La fête nationale

Quebec gets an extra holiday in the summer. It's St. Jean Baptiste day or La fête nationale. This year it took place last Friday (June 24th). The rest of Canada also takes Canada Day (July 1st) off. I think they get that as a holiday here as well.

It originated in France as a pagan holiday celebrating the summer solstice. When King Clovis started making christianity official, he turned the holiday in to a celebration of St. John the Baptist (the dude who baptised Jesus and I think later got betrayed by Salomé and had his head cut off). The original french settlers brought the holiday with them to Nouvelle France and maintained it as a patriotic celebration. I think it's not such a big holiday in France anymore, but here, especially with the revolution, it has been installed as one of the biggest holidays of the year.

And it's big! Quebec City and Montreal have huge spectacles (that's concert in french). Montreal actually had two, a free one in Parc Maissoneuve and a pay one on Île st. Hélène. Hundreds of thousands of people attend these shows, wrapped in Quebec flags, fleurs-de-lys painted on their face. I'm sure most of the smaller cities in Quebec have their own spectacles and parades as well. People really party. I imagine there are a lot of people born 9 months after June 24th! At the shows, everybody knows all the lyrics, singing them together with the people on the stage.

Anyways, it's a very nationalistic holiday. I know to a lot of westerners, that must sound weird. It still sounds weird to me. I also heard a few bilinguals scoff at it being called la fête nationale. I'm sure there are many who feel threatened by Quebec nationalism who are not comfortable with the tone of this holiday. Most people, though, from what I read in the english hebdos, are quite happy to have an extra holiday and consider it a great opportunity to party.

I heard an interview with a politician who was encouraging people to come to the spectacle in Montreal. He took great pains to make it clear that this holiday was open to all Quebecers, especially immigrants. The host was asking him some tough questions about this issue, but I still got the sense that the politician was protesting too much. The problem with Quebec nationalism (any nationalism, really) is that it reveals the fuzzy line between cultural pride and exclusion. It's a complex and rich argument, with points on both sides. But Quebec nationalism connects itself back to the original white, french settlers. And that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Many anglophones have families that have been in Quebec for generations. There are also many immigrant groups, especially here in Montreal, who have been here for 2 or 3 generations (Italians and Portuguese specifically) who don't feel included in the fête nationale.

Furthermore, Quebec is bolstering its population with immigration. The government is working hard at educating the new immigrants, in the french language and the Quebecois culture. But you just don't get a sense that someone who moved here from Mexico is going to feel the same connection to Quebecois pop hits from the '70s as someone who grew up with them. Perhaps Quebec's strategy is a bit like the U.S. Unlike the "vertical mosaic" of the rest of Canada, Quebec is trying to fully assimilate its immigrants. Judging by the low-level racism that I see and hear constantly in Montreal, I don't think they are succeeding (more on this issue later).

I don't have many conclusions, beyond that there is a real tension inherent in the fête nationale, but I think the overall postive and festive nature of the culture here will keep the tension at an intellectual level rather than turning the holiday into something divisive.

How french has taught me to love the phone.

[Thanks for the great feedback on my last post everyone. Really interesting and enriching comments. I'd love to find a good discussion group for new anglos to Montreal, that way we could carry on these discussions more dynamically.]

I have discovered a wonderful new bonus to learning and practicing French. Now two of the things that I used to hate the most, tech support and telemarketing, have become good things in my life. Let me explain how.

I'm a bit of a nerd and know enough about electronics and computers to be the kind of customer that I'm sure most tech support workers hate. I also have an attitude and a political opinion born out of a childhood in Berkeley and a father who is basically a technological anarchist. So when I'm phoning my ISP or the hydro company, I'm already in a fight before I even get them on the phone. Of course, they always do something to justify my anger.

In Quebec, when you call these services, the default tends to be in French. Speaking another language on the phone is much more difficult (no visual cues, can't watch the lips move, sound quality is bad) and you really have to prepare yourself mentally. The difficulty is especially pronounced if you are going to be using specific vocabulary, such as billing or computer terms. Generally, here, the people on the other end of the line are bilingual, but I always feel like such a jerk barging past their polite "bonjours" and "comment est-ce que je peux vous aider?" into my complaint (seeming all the more obnoxious in english). For a while, I would start out in French, exchange pleasantries and then ask if it was okay if we spoke in English as I had trouble with the technical terms. This tended to help me feel less guilty and improve the overall tone of the conversation.

