The OQLF has produced two new studies proving that French is in decline, nobody’s speaking it enough at home – but the trend can’t be blamed on allophone immigration. So now you know who the villains are – me and Shakespeare.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The STM is studying the possibility of running bus rapid transit (SRB) on Henri-Bourassa, Côte-des-Neiges and Park Avenue, but these are only twinkles in their eyes for the moment.
Spi
To be seen if it’s going to be a Pie-IX SRB or a Sauvé SRB.
DeWolf
Despite the branding, I wouldn’t consider Sauvé to be an SRB. There’s a dedicated reserved lane, but it can still be used by cars turning right, it’s still vulnerable to being blocked by delivery vehicles and illegally parked cars, and there hasn’t been any upgrade to bus shelters. Last time I was on Sauvé, there were lots of cars driving in the bus lane to get around traffic, which defeats the purpose of its existence.
Pie-IX is the way to go – it’s basically designed to offer the same user experience as a tramway, and buses don’t need to share space with other vehicles.
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Kate
An act of explicit anti-Asian racism was caught on video in the metro and circulated on TikTok and Twitter on Sunday night. “On va se battre contre vous autres les criss de Chinois” says the assailant.
The universality of face masks might be making it easier for subhumans to express their hateful statements. You can’t see anything of this assailant’s face to identify him by.
Update: La Presse talked to the woman who was the object of the man’s outburst.
Bill Binns
This guy sure does dress, walk, talk and act like one of the sainted, marginalized and victimized folks currently experiencing homelessness that tend to stumble around the metro.
I was all for the open trains where people can easily move from one car to another but it sure makes incidents like this a lot easier to pull off without getting caught.
Sprocket
My girlfriend is from Southeast Asia and has become hyper aware of this type of thing. If I was present and some sort of anti Asian stupidity were to happen… She knows I would have her back and hand his ass to him on a plate.
walkerp
These racists always pick times when they know they are not going to be threatened themselves in any way. It’s the coward’s instinct. I’m with you Sprocket. One good beat down would teach that guy a good lesson in anti-racism.
Mark
Using violence to confront this type of behavior might strengthen the racist’s resolve and sense of victimhood. Stepping in and physically placing yourself between the attacker and the person being verbally assaulted is usually a good approach, as long as the person doesn’t have a weapon. By doing this, you make sure the person is safe and you’re sending a message. Obviously, if they attack you, then, by all means, defend yourself.
This guy did pick a very strategic time for his tirade, as he left when the doors opened, so I don’t even know if people had enough time to react, step in and confront him, unless we don’t see the whole video.
The racist acts like this for many reasons: 1) they are scum 2) they are afraid (lost their job, divorce) 3) they are a victim of abuse themselves 4) combination of all of the above. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to “teach him a lesson”, but perpetuating violence will only make the climate tenser.
Sprocket
@Walkerp I am not advocating violence. Just that if a situation were transpire I would step in. At 6’3″ I can intimidate these cowards without needing to raise my voice.
@Mark. I think you are being a bit too sensitive. Many have been divorced and/or lost jobs over time. I have had both situations. While they are life changing events; they don’t turn you into a jackass.
I would imagine the preexisting jackass that was already there.
‐————————————————-She was also racially discriminated against at a fast food place in northern QC because they for some reason thought she was Inuit. But that is a story for another time. How a redneck is rude to someone from Laos and then goes on to deny service because they think she is indigenous beggars belief.
Uatu
Hey, I thought we were one of “the least racist places on earth”….. hahaha. I’m Asian and this shit has been going on way before covid hit. It’s just now there’s an anger and frustration that enables these guys. When covid ends it’ll be there, back underneath all the smiles and platitudes of inclusion
Chris
>Hey, I thought we were one of “the least racist places on earth”
That’s probably a reference to my previous comment. I never said we have zero racism here. We have plenty. That’s not a contradiction with being one of the least racist countries. You realize that:
“least” is a comparative, it does not necessarily mean absolute numbers are low, it means few compared to others.
such things are properly studied by academics and pollsters. See for example:If you have contradictory evidence, please do share.
Uatu
Well I guess according to the article we are pretty tolerant. I’m probably cranky because I’ve been on the receiving end of racist cracks my entire life (from people of color and white as well) and it isn’t some abstract data expressed as a color on a map for me.
Chris
Uatu, sorry to hear that. There’s no contradiction there either I’m afraid. The general does not always apply to the specific. So we could have low racism in aggregate but of course specific individuals may have experienced more than average.
