Xenophobia

The Cultural Dictionary (from dictionary.com) defines xenophobia as: "An unreasonable fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign or different."

Somehow though, I simply don't think that the word is strong enough to describe what the English minority in Quebec has to face when it comes to extremist separatist groups. The latest example of what I call uber-idiocy, a group that calls themselves Le Comité d’action politique pour l’Indépendance nationale, decided that it would be a good idea to protest the building of the
McGill University Health Center (MUHC) by planting 101 wooden crosses and a banner symbolically painted in red.

A statement sent to the press said: “This cemetery of crosses, in the image of cemeteries for soldiers fallen in the two Great Wars, represents the Québecois people who, after centuries of battle, are finally conceding to the English-speaking pressure on the continent. The cemetery is accompanied by a banner claiming high and loud the death of a people, signaling that the MUHC represents nothing less than the death of the Québécois people, and it expresses the people’s rejection of an assimilation like that which they have always resisted until now in a continuous, and perhaps perpetual, struggle.”

I resent the entirety of this statement, the separatists group have no right to even equate themselves to the brave young Canadians who fought in both Great Wars, as Canadians. The also have no right to protest the building of this hospital as there is also a super hospital being built for the Université de Montréal.

Once again, the extremists of this province have given my people a black eye on both the Canadian and the world stage.

To the rest of the country we're already strange enough and every week I talk to people in Toronto, 5 hours up the 401 highway and they have no idea that people in Montreal speak English as well as French.

If idiots like this group keep grabbing headlines, what hope does Quebec ever have of attracting foreign investments, preventing a brain drain and of being taken seriously on the national stage?

Just food for thought.

(quotes from Montreal Gazette)

Jacques Cartier screwed up...

I was talking with a good friend of mine today, a small business owner here in Montreal. For the last 25 years he's owned a guitar store and also worked on and off as a high school English teacher.

We were talking today, as we usually do, about the political climate in Quebec. With Jacques Parizeau trying to revive separatism in his new book, with the Franco-racist-Brotherhood and Unions trying to push the government to go against the supreme court and stop French and immigrant parents from sending their kids to English Private school (because they're not allowed to go to English public school unless both parents are primarily English) and talking about where the hell our money goes.

To sum up the conversation, we both live in a province that should be proud of its heritage and want to motivate others to embrace it but insteand we shove it down everyone's throat and play the victim. We live in a province where our gazillions of tax dollars seems to disappear. We also live in a province where Unions are bankrupting cities and choking government infrastructure.

My friend, as always, has very extreme views on this and he's prepared to back them up... Here's what he says: "Muchacho, if I ever find out I'm ill and I'm going to die I swear to god I'm going to burn this whole place down and move down south. Where life is simple, the government won't tax me to death and I can get a decent blowjob before breakfast."

A mutual friend decided last year to pack up, sell everything and move to a Caribbean island and live the life. So I'm guessing that this is where my friend got his idea that on the islands everyone gets head before breakfast. Either way, the point is that here we were, two tax paying french born citizens contemplating on the ways our government screws us on a daily basis.

My friend lights a cigarette and looks at me and says: "When Jacques Cartier discovered this place, he should have just kept going south. He really screwed up..."

In Your Face Separatists!

I'm sitting on my laptop tonight and I came across a story in the Montreal Gazette about a poll that was conducted over the weekend in Quebec and the title just made me smile: "Hopes for Sovereignty Dim: Poll".

Here are some of the highlights:
- 32 per cent said Quebec has enough autonomy and should remain in Canada.
- 30 per cent said Quebec needs more autonomy, but should remain in Canada.
- 28 per cent said Quebec should become a separate and independent country.
- Should Quebec Separate from Canada? : 54 per cent said no while 34 per cent said yes.

While these results are hardly a resounding victory for me and others who wish to remain in Canada, at least it gives us some things to build on and might just (hopefully) some of that racist hateful intolerant wind from Pauline Marois' sails.

