"FLQ manifesto will remain part of Plains of Abraham event, says artistic director"

When the old line parties have nothing to offer ordinary Canadians, which is quite often, sometimes they resort to the politics of division and bigotry as diversion. And it's a low and fascist place to foment chaos from in times of capitalist economic upheaval. 

Mmmm... I could have sworn I started a thread on this at 1:58.

Haven't the dominant group - NOT Francophones in Canada - always had the privilege to define who are the "thugs" and who are legitimate armed supporters of the status quo?

Nice bit of sloppy editorializing from Canadian Press, that last paragraph. Comparing a military defeat to the reading of a text... This after quoting approvingly arch-Angryphone William Johnson who claims that the Plains of Abraham attack saved French Canada from being sold off like Louisiana...

Instead of grandstanding, CP should do its homework. There is absolutely no truth to the FLQ Manifesto having provoked a "string of bombings" as the author claims: "...The planned readings include the manifesto of the terrorist group that triggered the 1970 October crisis with a string of bombings and kidnappings in support of Quebec independence..." The only bomb related to the FLQ to be set after the Manifesto's writing exploded in July 1974, behind Sam Steinberg's home... in the face of Robert Samson, the RCMP agent that was setting it!

But hey, whatever the market will bear, eh?...

That's plausible.

toddsschneider wrote:

I'm still waiting to see what disciplinary measures are taken towards the thuggish bus driver for telling the "other" guy to speak White, then throwing everyone off the bus and calling the cops to come to her aid.  And to see which groups rally around her.

Not even worth mentioning  in the French press, evidently.

You think the facts aren't dramatic enough, so you make them up?

Busdrivers in Montréal are not required to be bilingual, even though the vast majority of them happen to able to function in English, and the STM tries to assign English-speaking drivers to certain parts of town. Sometimes there are replacements, and it's not always possible.

Nor, to my knowledge, are they supposed to be an information service telling passengers what time it is.

This driver obviously didn't speak English - very rare in my experience. The fellow asked her the time in English. She replied in French. He persisted in English, obviously being rude. She finally explained, "I don't speak English". He then baited her, saying that if she didn't speak English, how was she able to say that in English?

At this point, if I were the busdriver, I would have pulled out a dictionary and taken the time to work out how to tell this pompous fellow to go f*** himself and hitch a ride. Instead, she felt threatened by this persistent person, and called the police and asked the passengers to vacate the bus.

Of course, all we know about this incident is from the passenger himself - he was the only one who went to the media.

So you see, todd, your take on this incident is founded in some kind of anger which I don't understand. This is Québec. [b]The language of Québec is French.[/b] We take pains to explain that fact to anyone who comes here to live even temporarily, like this fellow. I do hope he enjoys his stay, but he should learn a little humility.

She probably saved many lives.  It's a good idea to phone the police ANY TIME someone won't speak the local language.  Don't take chances!

From the story, it sounded like he berated her for saying she doesn't speak English, then speaking English.  And perhaps he was, as you say, being rude.  But phoning the police over it?  Kicking everyone off the bus over it?

If the story were "Toronto Bus Driver Phones Police When Brown Man Gets Rude" I might anticipate a slightly different response.  I respect that there's all kinds of old subtext going on here, but still.

Quote:

So don't take these bullshit stories too seriously. Ask, rather, why certain MSM outlets do so.

A fair comment, I suppose. I assume that many media outlets have their own preferred spin on things, and that they primarily exercise this spin through the choice of what they cover and what they don't (along with the Editorials, of course) but I usually assume that the spinning doesn't extend to deliberate misrepresentation of facts. So I'm sure that some Anglo editor or owner was drooling at this story, but in and of itself, I'm not assuming the story to be false.

But your advice of late seems to be "slow down", and I think that's probably good advice.

martin dufresne wrote:

Well put. Women's experiences of harrassment at work are routinely pooh-poohed, even when someone is doing such a high-attention task as driving a bus! The driver followed instructions to the letter and maybe avoided an accident or dangerous escalation of this guy's attitude. She deserves respect from progressives, not insults from our resident francophobe.

