le givre

my window at work




the window down the hall




the icicles you can see through the window

Quite beautiful, eh? They look like light little feathers dancing in two dimensions on the glass. They melt away when the sun hits them. All this icey beauty is the result of poor insulation, unfortunately.

Carbon Neutral Move

So we're moving. We are part of the horde of yuppies turning Mile End from an old working class portuguese neighbourhood to the new SOHO of Montreal (I've already seen two new baby stores opening up, a sure sign of the apocalypse). I speak partly in jest, as we are literally moving one block north, across the border of avenue Mont-Royal, which puts us at the very bottom of Mile End. The difference is that we are now owners rather than renters.

Among the many positive aspects of this Step to Maturity, the one I am most excited about is the possible opportunity to make this move entirely by hand. I am a bit obsessive about moving and quite good at it and I have found that hiring people can be very hit or miss. Our rent is so cheap that we can afford to keep our current place for a month and take the time to move slowly. I don't have the kind of competent friends here that I would have in the West Coast (the kind of men who synchronize their watches with the CBC time signal when they hear it), so I am kind of on my own. Not that my friends here aren't competent, but I haven't known them long enough to feel comfortable to ask them to help me move. Though one couple already offered to help with painting or borrowing a car, demonstrating the natural generosity and hospitality of the Québécois.

So I've borrowed a hand truck from work and we are slowly going about boxing non-essential things. I spent this weekend rolling them up the block, through blowing snow, carrying them up the stairs, unpacking everything and then taking the empty boxes back home. I was feeling a bit like a crazy person and suffering from the deeply-ingrained bourgeoisie instincts of guilt when not spending money and doing things like everybody else.

On Sunday morning, on my first run, as I was dragging the heavily-laden handtruck over the small mountains of snow between the sidewalk and the street (it's easier to push the handtruck along the cars' wheel tracks which tend to be clear of snow), I encountered a red-cheeked, older man in an old coat and toque with earflaps. He immediately recognized what I was doing and told me that he had once moved with only a hand truck. The distance between his old place and new one was a lot longer than mine and required 10 trips. We walked up the street together, discussing moving and what a privilege it was to be able to take your time when you move. "C'est une grande luxe de démenager tranquillement. Une grande luxe!" When we parted ways, he gave me a pat on the back and I felt like I had received both social acceptance for my behaviour and a small blessing. The guy was old school Montreal and looked a bit like a friendly gnome and I wondered if he hadn't been sent by the city itself as a reminder that despite the yuppies that swarm the Provigo in their new cars, this is still a working man's town at the core and doing things by hand the cheap way is accepted and approved.

Snow Day!

I've been very absorbed in school and work and life so it wasn't until last week that I started really thinking about the winter. Last year was so mild and what with all the global warming, I was anticipating a few weeks of hassle here and there and some basic bundling up. I happened to read an article in Le Journal about how it was supposed to be a really cold and snowy winter in Quebec this year. Then all of a sudden everybody seems to be talking about it. It's Canada-wide! And a few days later we get a nice dump and all kinds of alarmist media reports about 40cm on Vancouver island and storms across the nation. Excellent.

I like talking and thinking about the weather, but the media reports really get me ranting. I totally understand how we want to see images of lots of snow in other parts of the country, but please leave off the tone of concern and seriousness. It's winter. We live in Canada. It snows. Why is this news? Just show it to us and give us the details. Stop with the retarded man in the street interviews where some guy tells us how he's having a hard time getting to work. Take the bus you loser!

What they should do is have a team that goes around and finds the best and worst shoveled households and compare them. The old Italian and Portuguese dudes in my neighbourhood are most impressive. I mean some of these guys are old. And they come from mediterranean countries. But they are out there early, and their work is thorough and symmetrical. They even sweep the ground after, even when it's still snowing. That's commitment (and retirement).

I don't if it's because I'm in the heart of the city or just the general collapse of civilization, but it seems like the rest of the people have become incredibly lazy and half-assed about cleaning their walks and drive ways. Perhaps out in the countries and the burbs, you have the kind of heart and character that used to define this great nation. But here, you see spiral stairs a foot deep in snow with a little trail of boot tracks in the middle of it. Get up and clean the whole thing off, you lazy whippersnappers. Are we all so used to the city to rushing out with their gas-powered machines and carrying the snow away that we expect it to be done for our own homes as well?

