Pride of Quebec

Hôtel du Parlement (House of Parliment), Quebec City, the oldest "European" settlement in North America standing at a mere 400 years, with the Quebec flag flying high and mighty at the top there!

The word "European" goes inside quotes, because it is often an omitted word and in an attempt to differ from the recent comments of McGill University chancellor (who btw has a great name!!)-

"We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization." — Dick Pound, McGill Chancellor and former vice president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

and a half-assed apology that followed - "but, sauvage in French has different meaning than savage in English"... hmmm the last time I checked McGill is a very English language university... and my m-w French-English dictionary says "Sauvage = savage, wild, unsocial, shy"... I will stop now on that...

But, that was a tangent... what I really was thinking when I took this picture was this:

So this Quebecois guy in school (that I don't have to work much... phew!!) was on a roll with this rant against the Federal government (no, I know, that's not news). And among the many things he says to me there's also,

the Federal government just opens the door to all sorts of immigrants. What happens when non-French speaking immigrants come here? The slowly turn this also into a non-French speaking place. We don't mind if they come in a and assimilate; see if they want they can do their cultural thing inside their homes, but otherwise they should learn the French language and promote the French culture. See if we separate from Canada we can have our own rules about who we allow in here and what we do with the people that come

Huh??????? Now I ain't no immigrant, but as an expatriate I am closest to the immigrants I think. What bothers me is not so much that he thinks so, but that he tells *me* this and expects me to agree. It's like the Caucasian Minnesotan woman who once told me about 'some professor getting married to a *little brown thing*'!!! What goes on through these people's heads when they say these? Are they just not seeing me as a 'little brown thing'/immigrant/outsider or are they just plain KKK-like?

The Quebecois finishes off with "you know Quebecois are really nice people" to which I smile wearily. By this time he is totally eating his foot, so like people who try to dig themselves out so often dig them themslves deeper, he says, "I challenge you to find nicer people in the rest of Canada"... and I am like "errr... yeah, now that you have told me how unwelcome I am and how I should learn French and cook French and if I want to do Sri Lankan stuff I could do it withing the confinement in my own home, yeah it's gonna be pretty hard to beat that level of niceness".

In general just this Gaussian tail Quebecois does not define Quebec for me. Just like the American who said after 9/11 "I know these kinds of things (bombing) happens in the rest of the world, but this is America" did not define the US for me. In many ways I met some really nice and open minded, sometimes more so than some people back in Sri Lanka, Minnesotans. Just like that, out of all the Quebecois I met just this one, and may I add just this time, expressed such racist remarks to me. In Montreal, actually I felt way more welcome that I initially did in Minnesota. It would be a just a bit unfair for me forget all those extremely nice and warm people in favour of this guy.

And then last Wednesday there was this -

Future immigrants to Quebec will be required to sign a declaration promising to learn French and respect Quebec's "shared values," the government announced on Wednesday.
- National Post, Oct 29, 2008

Hmmmm... who will suffer if Quebec curtails immigrants like this? In the recent past most Physics Nobel prizes have gone to the US, but it is often so that these physicists were not born or even educated in the US. The US is the country it is today because of its attitude towards immigrants, these days; an attitude which is different from the days of Ellis Island immigrants. I am not saying the US does not have racism, and yes, it does have a long way to go. But I can't help but think that it is far far ahead of pretty much all the other countries, certainly ahead of Sri Lanka. People say Europe is open minded, but where is the Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, Powell etc of Europe? Not that they were all great people, but still...

This is a joker document that the Quebec government is going to get people to sign. So they are gonna give the immigrants free French language/culture classes. But what are they seriously gonna do if they don't adhere to this French culture after they immigrate? Ah yes... lynch them... I forgot...

To clarify, I am actually one of those people who likes to absorb new cultures and ways. I cook a variety of cuisine - seldom is it that I make Sri Lankan. I am dead serious about learning French and so on... But it is an individual choice I make... I don't want these forced down my throat - it will only make me rebel. Yes, so this means that I should ramp up my French learning... pretty soon I am going to resist learning it...

If a culture is dying, why should we hang on to it and artificially keep it going? Imagine if we had dinosaurs walking among us in 2008!!!

This picture, a beautiful building shrouded in darkness, even though the sun is right behind it, very nicely captured my thoughts of the past week. You can see a rainbow though - the famous 22 degree halo...