justnick's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vas chier en Toronto, esti'd tabarnac BGM: "Mini Jupe et Watusi" - Les Breastfeeders There is no faster way to set my blood to boiling and get me red-in-the-face, irrational mad than debating Quebec's language laws. For those of you who don't know me in person, I am a fiercely proud Montrealer. I am the eternal advocate of this city among my friends who've moved away. I genuinely believe there is no better city on Earth. Bigger, certainly. But not better. And I consider myself a pretty accurate representation of this city. Been here for hundreds of years on both sides, half French, half English, both of them from the dirtiest, poorest neighborhoods in the city. Now, Montreal is not Halifax and Halifax still isn't exactly Brooklyn, but we still have some dangerous streets here and there. More so when my parents grew up, when you could get beat up for speaking the wrong language in the wrong neighborhood, no matter what you were saying. I have been in a grand total of two language-based fist-fights, and while that may be shocking to those of you not from here, that's probably what my dad saw in a slow week when he was growing up. It's not that I don't understand why the French Language movement was necessary, I do. The Canadian government ignored the entire French population, including those segments of it related to moi, and that clearly needed to change. But Bill 101 and laws like it are not just ignorant and outdated, but completely fascistic. I should have the freedom to do anything I want as long as it doesn't put anyone else in danger. It is not the government's job to tell me which language to speak at work, to conduct business in, to write in, or to teach my children in school. What gets me especially mad is the 'preservation of culture' excuse. It's so woefully ignorant. If the only way you can come up with to preserve your culture is at the expense of another, than you need to go back to the drawing board. Because a large segment of the Francophone populace of this province doesn't think of Anglophone Quebec as a distinct culture. They see us as those who have yet to move to Toronto. Well fuck Toronto. My family has been here for like six or seven generations on the English side. This is my province too, and I am clearly not the only one. Quebec is not a Unilingual (I want to point out that Firefox's spell checker wants to change that to cunnilingus) province, it is Bilingual. Don't tell me to move to Ontario if I want to speak English, my family has always been here and I hate Toronto just as much as any Francophone out there. (seriously, fuck that place) This might be hard to relate to for the Americans reading this, thinking of the English language as the legally unrecognized minority, but just imagine I'm Mexican or something. Preservation of culture. Bullshit. What about my culture? Excelsior. 11:18 a.m. - 2009-04-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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