Daniel
Chris, you’ve hit peak white mansplainer. Please just sit down and listen.
Chris
Daniel, who says I’m white? or a man? You’re just using a fancy ad hominem now. How about you retort my points instead of attacking whatever kind of person you imagine me to be. I also have the feeling that you are misinterpreting my tone, which is of course an endemic problem on the internet. Please try to apply the
principle of most charitable interpretation.MarcG
Chris, when you said “There’s no contradiction there either I’m afraid” you were assuming Uatu was trying to contradict you rather than simply share their experience. Apply the principle yourself.
EmilyG
I don’t think there’s less racism here than in other places (“here” being not just Montreal, or Quebec, but all of Canada.) It seems that in Canada, we like to be nice and polite and pretend that the problems in this country aren’t “as bad as other places.” In reality, I think people pretending that these problems don’t exist, or aren’t bad, doesn’t actually make it so, and the reluctance to admit that there is a lot of racism in Canada doesn’t help to make society less racist.
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Kate
Last week it seemed school kids around Quebec were given masks that were potentially toxic, and now it seems STM workers have also received these masks, which contain “nanoform graphene materials” which present an “‘unacceptable’ risk of toxicity to the lungs” according to Health Canada.
Quebec is also backing off administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 55.
I have a feeling that this pandemic is going to spawn a hell of a lot of class action suits, which will go on for years.
Nick
COVID-19 vaccine makers are not legally liable. I think the government has to pay out whenever there are serious side effects or worse.
walkerp
This is what happens when policy is dictated by companies wanting to get the pork bids. The new mask policy for elementary schools was good, but super suspect when it also mandated that the kids could not bring their own home made masks and that the ones provided by the school would be thrown away at the end of the day. For sure somebody got a huge contract and you have to ask which came first, the contract or the health concerns.
qatzelok
So the Astra-Zeneca vaccine is *fine* for people over 55 because…. these people are disposable anyways?
Blood clotting is something that affects seniors more than anyone, so I don’t get why this is *fine*.
And I also find it very creepy that Ottawa has signed onto “no liability” contracts for these faceless multinationals.
Pfizer Infra.
jeather
It appears that the blood clotting issue is mostly related to women of child-bearing years, not anyone under 55. So it probably should be allowed for men under 55, as well as adults over 55. But this is based on skimming some of the stuff, I’m not sure there’s really enough data to know. It does also appear to be a different clotting issue than the age related clotting issues seniors have. And of course, it’s very, very rare, certainly more rare than deaths from Covid.
No home-made masks is one thing, but “two masks per kid per day, including before/after school programs and gym class, if you break it we will tape it up because the government doesn’t provide spares” is not good.
Tee Owe
Jeather – I was with you yesterday, today I learned new facts – hard to share because I can’t post a link and the link anyway is to a rolling blog on the Guardian website – here’s what I read –
Germany’s vaccine regulator has said it has recorded 31 cases of a rare blood clot in the brain, nine of which resulted in deaths, after people received a Covid vaccine from AstraZeneca.
The Paul Ehrlich Institute said it has now registered 31 cases of clots in the cerebral veins – known as sinus vein thrombosis, or CSVT – and that in 19 of these there was a deficiency of blood platelets or thrombocytepenia, Reuters reports. In nine cases, the affected people died. With the exception of two cases, all reports concerned women between the ages of 20 and 63. The two men were 36 and 57 years old.The point is, this is no longer the handful of cases it used to be, and if you can dig into the numbers (I don’t know how) then these incidences are a percentage of an age group, mostly women, and only those getting that vaccine so maybe not so rare as I used to think. Maybe it’s OK to be careful
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Kate
TVA quotes Denis Coderre: «Les gens ont besoin d’espoir, ont besoin de fun». Someone’s got to be feeding him lines about how the Roaring Twenties followed the Spanish flu.
JoeNotCharles
We can make our own fun, thanks. We need the government to take care of the boring day-to-day responsible stuff.
qatzelok
By branding himself as “fun,” is he saying that Valérie Plante has been nothing but pandemics and climate disruption?
(I wish Mario had asked him if he had plans to sell more public parks to *Evenko Infra*)
Bill Binns
Ugh – Madame Land Acknowledgment on one side and Mr Bread and Circuses on the other. Can we not have a choice somewhere in the vicinity of the middle?
Ant6n
Surprise: If you reduce them to caricatures there’s no middle.