I think we should get rid of the plows altogether and have a law that everyone is responsible for shovelling within their property line, projected halfway out into the street. Then when it snows like this, we'd all take the morning off, come out onto the streets together and shovel. The cols bleus, could be responsible for the highways and larger roads, as well as bringing hot chocolate to the neighbourhoods. The mayor would make spot checks and the cleanest streets would get a small tax break and have their picture in the newspaper. It'd be great for the environment, great for community spirit and keep people in better shape.

Why Thomas Mulcair won

I don't know if any of you care, or even know about it, but the NDP star candidate won the Outremont riding here in Montreal, which had been a liberal "stronghold". Mulcair was the provincial Liberal minister of the Environment here in Quebec under Charest before they had a falling out. I had a minor encounter with him on the radio during that time, which made me very suspicious of him. However, his quitting the provincial Liberals, though probably politically very pragmatic did suggest to me that he might have some core values. I also spoke with one of my colleagues at work, who knows politics and the environment extremely well and he said that often ministers of the environment come out "converti" to the cause.

So even though I tend to vote green, I was leaning towards Mulcair. I used to like Jack Layton when he just spoke intelligently instead of constantly trying to market his way into our hearts and the NPD does actually seem to stand for things from time to time. I applauded them forcing the transportation money into the federal budget. And they seem to be the only federal party that is actually willing to publicly criticize the cons.

It also helped that the NDP called my house twice, each time taking the time to listen to my positon and my doubts about Mulcair. Both were francophones (though the first call was in english) and seemed well-informed and flexible. We just had the kind of interesting political conversation you might have over lunch. There was little pushiness. The second guy said that because of the plastic bag incident, he would see if he could get Mulcair himself to call me. Which he did. Twice, leaving me a number to call him back. Unfortunately, this happened around one of my busiest periods of the year and I really didn't have time to call him back. I was disappointed, because I wanted to get a sense if he was just playing the game or actually had some environmental beliefs.

I hadn't decided who to vote for right up to the moment where I was standing behind that cardboard screen with the piece of paper in front of me (how pleasant it is to vote in Canada; such a lack of bullshit). One thing that threw me was the presence of the a Neo-Rhino candidate. It doesn't get much more Canadian than the Rhino party. Unfortunately, I hadn't read up enough on their platform, but I was tempted. In the end, I decided that since it was an interim election, I'd give Mulcair a chance. Maybe he'll stir up some shit in the Parliament.

My vote is certainly not the reason Mulcair won. What I found really interesting is that during this time, I did not see a single sign or poster up for the Liberal candidate. Mulcair was all over town, big placards of him hanging with Jack Layton. The Bloc were there as well. I also got nothing in my mailbox, no phone calls. The Liberals were effectively silent in my neighbourhood. I don't support all that waste of paper but just speaking strategically, you have to get your name and face out there.

I spoke with another person at work, also pretty well informed and he told me that the Liberal party has no money in Quebec. According to him, that's the whole reason for the sponsorship scandal in the first place. Their financial base is gone and they don't have the manpower or resources they used to have. This made me think immediately that without the base, how can they raise more money? Death spiral, anyone?

Anyways, I'm going to be keeping an eye on Mulcair. I hope he comes in swinging. If there is some cheesiness there, I'll forgive it if he's actually aggressively attacking the cons and talking about issues that matter, without equivocating.

Quoi!? (les yeux bridés)

I have really not been motivated to add much to this blog for a while. I have kind of plateaued out with my cultural and language immersion. I'm getting by in French and starting to understand Quebec enough to the point where it seems to be exactly like everywhere else in the world: full of human beings! So I just had nothing really interesting to discuss. On top of that, I find politics, particularly provincial politics, profoundly boring. One of those things I hate talking and thinking about and yet often find myself doing just that and then feeling annoyed. I had sort of thought that provincial politics in Quebec would have a little more depth and substance than the media machines I was used to in B.C. I had hoped that the idea and history of sovereignity and Quebec's culture uniqueness would result in a more informed populace and candidates who would respect that.

Well I was wrong about that. This election is fully up-to-date, with every single move geared towards the party's relation with the media and how the spin will affect their ratings. The current analysis is that it is a three-way race because none of the candidates has come up with the single dominant videobyte that will define them and give them the lead. So that is what they are struggling for, the perfect television moment. One issue that seriously came up earlier in the week was whether or not Boisclair dressed in too fine of a style, alienating the working class base and perhaps reminding them of his homosexuality. Whoo, deep issues!

