But the sound wasn’t sad!Why, this sound sounded merry!It couldn’t be so!But it WAS merry! VERY! Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say. You know, for months I
Continue readingTag: Quebec politics
Tattered Sleeve: Paint It, Red
But the sound wasn’t sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn’t be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!
Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say.
You know, for months I was reluctant to get behind this particular student-led movement. It really left a bad taste in my mouth every time I heard about “striking” students thwarting others from attending classes. And like many others I spoke with, “strike” (or its french equivalent, “grève”, rhymes with Bev) seemed a misnomer. If anything, these guys were boycotting their classes, or at the very least, “protesting”. But calling it a strike seemed disingenuous.
I am however, a tolerant Canadian, so I did not quibble with them throwing bricks on subway tracks to get attention when the hardline Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest refused to even meet with them and hear their grievances. It was not very becoming of Charest, but then again, he is a pompous ass, and when you knowingly elect a pompous ass, you have to expect to live with that devil you knew and know. He was, after all, merely a young pup when learning the tricks of the trade within Mulroney’s cabinet.
But once he had had enough of these unwavering protesters, his pomposity grew to such outbound proportions with his Bill 78 that I knew in a heartbeat that rather than making a Swift, Decisive, Strong Leader decision, he had instead impetuously shat the provincial bed.
I look on it now as my Grinch moment. It awakened me.
There I was, hand cocked to ear, sitting atop Mount Crumpet with all the self-righteousness of the many people like me, feeling unlawfully hindered from wending our little ways through the workings of life to get to our woefully underpaid jobs. I was fully (gosh, naively) expecting to hear the mea culpas from CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and the others. And like all those who’d poo-pooed the movement and quietly categorized them as uber-brats, I had expected them to back down and accept that they were about to be firmly screwed again. The way I got screwed. The way we all have been getting screwed by the untenable but nonetheless well-embraced mantra of neo-liberalism that doesn’t know anything other than sucking every ounce of life from the 99.9% to feed the self-important point-0-one.
But this generation of students? Nuh-uh. They wouldn’t – and won’t – have any of it, even though Bill 78 meant these students had just had their whole semesters scuppered.
But just like the Whos in Whoville who had been robbed of all their worldly possessions, the “entitled” young buggers came right back out into the commons anyway. They came out in numbers much greater than what wept for Maurice Richard’s passing, and they sang their protest song on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012. Over a hundred thousand people marched in bold defiance of a law that so obviously contravenes our utmost rights (bestowed by the people to those that rule us, remember, not the other way around), even the dimmest of voters could not help but see it.
We all heard them; me from the 8th floor office on de Maisonneuve Blvd where I earn subsistence wages for an American company that constantly insists none of us may take a sick day without later furnishing a Doctor’s note, never mind that it’s against Quebec law to ask for that for absences of less than three days.
I went down to the street on my break and watched the marchers head down Peel Street. They were joyously defiant. They had all the violence of a John Lennon or Ghandi.
They were on the right side of history, I figured.
For what I had heretofore failed to see was that the tuition increase wasn’t all they were protesting. The increase, or “Hausse” was more like the straw that broke the camel’s back – the camel that the mass media was always looking beyond because it figured nobody cared so much about camels as about Kardashians. And if it’s sad that they are right in that assumption, it’s also true that they had a big hand in making it so.
I guess I didn’t relate because my own experience in university was that tuition kept going up each year, but my parents (what foresight!) had been saving for me and my sister since we were tots to make sure we had money to get a degree. And they had expected it to be a lot more expensive than it turned out to be.
My first year at Concordia University was also the last year of a long-standing tuition fee freeze (1988), and my contract for a full year’s study, including extra administrative costs, was all of $750. After that, there was books and living expenses of course. And I did my bit. I toiled unrewarded as a volunteer student journalist; I paid my way and switched to studying part-time once the $350-a-year increases kicked-in in 1989, working minimum wage at McDonald’s – a real Flaherty job if ever there was one.
Since graduation, I have found the market for my writing, my reporting, indeed the sum of my skills learned within the two departments of Journalism and Communications, to be drier than a James Bond martini. The jobs just haven’t been there, and when they were, I jumped at them, only to find myself jammed-up with numerous others, like the hammers of an old manual typewriter all struck at once, with none eventually hitting the ribbon, but left with no recourse save full retreat.
I am 43 years old, with two dependants and an ex-wife. I had to start over last year, grateful as hell to find employment that provides good family benefits and a measure of security (not maternity-leave replacement or fixed-term contract work, but permanent, full-time with vacation), despite the fact it pays less than I made twelve years ago as a McDonald’s manager.
So if the greater message is that this society is just not providing opportunity for the average Joe and Josephine, yeah, I get it.
And as someone who is squarely in the red, living in a tiny apartment with no money to go on vacations and unable to set aside anything for my kids’ education, let alone my own retirement (which I imagine won’t come before I am 70, if not 67 – unlike the tsk-tsk-ing well-heeled Boomer generation that is so disgusted by all this protesting), you bet I get it. Even Arcade Fire and Mick Jagger get it.
So I am with you. Sorry I wasn’t listening earlier. That’s what happens when you’re working for the clampdown. I always loved that song. Now I’ve lived it.
Not the way I’d hoped.
*Photo: thanks, Aly Neumann!
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Paint It, Red
But the sound wasn’t sad!Why, this sound sounded merry!It couldn’t be so!But it WAS merry! VERY! Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say. You know, for months I
Continue reading350 or bust: #Casseroles: Viral Video From Montreal
* Montreal Pots And Pans Video of Protest Against Bill 78 Goes Viral
Continue readingThe End of Days for Charest?