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Kate
The death happened in an Ontario hospital, but the victim is from Pointe-Claire and the accused, a doctor, lives in DDO and trained at McGill. Police in Ontario are looking into whether other deaths at the Hawkesbury hospital may also have been homicides.
dwgs
Mercy killing?
Max
This article says it’s something Covid-related. And that the doctor’s had a run in with the authorities before.
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Kate
Le Devoir looks back at the notable moments in Denis Coderre’s time as mayor. Let’s not forget how he ordered the bugging of Patrick Lagacé’s phone in displeasure at some of the journalist’s revelations.
Su
The article describes a mayor branded as a quirky, bumbling entertainer but is in fact an autocrat. Brings to mind a similar chap who was once the harmless clownlike mayor of London England.
Marco
They kind of gloss over the formula E fiasco. Yes, it contributed to the deficit because the City of Montreal lost over $60 million from hosting the race. Coderre knew it was a disaster and he tried to hide the costs. Oh, and who can forget his $3.5 million granite stumps on Mount Royal. I think of him whenever I sit next to them. Actually, I think of what I could have done with $3.5 million as a sit down on a broken park bench.
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Kate
Workers at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges have voted for strike days, management saying it’s too broke to make them a better offer. When Notre-Dame – also owned by the Sulpicians – sacked people because of the steep fall in tourism revenue, the claim had some credibility, but people are still dying, if anything at a slightly accelerated rate.
The cemetery workers complain that the Sulpicians will not let them examine the books to confirm that their claim of being hard up is true. That’s pretty much all you need to know about this story.
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Kate
High school kids are theoretically back to school in person full time Monday, even though risk is still high, and while older people are better protected now than in the first wave, younger people are still getting sick. Some parents and experts are not happy about the students going back, nor are the students themselves.
The Tyee has a good piece by Andrew Nikiforuk, We could have been largely free of the pandemic by now, in which he blames politicians for dithering. A must-read.
Kevin
High schools are allowed to have the kids back, but it’s not required. I suspect most will only let the grade 9 students come back because their chairs and desks are still in the classrooms.
I doubt grade 10 or 11 will come back at all this school year, and I think my oldest has a 50-50 chance of starting next year in the classroom full time.
Thomas 21:35 on 2021-03-29 Permalink
I often wonder how French always seems to be in terminal decline as more and more English schools close every year. I would also be curious to know if these dire statistics include the entire metropolitan region, or just Montreal proper.
In any case, I live in Ahuntsic and the only place I ever hear or use English is inside my own head.
Ephraim 05:29 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
Oh, a surprise… a self serving organization has produced a study showing it’s need for existence. Can we fold them into the OIB? About as useful and just as self serving.
Mitchell 06:19 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
I’m not sure how to articulate this, but there are kind of odd resonances between this post and the one below about anti-Asian (and other) racism. Elevating one language above others is also elevating speakers of that language above those who don’t, won’t, or can’t speak it. But the most knee-jerk way to identify someone who “doesn’t speak my language” is their physical appearance. And since Montreal is filled with people who “don’t look Quebecois” (whatever a Quebecois looks like), well, then . . .
jeather 08:59 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
And yet, the decline in French spoken at home — which is “what will the numbers be like in 2036”, not “what are they like now” — is actually not balanced out by an increase in English spoken at home. And something like 94% of people will be able to speak French.
Uatu 10:21 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
Here’s a deal, I will quit seeing racism everywhere if they quit seeing everything as an assault on the Quebecois culture 😛
jeather 10:34 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
Asking for that sounds like an assault on Quebecois culture, Uatu.
Paul 11:37 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
The study doesn’t show French in decline, they show unilingual (or french only) households in decline. The actual comprehension of French is increasing as we transition from unilingual to bilingual.
This should be celebrated
Jack 11:52 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
I know this is another Quebec taboo but this issue is not about language. It is about ethnicity. The French origin majority have a current birth rate that makes immigration essential, yet many in that community are not comfortable with this reality. Unlike before Law 101 these immigrants want in, it’s the wanting in that fuels the angst of MBC and Quebecor. They can sell fear with this issue.
steph 12:42 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
can’t we just go back to the glory of the 50’s, when white people didn’t have to worry about racism? //s
Meezly 15:05 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
I’m curious as to why this such a Quebec taboo, does this explain why there is a serious lack of critical analysis at how Quebec nationalism is based on fear of the other?
Jack 21:10 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
Because it allows you to talk about what is an ethnic issue and ultimately a question of supremacy, using neutral language. Francophone, Anglophone, Allophone are words that break us down ethnically.