You're aware that Wednesday August 2 is the 40 th anniversary of Adrien Arcand's death. In the 1930s this Montreal-based fascist anti-Semite leader recommended that Quebec's Jews be given Hudson's Bay, where they'd enjoy a nice, but chilly homeland away from the good Christians. Had that happened Quebec would have had to negotiate with those very same deported Jews for the electricity that fuels the province. It's a ridiculously bad idea that became even even worse with time.
Very interesting indeed. Sometimes you just have to wonder wtf people were thinking.
ReplyDeleteThen again, a friend told me that a disturbing amount of the graffiti in the mens' bathrooms he's visited at Concordia is on the topic of Israel vs. Palestine, so I guess some things never change...
I remember a broadcast by Mayor Drapeau about 1965 or 66 raging about the bloody Jews on the island of Montreal. He was speaking in French
ReplyDeleteBobby
The fascist cited here was far from mainstream. Of course, that much should be plain. Please direct your reading to the last paragraph of this entry. While there may have been plenty of in-your-face discrimination in Quebec, it remains to be proven whether Anglo Protestants were much better. Speaking of commercial relations between ethnic communities: my modest experience of marketing my products and services to French-Canadians is, for the most part, this: they buy; cheapskate Anglos don't. Example cited: for four years, starting when I was 16, I shilled, shot, developed, printed, mounted, and sold almost-instant nightclub photos at the Kon Tiki restaurant in the Mount Royal Hotel. French-speaking customers were _much, much, much_ more generous than anglos. That's not to say I didn't have the occasional, usually drunk, anglo client. And while both francos and anglos used to bolt without paying (as some kind of prank -- but don't you wish you had your stupid $5 picture now?), it was the stingier anglos who did this more often. I will always raise my hat to the fun-loving, generous, French-speaking client, anyday. That's not to say they don't have their faults. But doing business is not one of them.
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