Montreal City Weblog

Kate 21:02 on 2020-07-24 Permalink Reply  

• Roman 21:55 on 2020-07-24 Permalink

  What’s even the point?

  I feel like it’s just adding to them vs us mentality.

  No flags!

• Michael Black 22:23 on 2020-07-24 Permalink

  A couple of years ago UBC-Okanagan installed another flag pole, and then they fly the Okanagan Nation Alliance flag.

  There are a lot of existing flags that could find flag pole space before some made up flag. I’d love to see the Metis flag fly, though we’ve missed some obvious dates like Louis’ birthday and Manitoba coming into confederation. There’s always Aug 24, 150 years after the Wolseley expedition got to Red River.

  This story seems like a small group who decided a flag was needed. But I.don’t see a reason for a flag, other than because other groups have them.

• Kate 09:53 on 2020-07-25 Permalink

  I’m quite satisfied with having 3/5 of the symbols on the city flag belonging more or less on the anglo side.

• david232 12:04 on 2020-07-25 Permalink

  I don’t care about flags, but it’s true that anglo-Quebeckers don’t really have a flag in the way that others do. I was very staunchly anti-separatist for most of my life, now I’m agnostic – on identarian grounds I’d be tempted to vote yes, but on economic grounds absolutely no chance. But there’s no question that this lingering “historic anglo” (thank you for that, Gazette) anomie that prompts that feeling of detachment from the nationalistic trappings of both Quebec and Canada would have been settled one way or the other with a yes vote back in 1995.

• Kate 13:58 on 2020-07-25 Permalink

  Another thought on this: there is no anglo community. There’s very little to tie us together. Unlike, say, Italian or Chinese Montrealers, we don’t have a cuisine that brings us together at the grocery store or restaurant. Unlike Montrealers from the Maghreb, we don’t meet at the mosque, and unlike Jewish Montrealers, we don’t meet at the synagogue. Nobody’s going to give me a job or help bail me out of trouble merely because I’m a fellow anglo. There’s no need for a flag for this sort of apathetic negative identity.

• Ephraim 15:45 on 2020-07-25 Permalink

  What, you don’t like a flying pelvis with a vagina?

• Dhomas 06:15 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  We do have “Montreal English” that ties us all together:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_English
  😉

  Also, @Ephraim: I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw the flying vagina in that flag. Actually, I’m not sure how anyone can see anything else in it. What were they thinking?

• EmilyG 11:07 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  I admit that I voted for the vagina flag because I found it amusing….

• Uatu 11:13 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  I’m Anglo but also a visible minority. Am I included included as a member of the Anglos or my ethnic group or both? It’s time Quebec moves on. It’s the 21st century. The province is more than the binary of English speaking white people vs French speaking white people.

  Also I’d hate to be part of the group represented by the image of the vagina in that design.

• GC 11:46 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  I can see the vagina, but does anyone know what it’s actually meant to be? A bird? A flower? As a Quebec anglo, I feel like it should speak to me and I should know right away how it connects to me.

  I can’t speak for all the anglos but, personally, I didn’t feel the need for a flag. The representation of England/Scotland/Ireland on the Montreal flag is enough for me.

• dwgs 12:15 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  It’s not just a vagina, it’s a vagina borne aloft by moose antlers.

• MarcG 12:21 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  I was going to get in on making fun of the designs as well but they were made by young people so I’m holding back. The adults behind this project, however, must be bored AF to have thought of it.

• EmilyG 17:26 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  On the voting site, it said that the last flag was “inspired” by Indigenous people, but didn’t go into details (maybe there weren’t many?) and just mentioned some vague things like nature and mountains. It doesn’t say there was any input from any Indigenous people, or which ones.

• EmilyG 17:31 on 2020-07-26 Permalink

  (It’s the second flag in the Gazette article. The, uh, flying something or other.)

  It says on the survey site about this flag:
  This flag design takes its inspiration from the Indigenous communities in Québec. The stylized clouds honour the seasons and the vastness, and the mountains reference the province’s ancient mountain range and extensive natural environment of Québec. At the centre of the flag is the crest of antlers, which also represent the vast natural beauty of Québec. The antlers are filled by several different colours that represent the flags of the diverse countries of origin of the English-speaking communities. This element is inspired by the flag of La Francophonie internationale.

• Kate 11:17 on 2020-07-27 Permalink

  I’m still reacting, I think, to an earlier Gazette design “project” in which they went on and on about how much better it would be to get the Greater Montreal logo designed by high school students. Never mind that a significant logo is developed carefully by experienced artists after a lot of study and verbal description – no no, let’s have some hideous naive scribbly thing produced by kids.

  

  This may be one reason I’m not holding back. By taking lines like this, the Gazette undermines the whole process of graphic design and the development of graphics that need to be professional, inclusive and enduring. I’m not saying the too-many-cooks aspect of logo development can’t have its downside – in fact, the Greater Montreal logo that was produced, shown above, was a dud, and I don’t believe has ever been used – but naïveté is not one of the prized qualities of a logo.

  See, this is the logo they use for the CMM:

  

  It’s simple and clever. The island is central, the northern and southern shores are included, and the whole thing wraps up into a circle. I wouldn’t letterspace the text nearly so much, but that’s easily fixed.

  Anyway, what’s with the giant fleur-de-lys in this suggestion? No idea. None.