Whether it's the language or the culture, French-Canadians are very polite. They take the time to state all the social pleasantries that we used to use in English but have mainly discarded. They say "bonjour" or "bon soir" when they see you and "bonne journée" and "bonne soirée" (have a nice day or evening) when you leave. They say "enchanté" or "c'est à moi le plaisir" (the pleasure is mine) when they first meet you. If you thank someone in a business transaction, they may well respond "C'est moi qui te remercie." (it is me who thanks you). I find it an interplay of language that makes for a warmer and more meaningful social existence. Anglos who want to get on in Quebec would benefit greatly by recognizing this. Even if you don't speak french, just taking the time to make a polite exchange tends to make the other person feel more inclined to be helpful, even if you continue in English.

I saw just how rude the anglophone can seem when I was out on my front porch sorting my recycling. A woman was knocking at the door next to mine. My upstairs neighbour, a woman from Saskatchewan, opened the door. The woman knocking told her in french that she was from the landlord and was here to collect some tax papers that had been dropped off in the mail. My neighbour said "We don't want any" and basically slammed the door in her face. It was jarring. The woman rang again and my neighbour came down. The woman started to explain who she was. I tried to tell my neighbour in english that she was from the landlord, but I could see from her face that she was quite stressed with her inability to understand. Finally, in a shrill tone, she yelled upstairs to her boyfriend that "Some lady is talking french." The boyfriend came down and they figured it out. I know my roommate was not trying to be rude. She was just anxious about not being able to speak the language and had her western canadian fear of talking to strangers defensiveness up. Obviously, the woman from the landlord could not see this at all and she looked very put out. When she turned to me, she went right into her need for these papers. I didn't respond to that and instead introduced myself and asked who she was. Then I remembered that I had talked to her on the phone and then we discussed the weather and the building and her husband the plumber who'd helped fix our kitchen sink. Her whole demeanour changed. She became relaxed, comfortable. I eventually got her her papers (and an appointment for her husband to come by and help me install the washer). Not only was the whole exchange so much more pleasant, but it really highlighted what's important in life: talking with people, not the stupid papers!

So I've been trying this strategy on the phone. Eventually, it got to the point where I just felt comfortable enough to stay in french. Sometimes, I'll ask them to be patient with me, but more and more we've been doing these transactions almost entirely in french. And the beauty of it is that, because of the gentle politeness at the beginning of the conversation and my sense of accomplishment at dealing with this onerous task in another language, I often end up not getting angry at all. Moreover, sometimes I find the person on the other end of the phone to be charming and engaging, to the point where I'm actually enjoying the conversation (despite the extortion-based policies of Hydro-Quebec and Bell, but that's another blog). Sometimes, they can't get me off the phone!

This has now extended to telemarketers. We all know them and we all hate them. Their demon spawn bosses should be packed in ice and shot out to Pluto. But suddenly, for the novice french-speaker, here is a free oral french lesson, on the challenging phone, no less! So when the telemarketer phones me in right in the middle of some project and asks if I have time to answer some questions, I say "avec plaisir!" Of course before they get to their questions, I head them off with some polite conversational openings. "Ça va? Oui, oui. Ça va très bien. En bonne forme, en fait, malgré l'humidité. C'est une catastrophe!..." Then I take the time to discuss each of their questions at length. It's great practice and eventually you can hear them start to get frustrated, which is deeply satisfying. Now they try to get off the phone with me! My most memorable discussion was the guy from customer service at Sympatico who called to follow up on a call I had made to see if I was happy with their response to my call (what middle manager fiend came up with that idea? "Let's see, our service sucks, so when they call to complain and we don't help them at all, we'll call them at home a week later and ask how they felt our service was!" "Great idea, JR!"). Anyways, I ended up arguing with him about the nature of their SMTP server (the poor fool knew a little bit about it, just enough for me to latch onto) and then launched into a discussion about data travelling around wires and in the ether and who should own it and what is private property anyhow. All in french. He hung up on me. I felt like I'd just got an unexpected tax refund.