But I am motivated to post today in reaction to Boisclair's latest gaff, where he referred to students of Asian descent as "les yeux bridés" (the slanted eyes). I'm not kidding. I repeat, I am not joking. And you think that's bad, he said that in french it's okay to use that term. Um, mister havard-intellectual, it's not the person who is saying it who decides if it's okay or not. It's the one labeled who decides. Absolutely shocking. I thought I was dreaming when I heard this on the radio today.

Now Boisclair is a fumbling politician, that's obvious. To even think of saying something like that, even if it isn't offensive in french (that I'll get to later), shows an incredible lack of judgement. Was it a speech? Did nobody vet it? He's done.

But far more disturbing to me is that I think he is not making it up when he says it is okay to say "les yeux bridés" in french. I think that is probably true. I'm going to ask my friends about this one. And maybe there is a linguistic argument for why it doesn't sound as harsh in french as in english. But the fact of it is that you are labelling an ethnic group by a physical stereotype, one that has been used throughout history to caricature and ridicule (and make look evil) asians as a vast group, lumping Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. in one vast group. That kind of language should be recognized as racist and people should be taught that it is offensive at best. That that has not happened in Quebec is extremely disturbing to me.

But it seems clear from Boisclair's reaction, that he expects the Quebec people to agree with him. The language he used was "we Quebeckers see nothing wrong with this language" and said it was a question for linguists, not politicians. In effect, he is belittling the people offended, saying their concerns don't count among "his" people. It could be a really sneaky strategy to try to appeal to the more xenophobic Quebeckers that populist Mario Dumont has been winning over. It could also be another example of Boisclair's misapplied pride (which almost always comes off as arrogance). But I think ultimately, he really believes his response is acceptable and there will be a lot of people in Quebec who will agree with him.

Since the big argument that went on here over Jan Wong's article, I have seen more and more small, but significant, examples of this kind of racism in Quebec, geared especially towards people of asian descent. It's rarely antagonistic, like you see in B.C., but it is alienating and weird. I can't figure out what is the Quebec weirdness with asian people, maybe some distant cultural strain inherited from the french and their colonial history in Southeast Asia? I'm grabbing at straws here, so if someone has some anthropological explanations, I would appreciate it. So I guess what I'm saying is that P.Lee, who seemed so virulent about racism here, may have a point.

Tremblay lost my vote...

It is very hard to try and stay calm and mature in the face of Tremblay and the current municipal administration ramming the name change of Avenue du Parc to Avenue Robert-Bourassa. For those of you not in Montreal, Avenue du Parc runs along side Parc Mont-Royal (thus the name). The south side of the park on Parc is sort of oriented around McGill and has lots of cheap restaurants and cafés for students as well as the irreplaceable Cinema du Parc (the last rep theatre, recently ressurected). North of the park, avenue du Parc is a historically rich, diverse neighbourhood, a rough border between Outremont and Mile End. At the very top, it touches the bottom of Parc Extension, one of the poorer neighbourhoods in Montreal and home to large West Indian and South Asian populations. Parc Avenue, historically, has been the center of the waves of immigration that came to Montreal. Currently, there is a strong Hassidic influx. They are the most visible people on a Saturday with their traditional outfits and crazy hats.

For whatever combination of pride, graft and politics, Mayor Tremblay suddenly announced a couple months ago that he was going to change the name to Avenue de Robert Bourassa. He was a long-running and popular Premier here, in the 50s I think (I am woefully ignorant of the details of Quebec provincial history). Though some people really disliked him, from what I can gather, he does sound like a decent man who did a good job. Probably should be honored.

But the name change, preceded by no studies, no public consultation, created an outcry. Business owners on Parc, residents, immigrants connected to the history of the street and young hipsters started protesting the change. Borough Mayor Helen Fotopoulos received enough pressure that she decided not to support the name change. (In a typically cynical and adroit political maneuver, she managed to walk a thin line between not going against her constituency and not really defying her boss.) A petition was put up that eventually generated 40,000 names against the change.

As a result of all this pressure, Tremblay decided to put the name change to a vote of City councillors. That went down today and it passed. Only 22 of the 40 councillors needed voted against the name change.

Tremblay said yesterday that this was a democratic process since all the councillors were voted for by the citizens.

I have several questions:

1) How much will the actual implementation (street signs, subway maps, communication) cost the city?

2) Who gets the contracts to implement these changes? How much will they be getting paid? Will this information be made public?

3) How much will it cost business owners? Will there be any sort of subsidies to offset the costs?

4) Why Parc? What was the process behind which street got the name change?

5) Why does a City Councillor from Laval's vote weigh as much as one who represents the district where the street in question actually exists?


