An eleven-day street fair will close the Main to traffic starting Thursday and running for ten days.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Some local media are in a tizz because Joe Biden has chosen Kamala Harris as his running mate, and she went to high school in Westmount.
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Kate
A report from the OQLF says too many jobs in Montreal ask for English, and Simon Jolin-Barrette is promising a smackdown.
Ian
Well here’s the CAQ’s dilemma… are they pro business? Or nationalist? Countdown to this minister being forced to change direction in 10…9….
Last I saw on glassdoor Air Transat still requires fluent bilingualism for almost every position posted …
Dhomas
Ridiculous! This is precisely one of Montreal’s competitive advantages. My first “real” job was with a French company that specifically chose Montreal as it bridged the gap between France and Anglophone North America. So long as they require English _as well as_ French, we should welcome this.
Ian
There used to be graffiti in my neighbourhood that said, and I paraphrase from French, “Bilingualism only benefits the colonizers”.
This is a very widely held belief amongst Québecois intelligentsia – they also consider multiculturalism a plot to weaken Quebec’s (ethno)National Identity.
Roman
Well, if they want all of the tech companies to leave, then sure, go ahead and crackdown. We’ve seen how this played out last time. But history tends to repeat itself ♂️
Danny
Agreed. Just today I had a tech support call with a Microsoft Level 2 agent who had arranged the call with me by email. When he called he introduced himself to me and gave his name (Martin) using the French pronunciation and asked if it was OK to record the call. I picked up on his pronunciation and answered in French that it would be fine and I appreciated his help. We did the 60 minute call in English, but he shared with me that he was based in QC and handled Intune support across North America (I live in the US now). These are the kinds of high-paying jobs that will vanish if English is not taught at the level of functional bilingualism.
Kevin
Legault mentioned this today and said something non committal.
Having just finished Empty Planet and taken a peek at census trends, I don’t think there is anything that any government in Quebec can ever do to change this, because the only ideas that would work are cultural, not legislative.
Kevin
On second read, the fact that every single person quoted in La Presse’s article is male is a chef’s kiss level of perfection in being unable to identify the root cause of the issue.
Jack
This story is part of a perpetual campaign to make sure French origin Quebecers see themselves as embattled or under constant threat. Fear of English, both language and body, as an electoral strategy has only recently been surpassed by veils and Muslims.
Legault knows this is politically productive. Graham Fraser former reporter and Biographer of Rene Levesque reported that in Legault’s first campaign he “told his riding association members that he had been raised in Montreal’s West Island among the English, ‘and I hate them as much as you do.’”
I know he doesn’t but its sweet music to those who fear others and that fear is almost always constructed by “leaders”who recognize its power in social control and cohesion.
This report follows the same tropes and fear mongering.jeather
French speakers are the colonizers too.
Ian
Well yes of course, and that’s the delicious irony in their attempts to position themselves as the victims of colonialism. I guess they never thought very hard about the “Nouvelle” in “Nouvelle France”.
jeather
I guess it’s not untrue that French/English bilingualism benefits the colonizers instead of everyone here speaking Kanien’keha but surely they are not planning that change.
Kevin
MBC is rage tweeting about how Quebec and the French language are on the verge of annihilation and it’s all the fault of people not voting for independence.
As the kids say, he’s incapable of dealing with his childhood trauma.Change la cassette!
Jack
Todays MBC screed was truly impressive, he took on the New York Times.
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/08/12/le-sermon-anti-quebecois-du-new-york-times
“Les Québécois ne devraient pas se soumettre à cette campagne d’intimidation idéologique, même si elle prend la forme d’un sermon de la version américaine de la Pravda.”