Law 78 has now so antagonized all sections of Quebec society from moderate Anglo professors like myself through to trade unions and perhaps the whole of the French speaking Quebecois intelligentsia that Charest has run out of good options. He could simply recognize that the existing tax system could be
Continue reading350 or bust: Quebec Shows The Rest Of Canada What Democracy Looks Like
Hundreds of thousands of people poured into Montreal’s streets last night to show their displeasure at the provincial government’s draconian anti-protest law, Loi #78. Watching the action on Twitter last night, it was fascinating (and disturbing) to see the hashtag #casseroles start trending after people, many of them middle-aged and
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: The Forgotten Issues of Quebec’s Student Strike
The ongoing three-month strike by Quebec university students over tuition increases has sparked near-unanimous outrage from members of Canada’s mainstream commentariat — and not just over the violence, but over the very content of what students are demanding. What do these spoiled rich kids have to protest, the pundits wail,
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Québec Students: You’re Coming Along
After school is over you’re playing in the parkDon’t be out too late, don’t let it get too darkThey tell you not to hang around and learn what life’s aboutAnd grow up just like them, won’t you let it work it out As I type this, thousands of youth are
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Québec Students: You’re Coming Along
After school is over you’re playing in the parkDon’t be out too late, don’t let it get too darkThey tell you not to hang around and learn what life’s aboutAnd grow up just like them, won’t you let it work it outAs I type this, thousands of youth are ou…
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Québec Students: You’re Coming Along
After school is over you’re playing in the parkDon’t be out too late, don’t let it get too darkThey tell you not to hang around and learn what life’s aboutAnd grow up just like them, won’t you let it work it out As I type this, thousands of youth are
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Just saw the english Mulcair ad
My reaction: Why is this man on my TV looking all psycho-eyed in a suit and trying to make nice with me? As an anglo Quebecker, I really don’t like the Sherbrooke resolution that got so many Bloq supporters to vote NDP. I consider that a classic and shameless sell-out
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Just saw the english Mulcair ad
My reaction: Why is this man on my TV looking all psycho-eyed in a suit and trying to make nice with me?
As an anglo Quebecker, I really don’t like the Sherbrooke resolution that got so many Bloq supporters to vote NDP. I consider that a classic and shameless sell-out move on the party’s part.
I have a big problem with anyone kowtowing to the separatists, because their project is rooted in xenophobia, and my very existence on Québec soil is an irritant to many of them. Their vision of Québec has no place for me.
There’s a reason Chretien passed the Clarity Act.
The NDP is a party replete with such short-sightedness, and I see no indication of a change of direction on their part. If anything, I imagine their next move will be to become more corporate-friendly (especially given the carefully rendered signals of this ad, wherein Mulcair is wearing a dark suit and situated in a board room).
I would hope the left-of-centre Liberals and the Greens could eventually merge with the NDP and get a real solid leftist alternative in place. Then maybe we could have a party that would feel strong enough they don’t need to make such concessions. But I won’t hold my breath.
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Just saw the english Mulcair ad
My reaction: Why is this man on my TV looking all psycho-eyed in a suit and trying to make nice with me? As an anglo Quebecker, I really don’t like the Sherbrooke resolution that got so many Bloq supporters to vote NDP. I consider that a classic and shameless sell-out
Continue readingCanadian Soapbox: Dépanneur owner whose store was vandalized should learn to speak French
The owner of a Verdun depanneur had his store vanadalized after a series of events resulting from his inability or unwillingness to speak French. CTV is reporting (HERE) that Anthony Williams, owner of a convenience store east of Montreal, has seen a drop in his business after a confrontation with a
Continue readingFor Stephane Dion, a Quick Math Lesson/Thoughts on Separation
I only like democracy when the numbers are in my favor. Stephane Dion penned an op-ed for the National Post. (there’s an odd combination) detailing how the NDP’s position on Quebec separation, detailed in the Sherbrooke Declaration, threatens national unity. There is one quote I want to draw specific attention to,
Continue readingLeftist Jab: Harper-Fueled Parti Québécois In Majority Territory
Ideas that won’t die: are you ready for a third referendum? Stephen Harper is Pauline Marois’s greatest political ally. How else do you explain the Parti Québécois’s rise from political grave? After the Quebec amphitheatre debacle, the caucus departures and the old leaders chiming calling for Pauline Marois to quit,
Continue readingBarely Five Minutes After He Was Announced Leader of The Bloc Quebecois, Daniel Paille is Out of The Starting Gate
It’s official, Daniel Paille has won the Bloc Quebecois leadership with a little over 61% on the second ballot (they used a preferential voting system). Ahuntsic MP, Maria Mourani came in second and Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapedia’s rookie MP, Jean-Francois Fortin came in third and was knocked off the second round. I
Continue readingTrying To Understand Politics In Quebec These Days–Part 1–Is Sovereignty Really Dead? The Potential Resurrection of Gilles Duceppe
I had heard nothing from the federalist media, particularly from those from the right who say nothing but sovereignty is dead in la belle province. The evidence they have? Well, some polls, which I do take with a grain of salt–the usual suspects–Leger Marketing. Sadly, that is all most Quebecers
Continue readingSome Misgivings on the Part of Some Harpercon Backbenchers on the Asbestos Issue?
I was surprised when I read this piece from Jennifer Ditchburn and Andy Blatchford last night. It appears that some Harpercon backbench MPs are getting a tad uppity and starting to look for their own information regarding the dangers of asbestos on their own. Five abstained from voting on an
Continue readingFrancois Legault Finally Announces Official Launch of His New Provincial Party–Coalition pour l’Avenir du Quebec Tomorrow
Well, boys ‘n’ girls, it looks like this is the moment many have been waiting for; the moment where Francois Legault’s fictitious party becomes a reality. He is to announce this tomorrow. It should be interesting to see how those…
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