Drimonis skewers Bill 21
Toula Drimonis! She has skewered Bill 21 brilliantly here on Cult Mtl:
It’s glorious when state-appointed discriminatory secularism targets only minorities, allowing the majority to pretend that they took an important step forward towards self-determination and the separation of church and state, when all they really did was find themselves a convenient loophole to discriminate against people who don’t look or live like them.
But it’s all good. Read it.
Spi 22:24 on 2019-06-11 Permalink
The Minister Simon Jolin-Barette, has just introduced an amendment to his proposed law that defines what a religious symbol to be
“Serait ainsi défini comme signe religieux « tout objet, notamment un vêtement, un symbole, un bijou, une parure, un accessoire ou un couvre-chef », qui serait « porté en lien avec une conviction ou une croyance religieuse » et « soit raisonnablement considéré comme référant à une appartenance religieuse ».”
So if I’m reading this correctly, you can get a Catholic cross prominently tattooed on your body and be a police officer or teacher (let’s be honest there are probably many more real-world examples of this than police officer/teachers wearing a hijab or a Dastar).
We went from “signe religieux” which would presumably include tattoos to “objet religieux”, strikes me as an interesting line to draw, I’m not sure there is much neutrality left in this proposed law.
Jack 10:50 on 2019-06-12 Permalink
Read it and recognize what an absolute cancer Quebecor “opinion” makers create. This cancer has metastasized in the minds of many and we will live with the consequences.
One of the odd blowbacks will be for the English speaking community. The Conservative nationalist ideologues who promoted this project, Bock Cote, Martineau et al., didn’t realize it, but they have guaranteed our communities long term health and prosperity, why?
We will never apply Bill 21, we will never allow people to come to our institutions and tell people what they can or can not wear. We will welcome those minorities into our institutions and communities, where they will help our entire collective. Their children will understand when their folks needed help we stood with them. So thanks Mathieu and Richard your desire for supremacy and obedience has created a context in which our community can grow and prosper.
jeather 11:14 on 2019-06-12 Permalink
There’s a reason the Jews in Montreal joined the anglo schools way back when but made their own institutions (hospitals, etc), so nothing new here.
Kate 11:33 on 2019-06-12 Permalink
I interviewed an Italian Montrealer a couple of years ago who said her grandparents initially went to register her father with the closest French grade school, but he was turned away because he didn’t speak French. After he went to English school the whole family trended to the anglo side, and that’s a story you’ll hear repeated in variations until Bill 101 came in.
Every couple of weeks I skim the obituaries. Even now, a lot of our older allophone communities publish their obits on the Gazette rather than La Presse – Greeks, Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Asians, people from the Caribbean…
jeather 12:00 on 2019-06-12 Permalink
Oh, Jews were turned away for religious reasons. And then at some point, well, the Jewish community — at that time mostly Ashkenazi/Eastern European — was English, so new immigrants into that community learned English first. (Many many of the Jews here who are dying of old age around now were born here btw, not just WW2 era immigrants.)