The top-rated 60 Minutes news program is in town doing an update on this story from 14 years ago. Reporter Morley Safer said he wanted to do it as a favour to his old, now-late, friend Mordecai Richler, who featured prominently in the original report discussing the overzealous policing of Bill 101, which sadly still exists today.
Perhaps by some coincidence, the state of things got much better around the same time as that first report came out, economically speaking anyway, as the 90s had been an unmitigated disaster under the PQ up until then, remember folks, PQ times is hard times.
Hopefully the new report will get attention, rather than turn out to be a media flop like the time the NME put Montreal band Godspeed You Black Emporer! on its cover, leading to such low sales it almost folded.
Every now and then Americans still ask me about Richler and that poor parrot, ordered to squawk en francais...
ReplyDeleteWithout Mordecai to poke fun at the tongue troopers, will it be as funny?
Things got better after the last one?
ReplyDeleteI imagine they are i trigued that our gov't just hired another 69 language cops... Hopefully they will delve deeper into the ridiculous insecurities of a society that invest millions on polocong signage, while people are expiring in hospital waiting rooms (and head offices continue to flee...)
-- GazooReader
@GazooReader, if ''things got better'' for you means having signs in English everywhere...you better stop dreaming...Quebec is still 80-90% French last time I checked and yes there are bilingual signs all over the place and yes we're talking about 8 million people in a continent of 300 million English speakers. I dont think this is ridiculous insecurities. Accept your minority status and you feel much better.
ReplyDelete@kevin Burton
ReplyDelete@GazooReader
@ Kristian
"ridiculous insecurities of a society"? Really? I beg to differ. If you want to be against bill 101 fine, but be honest and get your facts straight. French is actually in steep decline in Quebec, or at least in Montreal; you can claim it's no big deal, you can even claim it's a good thing; but you should know it's happening, and that it matters greatly to many people. About Mordecai Richler, as a writer and avid fiction reader, I admire him more than anyone else; but I'm afraid he's inherited culturally, for obvious reasons (I'm not blaming) a very deep fear regarding any form of nationalism which led him to see Quebec nationalism as not essentially different from the European nationalism that led to the war. Well it was, and still is, quite different.
YR, thanks for the comment. I think the facts speak for themselves, legislation was passed and enforced to repress the English language. It's not a matter of interpretation, it just is. I think this is a mistake not only on ethical grounds, but often backfires when you repress minority cultures. For example, you'll note the almost wholesale rejection of the student tuition protests among anglos, who have been alienated by the left's endorsement of the identification of English as an enemy culture. That's just one of many manifestations of the backfiring of the law.
ReplyDeleteYannik any empirical statistical data shows the " French Fact-French origin- R.C." has remained at about 80% of the population of Quebec for the last 70 years, nothing has changed demographically except their are less anglophones.Your fears are stoked by nationalists who are invested in your fear.
ReplyDeleteChuck: Statistically, anglos are part of a linguistic minority within Quebec, sure. But they are also part of a majority if I look at my neighbourhood, my burrough/city, and/or my country. You are free to draw the line at the Province level and ignore all the others if you wish, but I take a larger, and I think more inclusive, view.
ReplyDeleteThese language cops deserve to be exposed for the petty small-minded nuisance that they represent to any business that does not believe in sacrificing customer service and profits in the name of a political cause.
- GazooReader
The latest tongue-trooper incident happened in a West Island seniors' home which was ordered to post notices on the bulletin boards in the building (announcing upcoming events, etc.) in French only.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I disagree with 101, it has been accepted by society. So either live within its bounds, or move to Ontario.
ReplyDeleteFor more on this subject, (thanks for the informative post BTW) please see 'Top 20 Reasons Why Bill 101 Is a Nuisance to Modern Quebec Society: Greatest Hits of the Tyranny of Bill 101 ‘Je me souviens’ les palmarès Top 20 de la loi 101 sacrée qui nuit à la société Québécoise.'
ReplyDeletehttp://dbhive.blogspot.ca/2012/04/top-twenty-reasons-why-bill-101-is.html
Also, I have re-published on my Cambridge, U.K.-based blog for more exposure (35 years of tyranny, and Anglo Quebeckers are sick of this shite! ):
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/2012/05/09/top-20-reasons-why-bill-101-is-a-nuisance-to-modern-quebec-society-greatest-hits-of-the-tyranny-of-bill-101/
Marc, t'est aussi cave que la gang de bandits a la RRQ - telling a Canadian that they cannot live where they want in their own country is typical 'we make decisions for you' franco-supremacist talk. Francos and Anglos can live where ever they want in Canada, and if you do not want to respect the Rule of Law - it is a Human right to live without language discrimination, otherwise you are propagating a Section 10 Charter violation, such is the hate Bill 101 has unleashed upon our 1M strong population in QC. You can continue to turn a blind eye to the way this province has gone from the richest in Canada, to the poorest and most corrupt since the Losership took over after the Quiet Revolution.
Here's another good read for the QC xenophobes out there (the septard minority): http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/2010/07/19/how-to-deal-with-quebec-s-extremists-expose-their-malfeasance-publically/
ReplyDeleteMes amis franophones sont eceoures de vous autres seperateux mauvais perdants !
@ Hugo:
ReplyDeleteNice ad-hominem attack!
Kristian, is that type of talk tolerated around here?
beginning as a staunch anti-101 type, over the years, i've come to be a pretty staunch supporter of the legislation. while it may seem silly to people in america or the rest of canada, it's a fight to maintain this quebec culture. really, if one doesn't like what quebec has become, one has only to go spend a while in another province, it's awful.
ReplyDeleteNow that's typical septard talk:
ReplyDelete'if one doesn't like what quebec has become, one has only to go spend a while in another province, it's awful.'
Canada is rated time and time again, a top country, if not THE best country to live in, but these rights thieves that we have here in QC who are so used to shutting out minorities of rights (basically everyone who is not white francophone is an 'autre' in QC), that they want to split off the country that has been made great and rich by the diversity we have, as opposed to the failed ethno-nationalist pipe dream we constantly hear about - and in doing so, they act as if FR is the Master language - ce qui n'as rien avoir avec la réalité, mais c'est ce judgementalisme qui a mené cette province à sa ruine auprès le Canada entier (extreme negative interdependence, massive provincial debt, due to racist laws and legislated racism).
It'd be REAL awful to live in Vancouver, yeah, right loser!