And the upshot of it all is that my french on the phone is really getting quite competent. Now if only I could get my outgoing emails to be sent reliably...

Les Bougons vs. The Trailer Park Boys

I just got a great comment to my last post from a french-canadian woman who considers herself Canadian. I strongly recommend that you check out what she said. There's a lot there, but one of her comments summarized nicely a problem I've been thinking about:

"It is amazing to me that so far noone at our much beloved CBC has managed to amalgamate in a program the two cultures for the two audiences to be shown simultaniously, something that I have been dreaming of for the past 30 years."

Late night on CBC they show some of the better television shows from Quebec like Fortier (a police investigation show led by a strong woman. I saw one episode and it was pretty good) and le Grand Ourse (a supernatural novela). They are subtitled (well) but probably don't get a lot of viewers as they start at eleven. I'm sure the CBC shows all the internationally sucessful french movies like the Barbarian Invasions.

In Quebec, we get all the english channels and the french commercial networks (TVA and TQS) show dubbed versions of many popular american shows (I'm told the dubbed Simpsons is actually quite hilarious because the dubbing is done in Quebec and they speak like real french-canadians). Most of the dubbed shows and all the dubbed movies are done in France by the same people, which everyone in Quebec knows quite well.

The two hot shows in French and English Canada right now are remarkably similar in theme. Les Bougons is a half-hour sitcom about a lower-class family in Montreal who are masters at scamming the system. The patriarch, played by Remy Girard (the star of the Barbarian Invasions, among many other things), is a domineering boor who loves to harangue the system while he mercilessly steals from it. The rest of the family are more than willing allies, each with his or her own techniques and scams to contribute to the family's well-being. They blackmail local politicians with their stripper daughter, adopt a chinese boy (who turns out to be a girl) to help with shoplifting and computer crimes, collect multiple social assistance checks, etc. They are portrayed sympathetically and the show ends up being more critical of the system around them. Characterizations are rich and the show ultimately celebrates the community and culture of the lower classes.

Trailer Park Boys takes place in a less urban setting and the protagonists are three young men constantly trying to strike it rich with crazy schemes that usually involve growing or stealing pot. It's less subtle than Les Bougons and perhaps aimed at a younger demographic. Most shows involve a shootout, drunken fights and some kind of physical slapstick. Again, though, the theme is about poor people taking advantage of a system in the only way that the system allows them. Furthermore, most episodes end with the notion that the trailer park is a big family, dysfunctional but loving. As in Les Bougons, you sympathize with the cheating criminals.

I believe that the theme of the lower-class underdog resonates across Canada. We love to portray ourselves as underdogs next to the big, rich US of A. The social welfare system is a much larger part of our economy. Authority may be corrupt, blind and stupid but it's not deadly. Our authority figures are petty corporals like drunken trailer park supervisors or obstinate clerks behind the desk at the DMV, not black-booted cops smashing someone's head in with a billy club.

So it surprises me that nobody I know in Montreal, french or english for that matter, watches the Trailer Park Boys. I can understand that few outside of Quebec watch Les Bougons simply because it's in french. The CBC bought the rights to it, but said they are going to refilm it with english actors. That seems ridiculously stupid to me. Basically, you're going to have the Trailer Park Boys in the city. Why don't they just subtitle it? The show already got a write-up in the New York Times. Part of the depth of the show is language they use. I can only understand it partially at times, it's so rich in 'sties and chalices, but it would give anglos such a rich insight into life here.

I think regionalism is a strong factor for the divided audiences for the two shows. Despite the similarity in themes, the city of Montreal is an important aspect of Les Bougons. But I've never been to the Maritimes and the Trailer Park Boys could practically be a small town in B.C.

So the question remains. What Canadian movie or television show would cross this cultural divide? I'll think about this because I don't have any clear ideas right now, other than that both sides should both be regularily watching Les Bougons the Trailer Park Boys. In case I didn't make it clear, both are well-written and hilarious, better than anything else on TV today.