I often wondered how someone who could compare the New York Times to Pravda got a Phd? Then I found out when he defended his thesis at UQAM… PKP was in the front row.Uatu
The only people who are riled up are the ones who make a living off it- MBC, the government, Geoffrey chambers of the qcgn. No one else really cares and as someone who is 50+ I’ve been hearing Chicken Little so many times that I’ve become numb to it. These guys can go fight in a corner somewhere while the rest of us can get on with trying to live and eke out happiness during a pandemic…
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Kate
BBC surveys the world’s response to the pandemic, and CBC asks what will happen in Canada when winter comes. Not local stories but I think they’re important.
Also, people keep arriving in Canada with Covid on flights from elsewhere. Contagion is a hell of a thing: just as we need to wear masks to protect others, as nations we need to impose measures, because the virus doesn’t care about national borders. Unfortunately Canada’s lying next to a huge infected beast that’s snorting in its sleep.
Ephraim
We need to set up Quarantine hotels for some of these people and warn them that they will be put into quarantine hotel… and if you are found violating quarantine, you will be put into quarantine hotel and have to pay for it. That should end some of the nonsense on the east and west coast. On the east cost, the American soldiers in Goose Bay are violating quarantine. On the west coast, there is the Alaska exemption, though they closed most of that up and there are now boats turning off their beacons to enter Canada… we need to sink them as pirate ships or we need to force them into a watched quarantine. Because clearly, you don’t honour our quarantine or care about our lives… and the fines aren’t serious enough… well, ban you for life after you finish 14 days under watch in a hotel that you have to pay for.
JaneyB
Agreed. I don’t understand why we aren’t doing this for people not staying with friends and relatives. A simple barracks-like accommodation would be fine. Right now Australia makes the arrivers foot their quarantine hotel bill. I think that’s a bit harsh.
Ephraim
There are plenty of hotels near the airport that would be glad to get some income and need to be refurbished anyway… it’s really a place where no one wants to stay anyway and definitely easy to quarantine, since no one wants to go and no where to go without a car.
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Kate
CBC asks can you fire a Governor General? It’s a tricky question, as the only person who technically can dismiss the GG is the Queen, and she probably wouldn’t. But can you imagine getting that phone call if you were Julie Payette?
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Kate
In Monday’s Journal, everyone’s favourite city columnist wrote a piece entitled Montréal, ville impossible which has nothing to do with Montreal, but condemns Valérie Plante in terms of a recent book about Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. The misogyny is palpable. He does not like being told what to do by a “maîtresse d’école”!
Update: Wednesday, another Journal opinion writer produced Montreal Qwabec! complaining that the CAQ is not nationalist enough.
Uatu
Ok Boomeur
CharlesQ
I don’t get why the Journal doesn’t lose advertising when stuff like that (and the islamophobia, xenophobia, etc) gets published. No one really condemns it either… There are no consequences. The number of complaints that were retained against Martineau on the Conseil de presse website is telling (https://conseildepresse.qc.ca/decisions/?date=&media=richard+martineau), the words “manque de rigueur de raisonnement” appears a lot… And yes I know Quebecor is not part of the Conseil.
Kate
Well, they did just pull the plug on Les Francs-Tireurs, so maybe his era is quietly drawing to its close. Even Quebecor can tell which way the wind is blowing.
JaneyB
@CharlesQ – My guess is that their readers don’t read it for the articles but for crossword puzzles, TV listings and maybe the headlines. Maybe also just because they’ve always had it around and need it for bbq kindling or litter boxes.
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Kate
Speaking of workplaces filled with impossible politics, the director general of the EMSB has stepped down.
Ephraim
The whole place needs a cleaning.
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Kate
Seems a hundred people working at the Fine Arts museum wrote an open letter calling Nathalie Bondil a beast, and she says it’s unfair. Adding another angle, she claims some of the signatories have told her they were pressured to sign. Just reading this story made me feel oppressed, neither for Bondil nor the unnamed workers but for the atmosphere evoked in any workplace where there’s a lot of discontent and chronic side-taking and politics.
I gather that the museum world generally is in something of an uproar but Bondil is not mentioned in this piece so her dismissal may have nothing to do with it – or may be a small piece of a worldwide upheaval.
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