Headlines on some Journal op-eds
I look at all the usual sites daily for the blog, and read a lot of the news and major opinion pieces. But Sunday, I’m going to spare my mood and my blood pressure after eyeballing the headlines on the Journal’s opinion pieces: Non, elle n’est pas une «pauvre victime» (Joseph Facal), Le Canada anglais en ébullition (Denise Bombardier), La laïcité à l’école, en France et au Québec (MBC), Québec, Canada : notre imparfaite démocratie (Normand Lester). Also a Jacques Lanctôt screed on a new book about the 1849 burning of Parliament, Montréal brûle-t-elle?: “Pour l’historien François-Xavier Garneau, cet acte de barbarie est l’équivalent de la destruction de la bibliothèque d’Alexandrie, en Égypte, durant l’Antiquité.” No, spare me. I’m going out.
Kevin 15:08 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
They are getting in extra shit now because Christmas is coming and the law requires them not to work on that most secular of days.
dhomas 15:33 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
I try not to place myself into an echo chamber by reading multiple different news sources, even (or especially) those publishing opinions that are at odds with my own. But I had to stop reading this weekend, too, for similar reasons as you, Kate. It was beginning to put me in such a foul mood that even my kids were wondering what was wrong. Enjoy your break. I hope it helps!
Uatu 16:22 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
Funny, I would apply pauvre victime to all these writers.
Raymond Lutz 17:42 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
Juste un petit commentaire pour vous signaler qu’il y a quelques “Québécois de souche” (quelle idiote expression) qui dénoncent la loi 21pour ce qu’elle est, un torchon raciste de la pire espèce: celle qui ne dit pas son nom. Zemmour en serait fier… C’est pas pour rien que MBC sévit maintenant des deux côtés de l’Atlantique. Joyeux solstice à tous, and keep an eye on the James Webb telescope launch dec 22!
Ian 18:29 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
That all the “pundits” are lining up to denounce criticism of bill 21 speaks volumes.
As many others here have pointed out, anyone who thinks Bill 21 is about secularism and not about suppressing multiculturalism just needs to consider that this beloved teacher, a woman who wears hijab, was fired in the name of secularism right before school goes on Christmas break. This isn’t secularism, it’s ethnonationalism.
By extension, to insist that critiquing Bill 21 is anti-Quebec also implies that ethnonationalism is a core Quebec value. These pundits aren’t the intellectual cream of the crop they seem to be held up as, it’s nothing but fallacious logic and taking turns saying “we are the real victims here” in different ways.
Meezly 18:47 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
I knew a very respected, highly intelligent Quebec immigrant from France who believed in the laïcité of Bill 21 and couldn’t conceive how people would criticize it as xenophobic or ethnonnationalist. His arguments used some fallacious logic which really surprised me because he’s a very logical person (in technology), but he really does believe in laïcité as an idealistic principle. Fortunately, he’s the kind of person who actually listens and is gracious. I don’t know if I ever got through to him though.
Chris 23:42 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
Meezly, his world experience is probably pretty different than yours. To be blunt, the average North American Muslim is more liberal/Western than the average European Muslim, who is in turn more liberal than the average Middle Eastern Muslim. i.e. the ‘clash of civilizations’ is more pronounced for him than for you. For example, here in Montreal, I don’t think we have stores that refuse women, like happens in France. To say nothing about places like Saudi. I suspect a lot of the support for Law 21 is to keep that stuff at bay. Whether it’s misguided, will work, backfire, we shall see I guess.
Meezly 23:52 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
Chris, I believe this may be the first time I got a semi-thoughtful and mature response from you. There is an Eurocentric belief that secularism will somehow make society more “civilized” by doing away with religions, esp. “less civilized” non-Western religions.
Kate 11:55 on 2021-12-13 Permalink
If Quebec were a person, I’d say they needed therapy to process their obsessive neurosis about religion. Yes, Quebec used to be dominated by the Catholic church. And yes, people are alive who remember that, who grew up in it, and some whose lives were dominated by it in various unhealthy ways. There’s no doubt about that. But going to the other extreme collectively is almost as unhealthy, and they need some cultural therapy to come to a more balanced, nuanced view of the place of religious beliefs in individuals’ lives.
Put more crudely, they need not to take out their resentment of religion on people who had nothing to do with their Catholic trauma.
Kevin 12:51 on 2021-12-13 Permalink
@Kate
Parizeau should have promised a trip to a therapist instead of a visit to the dentist. We’d all be a lot better off.
And BTW, Martineau doubled down today by finding some English speakers in ROC who support Bill 21 — because they can’t conceive of anyone voluntarily wearing a hijab. Which just strikes me as bizarre. Like, is nobody else curious enough to *ask* people why they wear what they wear?
dhomas 14:26 on 2021-12-13 Permalink
If I worked as a teacher, I would be half tempted to wear a kippah and a turban on alternate days. If confronted, I would say that I adhere to neither Judaism nor Sikhism so these are not religious symbols but rather expressions of my fashion sense. I wonder who would get to me first, the right with Bill 21 or the left with cultural appropriation.