The pernicious influence of the CBC

As all of Canada knows and maybe 6 Americans, we are in the midst of a decent-sized corruption scandal at the leve of the federal government here. The Liberal Party, whose politicians have been running the country for a long time now, gave away a couple hundred million dollars to Quebec advertising and PR firms, a chunk of which was funnelled back to the party so that it would have funds to run it's election. Pretty sleazy, infuriating stuff, without a doubt.

Everybody is angry about it, because it's basically taxpayers money that went to the two of the worst places you'd ever want your money to go, advertising executives and political parties (though now that I think about it, the places where I don't want my money to go make up a very long list and most of my money seems to go there, but that's another topic altogether).

What has surprised me, though, is how quickly the media have started pushing this idea that this sponsorship scandal is now going to ignite another, and this time possibly successful, separatist movement. Every day in the news, it's about how this is the last straw for Quebeckers, how they are so sick of the federal government that this time they are definitely going to vote for separation. Yesterday, Alfonso Galliano, the straight-up lying, sleaziest-mafia-thug-wannabe, who actually was the one handing out the money put forth this notion. And the CBC ran it as their headline! The story was crafted around Galliano's quote (who, by the way, should be in jail in about a year or two) and then all the politicians reactions to it. Every separatist politician responded neutrally, basically implying that anything Galliano said wasn't worth listening to.

I listen almost entirely to the CBC. Watching or listening to any commercial news outlet is not conducive to domestic tranquility chez moi. However, even the CBC is pissing me off these days with this bullshit. They portray Quebeckers as these imbeciles with hair-temper reactions, as if they were all tranquilly happy being part of Canada until all of a sudden! the sponsorship scandal has made them all decide to change their mind! No wonder the rest of Canada considers them to be such a bunch of babies.

I can't speak about the rest of Quebec, but here in Montreal, the reaction is exactly the same as it is in B.C. and I'm sure in the rest of the country. People are disgusted by the corruption, but not surprised. They want good stuff done with their money and they want politicians to address them honestly and directly. I'm sure the die-hard separatists are using this to spur their movement, but I really doubt it's changed anyone's mind.

One of the reasons I left the U.S. was because of the power and pervasiveness of the media and how its citizens clung to their teats, sucking desperately for their daily opinions and personalities. I don't consider Canada to be that much better, but I had hoped at least for some distance and not the kind of fear-mongering and yellow journalism that keeps CNN et al. rich. I grow discouraged.

There is a certain class of Canadians who just keep the CBC on all day. I'm one of those. My friend Ken, also of that class, pointed out when he came to visit how you forget that it's on, until it just becomes a dull buzz in the back of your head. After our third bottle of wine that night, I realized that the radio was on and it was getting in the way of the conversation. I turned it off and Ken reminded me of what he'd pointed out earlier. "What is that noise?" he said, hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand. And then when it's off, "ah yes, quiet. Now we can talk."

Métropolis Bleu

The Blue Metropolis or Métropolis Bleu is an annual literary event in Montreal and another cool thing I got to attend for free thanks to my school. They arranged a workshop with Naim Kattan and groups of advanced students in various french programs. Naim Kattan, whom I did not know before, is a very well-respected Canadian author. He lives in Québec and writes in French, but his books get translated into many languages and he has all kinds of awards and is on a bunch of boards and committees.

He was chosen to lead this workshop because he himself has made the transition to the french language and milieu. He was born Jewish in Baghdad. He moved to Paris when he was a young man, where he mastered his french and then moved to Québec where he's lived for something like 30 years. He spoke to us about his experiences writing in a second language and transforming himself in his new worlds, issues all relevant to his audience, clearly.

He said that he still often gets asked two question here in Québec, questions that he has grown very tired of. The first is "where do you come from?" and the second is "How do you like it here?" Understand that, though once an immigrant, this is a man who has lived here for decades, has a french-canadian wife, children and grand-children. He has published numerous books in french.