On the other hand when the same poll asked the respondents "which province understands best Quebec culture and Society?" they answered this:
-42% New-Brunswick
-9% Ontario
-4% BC
-3% Alberta
-2% PEI
-1% (Newfoundland-Lab, Manitoba, Nova-Scotia)
-0% Saskatchewan

Why is it that Quebeckers feel that New-Brunswick best understands us? I mean really... I used to live there and while it's a beautiful place in its own right it is nowhere near the cosmopolitan multi-ethnic metropolis of Montreal, how could they possibly understand us when the entire province only has 750,000 inhabitants? Is it because of the Acadians? Because Acadians don't give a crap about separation. I don't know what it is but I'd really like to find out... If anyone knows, please let me know.

In conclusion I can go to bed tonight a little safer in knowing that I still have a country and that I might not have to move away just yet. Although with Canada day and St-Jean Baptiste around the corner, emotions here tend to run high from the separatist side; so I'm expecting, as usual, my neighbors to ignore me and call the police to be my house at 3pm to tell me to stop my annual Canada barbecue, again.

Muchacho Enfermo

Commie Rhetoric in my Town?

Today Quebec's left wing separatist party Québec Solidaire published a manifesto called "To Overcome the Crisis: We Must Surpass Capitalism?"

With this new publication they hope to enlighten the masses and bring us to the conclusion that only must we abandon our current economic system, but we must surpass it and embrace something new. "Our economic system itself, is based on the accumulation of endless profits and is largely responsible for the problems we are currently experiencing. It is time to revise the system to place the humanity at the center."

It is no surprise that they are launching this manifesto on the even of May 1st, International Workers Day, usually a day of riots and protests in Montreal and around the world. Oh yeah and in case you were wondering, the spokespeople for Québec Solidaire are the ones calling this publication a manifesto, I didn't put that word there for fun.

I'm sorry folks, but the commie crap just won't fly with me. I've seen first hand what communism does and anyone who has will agree with me that socialism is not the key to solving an economic crisis. EVER. Have we learned nothing from Cuba and the old Soviet Block? How much aid do we send to North Korea for food? And OUR economic system needs fixing? Please...

Not only is this party communist but they're separatist as well... So if they had their way Quebec would be a socialist nation of unemployed unilingual French people starving to death on the streets waiting for their promised utopia, their El Dorado, that will never ever come.

It's a good thing that no one votes for these people because then I'd start to get worried...

Muchacho Enfermo

Marois: the little train that couldn't.

PQ leader Pauline Marois decided to use her opening speech at the Parti Québécois "National" council on Saturday to tell everyone present that Québec would be better off in this economic crisis without Ottawa... Isn't this the same person who complains that the money we get from Ottawa just isn't enough?

“Sovereignty is a pressing need” said Marois, saying that if Québec were independent of Canada it would have a seat at all the major international conferences and could push its own agenda.

I have a few words for Marois: nobody cares. Do you really think that if Quebec were a nation of maybe 6 million strong that it would be a part of the G8 or even the G20? Do you really think that with your broken English and your angry little fist pounding, anyone outside Saguenay would really give a damn? Do you think the world would just roll over and say "Wow.... Quebec is awesome, let's listen to what they have to say?"

Well my answer to all these questions is: no.

Outside Canada Quebec is insignificant at best. Economically Quebec would have nothing except hydro and lumber. The multinationals that employ hundreds of thousands would pick up and leave (just like in 1980 and 1995) and Quebec would be left alone, crippled, without Ottawa bailouts and money injections from big business.

It wouldn't be long before Marois would sell us out to the US and the precious "national identity" she so desperately pursues would be lost.

Muchacho Enfermo

And the Separatists win... this time

As reported in the Globe and Mail the planned re-enactment of the famous French-English battles on the Plains of Abraham has been canceled due to separatist threats. It was reported that these threats included threats of violence.

The organizers of this event then chose to cancel the event to prevent harm from coming to those who may be attending the re-enactment, including the many families and small children that they believed would be in attendance.

The separatists no doubt think that this is a huge victory because they all felt that this was an insult to their french heritage.

