (sic). I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate. Which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams. Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men. Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be Women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli.
Sorry for this too brief letter.
Marc Lépine

Or how about this Jacques Parizeau pearl of a speech on the night of the referendum loss in 1995;

"My friends"

"It's lost, but not by much. But it's a success, it's a success in a way. Please, let's stop talking about the francophones of Quebec, would you? Let's talk about us: the 60% - those who voted for (independence). We fought well, and we ... we even showed clearly what we wanted. And we missed by a small margin, by a few tens of thousands of voices. Well, in a case like this, what do we do? We spit in our hands and start all over again.

"I really wanted this to go through. I wanted it so badly, like all of you, that it would get through. We were so close to a country. Well, it's been delayed a little ... not for long, not for long ... we won't wait 15 years this time ... no, no ..."

"It's true, it's true that we have been defeated, but basically by what? By money and ethnic votes, essentially.

So all it means is that, in the next round, instead of being 60 or 61 per cent to vote YES, we will be 63 or 64 per cent and it will suffice. That's all. But now my friends, in the months that will come, we are going to... Listen: Some people got so afraid that the temptation to take revenge is going to be something! And never again will it be more important to have a Parti Québécois government to protect us until the next time!"

After all, history is history!

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
_______________________
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!!!!