And now for my opinion:

This is a total outrage. It is a waste of taxpayers' money. It is a complete flaunting of the democratic process. It is a slap in the face to all the immigrants who made Avenue du Parc what it is today. I am infuriated. I am against all name changes in general, but Montreal (and probably Quebec) is just disgusting with its city full of self-conscious and righteous hommages to n'importe qui. If you are such a humble and self-effacing servant of the people, why the hell does your goddamn name have to be all over the place? It is so bad that half the streets actually change their names at many points in the city, so giving directions is a nightmare (Parc actually becomes Bleury south of Sherbrooke). Why does some man whom I have never seen once (despite being heavily involved in many community projects) has the power to just change the name of a street my great-grandparents went shopping on long before he and his family ever came to Montreal?

Fair warning: when the leaders abandon the democratic process, the citizens will do the same. Do not expect the new signs to last long...

Two wongs...

[excuse the bad pun]

I should have posted this a month ago, when the editorial cartoons first came out. P. Lee's comment to my post on Jan Wong spurred me to respond. My position still holds on the Jan Wong and her editorial. After hearing her interviewed, where she said that her editor pushed her to add a thesis, and after seeing the Globe and Mail's lame response to the criticism of the article, my opinion of that publication only sinks deeper.

However, the editorial cartoons that showed up in Le Devoir and Le Journal were just as bad and completely substantiated Wong's later explanations of what she wrote. The link between language laws and Quebec culture to the alienation of those psychos is preposterous. But there is a level of racial ignorance and insensitivity in Quebec. With the growth (and encouragement) of immigration and some efforts in the media and government, it is getting slightly better. But for someone from western Canada, I am sometimes quite shocked by the things that pass as acceptable here.

The editorial cartoons depicted a caricatured Jan Wong going through fortune cookies to learn about Quebec (in the Le Devoir version) or reading aphorisms about good journalism (in the Le Journal version). The one in the tabloid Le Journal was the first one I saw and the portrayal of Jan Wong was frankly offensive. Buck teeth, super slanty eyes. The one in Le Devoir (pictured above) is not as extreme. Their defense was that it is a caricature and that the point is to exaggerate features. They have absolutely no sense that honing in on the stereotypical ethnic differences (the fortune cookies) is racist. I am pretty sure an image like that would not fly in english Canada.

Now I am not saying that somehow english and western Canada is any less racist than Quebec. I have seen some of the ugliest incidents of racism in my life in Vancouver. Growing up in Nanaimo, chink and paki were the standard way for many people to refer to the few Vietnamese or Sikh students in our school. But I think there is an ignorance in Quebec based on the homogeneity of the population. Outside of Montreal, there just aren't many people who aren't french-speaking and white. And they cling to an older world where those kinds of distinctions are important. At my french school, one of the teachers was referred to as "the Belgian". He had moved to Quebec from Belgium when he was 9 in the '50s!

I can relate to numerous instances of that kind of classification and ignorance that I have seen happen here. My girlfriend is of chinese descent and she is constantly remarking on how white it seems here. A security guard said "konichiwa" to her when taking our tickets at a museum. When I was in the lineup for Fantasia tickets, I got in a conversation with a guy. We talked for quite a while and when my girlfriend showed up he seemed visibly embarrassed. After she left, he got all weird and asked me all these questions about where she was from. I had a realtor who was recommending me a banker say, "I should tell you he is asiatic". One of my friends thought it was acceptable in english to say "Red Indian". Whenever Le Journal reports upon crime, it always mentions the race of the criminals if they are black, but doesn't if they are white.

All of these incidents are awkward and disturbing, but they are marked by a naiveté rather than any malice. I touched upon this in an earlier post and someone pointed out that this is a society that only opened its doors a generation ago. It is a beat behind the rest of Canada in the assimilation of immigrants and other cultures. So it is understandable, especially at the individual level. But when the major newspapers stoop to ethnic stereotyping to respond to insults against their culture, then we are moving from ignorance into outright racism. And it does nothing to address the problem.

This is what is so frustrating about this whole incident. Instead of using this as an opportunity to accept a bit of criticism and find ways to improve, both parties just got defensive and dug in. The Globe and Mail refuses to admit there is anything wrong with running an exploitative, badly-researched and judgemental article on their front page. Jan Wong acts all wounded and innocent. The Quebecois media reacts to criticisms of their culture by throwing out racist cartoons and then saying they are just caricatures. Come on, Canada. We can do a lot better.