First let's get a few things straight:

1- The French abandoned La Nouvelle France long before the plains of Abraham.
2- They left the colony to die at the hands of a far superior army.
3- It is a FRICKING HISTORICAL FACT people. It happened, you can't argue that it didn't happen. It's in history books... your kids at school are learning about this HISTORICAL FACT and what? You're going to threaten the teachers if they don't stop teaching it?
4- Grow up.

Seriously, France hasn't given a crap about Quebec in hundreds of years... Has anyone listened to what Sarcozy had to say about the separatists?

Just for the record, I am french, I am Canadian and history is history.

Let it go people, your little separatist dream of a little French utopia where the world recognizes you for something else than the intolerant people that you really are is dead.

You may have won the plains of Abraham this time, but never... EVER... again. History is on the move, and those who do not move with it will be left behind to watch it happen from a distance.

Muchacho Enfermo

Duceppe vows to bring more turmoil to the country

Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois and professional idiot, stated a party rally in St-Hyacinthe that "Bloc and Parti Québécois victories brought hope to sovereignists. It's up to us now to translate this hope into action." There's so much I could say about the Bloc and the PQ but I'm pretty sure I've made my opinions clear on these two "mickey mouse" political parties, so we'll just leave it at that.

I'm just glad that Ignatieff never went through with this coalition business... It would have been a catastrophe to have the Bloc try to push their renewed fervor for separatism and its plan to destroy the country.

Duceppe gets cheers and applause at rallies because he speaks with conviction even when he's spouting nonsense such as: "For those who may not have noticed, no matter what party is in power in Ottawa, Liberal or Conservative, no matter who's in charge, the interests of Canada take precedence over the values and interests of Quebec." Does anyone else see hoe moronic that statement actually is? Of course they'll put Canada first, Ottawa is the capital of CANADA. If they started putting Québec first we'd have a huge problem on our hands.

My other beef with this next round of separatist rhetoric is that in this situation of economic downturn, the comments of the PQ and the Bloc could further hurt Québec's economy by scaring away businesses that operate here, simply because of the potential for political instability. The other thing is that this always comes up when the economy is at its lowest, when people are getting desperate, people who are afraid are much easier to manipulate and Duceppe is a professional manipulator.

I sometimes tell myself that I hope that the separatists win. It's too bad that I'd have to move away, maybe it's the motivation I need to buy a nice little house on the beach in PEI. But all that would be a small price to pay to watch the sovereignists crash and burn and struggle to stay alive. When all is said and done and Québec realizes it can't govern itself and steer its economy into the fiscal utopia that the Bloc keeps promising and they come crawling back... I'd hear about it on CBC radio, while sipping an ice cold Moosehead on my porch, watching the sunset on the Atlantic, I'd light a celebratory Cohiba, smile to myself and say: "I told you so".


*source for quotes: Globe and Mail*

Muchacho Enfermo

Western separatism? WTF people!

Alright... the redbull and the coffee have finally kicked in. Time to get serious folks the bartender has just put the Clash on the stereo and I'm feeling a little confrontational.

My good friend over at the Nexus of Assholery has posted today about how Preston Manning is trying to tell western Canadians not to separate. I think it's the first good thing this guy has done in his entire political career... I can't even begin to describe the disdain I have for good old boy Preston, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is that the West feels like they were left out of the coalition of NDP/Liberals some of them seem to think it's a giant conspiracy by Toronto to run the country. I got news for you folks. You voted conservative. The rest of us who didn't are well represented within this coalition. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of a coalition any more than you do. But I would never complain, for example, that Stephen Harper doesn't represent me. Ever. The bottom line is I didn't vote for him and I don't feel he has my best interests at heart. Does that mean I want Quebec (where I live) to separate. No. Never. Ever.

People who think that the western provinces should separate should have a gigantic bbq at the nuthouse along with the Quebec separatists because it's basically the same load of crap that they are spouting. The only difference is one is saying it in English and the other is saying it in French.

You see? We have more in common then most people think. Why can't we all just get along.

Muchacho Enfermo