Francis Fox, who was elected several times in federal ridings outside town and served in Pierre Trudeau’s governments, has died. Fox was by turns a cabinet minister and a senator although CBC illustrates the story with an unintentionally comic photo showing Fox ill at ease in a canoe in business attire alongside a nattily clad P. Trudeau.
Justin Trudeau acknowledges several achievements by Fox including the Access to Information Act and Telefilm Canada. What he doesn’t mention, and what I can’t find chapter and verse on, was the change in the lyrics to the English version of O Canada that was made on Fox’s watch as Secretary of State in 1980.
The eighth line now goes “God keep our land glorious and free!” which was a departure from the version I learned as a kid, which had a lot more standing on guard, but no God. The change turned the anthem into a religious hymn, which the English version hadn’t previously been. (The French version is totally, almost luridly, a Catholic hymn.)
People were more concerned about changing “True patriot love in all thy sons command” to a genderless “all of us” but God needs to be shown the door too. But then the French version would need a complete rewrite.
I’ve held forth on this before.
Secretary of State was a federal government position abolished in 1993.
Phil 07:10 on 2024-09-27 Permalink
Move all he concert venues there…
faizimam 19:49 on 2024-09-27 Permalink
Mirabel might be a lost cause, but St-hubert is actively growing and hungry to expand further.
Currently they only have authorization for domestic flights, and ADM as it stands refuses to share international duties. But if ADM faces any serious restriction that could easily change.
Not that St-hubert will ever be a Mirabel, but having a decent smaller secondary airport that is actually a reasonable distance from the city is a huge benefit.
For the record, St-hubert is 15 mins shuttle from both REM and metro, and a closer drive than Trudeau for a substantial amount of the Montreal region.
carswell 20:45 on 2024-09-27 Permalink
While I don’t doubt that air travel will continue into the foreseeable future, I wonder whether it will be at the same scale as today once the world is forced to take serious, even drastic action on global warming.
Industry forecasts don’t see a switch away from kerosene-powered engines before mid-century at the earliest, and aircraft are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. If cutting emissions becomes a top societal priority, I’d expect restrictions (surtaxes, limiting of slots) to be placed on all flying or on non-essential flying. If they were, Montreal-Trudeau may be large enough to meet they area’s needs through the next few decades and possibly beyond.
It also seems to me that helping to avoid expanding or replacing Montreal-Trudeau is a strong argument in favour of a TGV, as opposed to a TGF, for the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, as it would drastically cut the number of flights between corridor cities, in particular YUL and YYZ (studies indicate a TGF wouldn’t). Indeed, that cost savings should be added to the plus side of the TGV ledger.
Orr 22:27 on 2024-09-27 Permalink
Montreal-based ICAO will greenwash the heck out of public perceptions of and airline plans for passenger air travel and their prediction that passenger air traffic volume will double by 2050 imo will come true.
Also probable: the Air Canada TGV will be built, maybe not by 2050, but by 2100 for sure.
Kate 08:44 on 2024-09-28 Permalink
carswell, earlier this year I briefly became fascinated with looking to see what flights were overhead, using one of the tracker sites. Flights from exotic places were interesting (names of Latin American resort towns I’d never heard of, for example) but the surprise was how many flights to and from Toronto there are, also Ottawa and Quebec City – all of which should be reached by train, not by air!
But I don’t hold out the hope you do that anything will quash the urge for plane travel. People will be flying from one city devastated by environmental degradation to another as long as they want to and as long as an airline will take their money. Nobody thinks their little plane ticket is a problem.
dhomas 10:14 on 2024-09-28 Permalink
It’s crazy to me that we don’t have a fast train between Montreal and Toronto. I just checked and there are about 35 daily departures for this route, 1 way. It’s “faster” to go by plane. Except it’s really not. The flight is just over an hour. But you have to get to the airport at least an hour early (more, if you have checked luggage). Plus, you have to get TO the airport, which could add another hour, in Montreal. Then you have to get from Pearson to Toronto, which adds another hour at least, on a good day. All this adds up to at least 4 hours transit time.
I was in Spain this summer and took a train from Madrid to Barcelona (over 600km, compared to 550km MTL > T.O.). The AVE took us 2.5 hours. From city center to city centre. We got to the station 15 minutes before departure. About 30 minutes to get to the station in Madrid and 30 minutes to get from the station in Barcelona to our apartment. Total travel time was less than 4 hours. And it is sooooo much more comfortable and pleasant to travel by train. You’re not packed in like a sardine. You can walk around, go to the cafeteria cabin, grab some food and drink. It was such a nice experience. But it made me sad. Because I know that we won’t have this for a long time in Canada (though we should!).
If we are serious about climate change, we NEED to do this. imagine the decrease in emissions. Literally half the population of Canada lives in the Windsor corridor. But we have no fast transit. It boggles the mind.
JP 10:41 on 2024-09-28 Permalink
I don’t do it anymore but before Covid I’d fly to Toronto for work. Environmental issues notwithstanding, I preferred it to the train…it felt faster…The trips were relatively short so there were no checked bags for me, and if I were going downtown I’d fly to Billy Bishop.
dhomas 18:25 on 2024-09-28 Permalink
It is faster by plane today. I’m saying it would be faster by train (in addition to being better for the environment) if we built a fast train.
Joey 18:34 on 2024-09-29 Permalink
Assuming no delays, total travel time when flying from downtown Mtl to downtown TO is about three to 3.5 hours. The UP train runs regularly and makes the trip from Pearson to Union in about 25 minutes; though you’d probably fly to the Island and grab the free 10-minute shuttle to the same stretch of downtown. Definitely something that can be made redundant by high-frequency/high-speed rail. But until that day, business gonna business.