In his view, we have many identities. More, identity is always changing. "L'identité est un mouvement, parce que l'identité fixe est la morte." [Identity is movement, because the fixed identity is death.] He explained how he considered himself to have three distinct births: the first as an Iraqi Jew in Baghdad, which encompassed his family and his childhood; the second as a young man in Paris where he learned about les jeunes filles (big laugh from the audience) and the third as a husband, father, grandfather, writer and part of the community of Québec.

If found this concept to be a very helpful one, as I've been thinking about this a lot. It seems sort of arbitrary and artificial to start choosing expressions, phrases and swear words to use in a second language. I feel like I'm acting or something and it makes me hesitate. When I think about it as growing up like a child into a new identity, it makes me feel less self-conscious about these things. It also makes me feel less defensive about what the hell I'm doing here in the first place! Although, generally, except for those two questions (which I also get all the time), the Québécois haven't given me too much reason to feel defensive.

I did have an interesting conversation with my next-door neighbour later in the week. She is completely bilingual, growing up to a french mom and an english dad in a french part of town. Her pet peeve is constantly being asked by Montrealers where she's from. As I said above, I get this a lot as well. I'm thinking it's the Québec equivalent of the New York "what do you do?" There, work is your source of legitimacy, here it's ethnic background. Québec was a very closed province until the revolution, but the attitude clearly persists. I'm sure it's changing, but I think they need to accelerate the pace a bit.

M. Kattan also told us a very funny little anecdote that was one of the things that made him realize how he was really a different person than he had been. His book Adieu, Babylon, which is about his childhood in Baghdad and his first big success was translated into arabic. When he read it in Arabic, he found that it was way better written than he could have ever done in his mother tongue. He certainly credited the translator, but he also realized that his ability to write in french had outpaced his arabic. He spoke than of the "dangers de déplacement" [the dangers or traps of moving], about how you can get stuck in nostalgia for home, when it is a home that can't possibly exist (see my last post). A good lesson, indeed!

M. Kattan was a cool, old dude, looking really writerly and calm, making the audience laugh a few times. At the end, he hung around and was very friendly. He put on a sweet burgundy beret that could only be pulled off by a french writer of his stature.

The Negativity

Something I'm proud of myself about is that I seem to have mostly overcome the negativity that learning a new language seems to bring up in others. I think a lot of it is because we first started learning this stuff in high school when everything is "stupid" and "gay" and French, being illogical and frustrating, as well as seeming kind of fruity, falls hard into both categories.

I still have brief flashes of frustration, such as today when I said "beaucoup des erreurs" and was corrected mid-sentence by the teacher. Beaucoup is always, always followed only by de, never des and this mistake really seems to drive the teachers wild. It is a simple and consistent rule, except that it's buried in a bazillion other exceptions with de that I still can't figure out. For instance:

Le groupe des étudiants

Une group d'étudiants

Why? Who can say.

Once you've had a few honest french teachers who admit that the language makes no sense, it makes it easier for you to accept it and just get along with learning, memorizing and practicing so you can use the language, which is what you want to do. However, there is a certain group of people, even at this advanced stage of their learning who really can't seem to accept the way things are. And they have been really bugging me.

So I am going to indulge in a bit of negativity myself, just to get it off my chest. These are the arrivants to Canada who spend most of their time complaining about Canada and how poorly it compares to their original country. Please understand that this is a very small minority and most people are quietly grateful for their opportunity and just working hard to take advantage of it. Surprisingly, the ones who complain are almost consistently eastern European. It's bizarre. I've never been there, but from the way they talk, their part of the world is some kind of paradise.

It often seems that practically every other sentence out of their mouth is some kind of complaint. Here are some classics:

"There are no clothing stores for women in Montréal. There's really nobody stylish here. The woman don't know how to dress. In Romania, the women are much more stylish." (this from a woman in a denim pantsuit).

"I see the wiring coming out of the houses and I'm shocked. In Slovakia, they would never allow wiring like that. Don't they have inspectors here?"

"The architecture in Montreal is all the same. Everything looks very cheap and shoddy."

"The parents here are very different than in my country. They let their kids do anything. All the children here do drugs and drink all the time. Even in the schools."