 

Martin is right on this.  This whole thread is, once again, about todd's attempts to con the rest of Babble into thinking anglophones are persecuted in Quebec.   It's been proven to him over and over and over again, that they aren't, but he won't stop with this.

The bus driver had every right to do what she did.  She deescalated a situation with a passenger who obviously showed a propensity for violence.  This had NOTHING to do with language, and todd knows it.

Quote:

She deescalated a situation with a passenger who obviously showed a propensity for violence. 

Obviously showed a propensity for violence?

Can you give us some kind of hint as to what he did that made it clear that he had a propensity for violence?? As I read the story, he argued with her. It's not clear to me how that indicates a propensity for violence.

Boom Boom wrote:

Yes, but the reality is that there are large numbers of unilingual Anglophones in the province who can trace their roots in this province back many generations, like here on the Lower North Shore, for example. Provincial services are fully available in English here.

And so it is in Montréal, and many other parts of Québec, where unilingual anglophones can live all their lives here and scarcely miss a beat - as I'm sure you'll agree.

That couldn't happen to any other linguistic minority anywhere else in North America, nor in most countries for that matter.

That's why bullshit stories like the one in the Gazette are so potentially harmful.

But you know, Boom Boom, when you say "large numbers of unilingual Anglophones", the percentage is constantly falling - not because Anglophones are leaving (that train left long ago), but because they're learning French.

Don't forget the kidnapping element. And I know the Gazette didn't mention this, but two of the passengers were Green Party members from B.C. that had crossed the floor to join l'Action démocratique.

This story is potentially huge.

I don't know who put the announcement on our community radio yesterday, but that is where the misstep began. We were invited to a public meeting where the road construction would be discussed. However, that was not to be the case - instead, it was a religious ceremony for the Innu construction workers here - somewhere between 36 and 42 of them. The ceremony was entirely in Innu, with a French introduction and some comments in French from the Minister of Transport at the end. We were kept waiting 45 minutes outside the hall as the Minister was late arriving, then the  ceremony lasted another 45 minutes. So I think the annoyance of the Anglophone community of Kegaska can be understood - it wasn't a meeting to discuss road construction as advertised on the radio, and there was no English content during the entire 45 minutes once we were inside the hall. Just poor planning is what it appears to be, but on whose part I have no idea.

The point might be that both sides are right-- the reinactment might have been okay if the reading including the FLQ document were both scheduled along with many other things. The feds by going for the bare-assed reinactment out of the context of the rest of Quebec history fouond themselves in an intolerable position.

Well yes that's quite true. Though I'm speaking to the behaviour exhibited to the other passangers. All in all rude people speak all languages. Big deal.

Ken Burch wrote:

Uh...don't you have to have a seat before you can cross the floor?

Montréal buses are divided among party lines. The Greens were seated in their section. When the shooting started, they ostentatiously rose and crossed over to the ADQ section. When the tactical unit arrived, they were totally confounded, because the passenger manifest didn't match the chief electoral officer's records. The affair ended peacefully, thank God, but it could have been a lot worse.

I don't know if this is still the case but I remember that Montreal buses used to have a sign saying something like "Please don't talk to me. All my attention is required by the driving.". Toddsschneider's whine seems to be based on the opposite principle. Bus drivers would owe passengers to listen to them, to be bilingal enough to answer whatever question in their language of choice, to tolerate whatever aggravation they choose to dish out, and to be accountable to the Montreal Gazette rather than to their employer for safety procedures. How callously colonial of him...

...I just sit as far back as my self-respect allows...

Could you explain that bizarre line? You seem to suggest resistance to being "forced to the back of the bus", like Blacks used to be in the racist South? Have you gone that far off the deep end?

Interesting thread drift. 

I think the FLQ manifesto should be read since it is an important document in Quebec history.

The meta question is whether an important historical  document is ever too name your ism to not be read publicly as a representative historical document.

Mein Kampf comes to mind although I'd like to avoid Godwin's law.