"The day cares here are terrible. The other children are dirty and sick all the time. And they feed bad food to my children."

It goes on and on and in the case of parents, you can see a lot of it comes out of anxiety for their children who are growing up in a very different way than they did. But most of them seem to come from some kind of feeling of superiority. It's good to be proud of your upbringing, but have they no sense of cultural relativism? There are many responses to these kinds of statements, the obvious being "so why don't you go back?" Usually, the answer to that is reality and it's often quite sad, so I just stay quiet and nod, occassionaly tring to clear up misconceptions.

I used to go to high school with a guy from Austria who was always crowing about how clean and pastoral Austria was. We used to goad him by saying how the sheep in the fields were androids and the clouds were pollution until he got red in the face and had a spas out. Perhaps it's just a European thing, thinking that everything is better where you're from. I don't know, but it certainly is not a helpful mindset to have when you've emigrated to a new country.

Most of the people in my class are much more reasonable. The comparisons they make between their country of origin and Canada are just that, comparisons, and usually interesting. When they complain, it's usually the same things that Canadians complain about, like the government. And once you hear that, you know they've finally arrived and should consider themselves true citizens.

La mystère de la tourtière

I first had Tourtière at a Cabin à sucre which was one of the first "cultural" events I did upon moving to Québec. A cabin à sucre is the cabin where they boil the maple sap to make sugar and syrup from. Every Canadian knows about the tradition of throwing the hot syrup on the cold snow and rolling it up in a popsicle stick to eat like candy. That in itself is an excellent thing, but here in Québec the trip to the sugar shack is a whole experience. You get to sit at a big giant communal table in a huge old barn with a giant fireplace and a band playing traditional music (with songs about the devil dancing with the prettiest girl in the village and carrying her away).

The tickets are kind of expensive, but you get to eat and eat. And the food was designed to fuel people who are cutting down trees and doing laundry by hand so it's large and easy to eat and full of fuel. The first thing you notice is the old, clear bottles filled with maple syrup, the fire lighting up the amber within (permit me a little lyricism in reference to a moment that was spiritual to me). One of the people in our party, a french-canadian from Ottawa, immediately poured the syrup into his cup and drank it! He explained that all syrups have a different flavor and that it's important to take some time to taste them before you pour it on the food. Like whiskey, I thought! The syrup was incredible, thinner than I had expected, but sweet and complex.

The food was great, especially since it all floated in maple syrup! If there is one thing I've learned from french-canadian culture, it's to not hesitate to put maple syrup on anything, no matter how weird it may seem. The results are always positive. Of special note for me were the fèves au lard (baked beans), the crisps oreilles (thick slice of bacon that looked like ears) and the tourtière. The tourtière is basically a meat pie, but it's almost all meat, with just some potatoes, and it's way thicker and drier than the english ones I'm used to. The crust was thicker and darker as well. I didn't want to stop eating it.

Since then, I've slowly been trying to find a good recipe for tourtière. This has not turned out to be so easy. According to the Larousse, the tourtière is first a casserole dish and second a meat pie made in Canada. Other recipes suggest that a real tourtière is actually more like a casserole, not a pie, with only crust on the top. My previous teacher swore that the only good tourtière was the one that is made with three kinds of ground meat: pork, beef and lamb, in equal amounts. I haven't been able to find that recipe even though she claimed that you could go to any supermarket and they would have a prepared package of those three meats specifically for the dish, with a recipe. I haven't found that in any of my local supermarkets, but I'm not in the most traditional of neighbourhoods.

More interestingly, the same guy who went to the cabin à sucre with us, explained that there was a bird called la tourterelle (I think, I'll have to double check the name with him) that used to be extremely plentiful in the forests of Nouvelle France. He referred to them as des frigos ambulants (walking refrigerators) and because they were so easy to catch, they were the original source of meat for many of the settlers who hadn't yet adapted their hunting skills to this new land. They are now extinct.

Most recipes just call for ground beef. But I'm not satisfied with that. I'm still looking and when I do find a recipe, either for the three meats, or that extinct bird, I'll try and cook one and let you know how it turns out.