I was in Montreal last weekend; it was my first visit in many years. I found a city still half-buried in ice from last month’s storm. Everywhere, streets and sidewalks carried glaciers four to six inches thick. Some homeowners were attacking with sledgehammers and chisels, cutting the ice into blocks and stacking them against the walls of their houses. Downtown, workers with ropes tied around their waists sent tons of ice and snow crashing from the rooftops into the streets below.
Everyone I spoke with was in high spirits; yes, they agreed the ice storm was terrible, but there was no point moping about it. In the old city, right on the St. Lawrence, the municipal ice rink at Basin Bonsecours was crowded with locals. It was a wonderful display of defiance and resiliency. If life sends you ice, put on your skates.
Adversity builds character and that must explain why I like Montreal so well. It has been 238 years since France lost her Canadian colony, but as far as I can tell, Quebec has not given one inch to the English-speaking culture that surrounds her. We live in a world in which every language that is not English is under assault and Quebec not only manages to hold its tongue, but Quebecois is a thriving language. That this little piece of old Europe can remain intact hard against the broadcasting behemoth that is the United States is a cultural event worth celebrating. Like many celebrations though, Quebec’s party may have gotten a little out of hand. It seems this particular party has been crashed by politicians, and while Quebec may enjoy a distinct society, jingoist politics are all too recognizable. There are now laws in Quebec which forbid the use of languages other than French in certain applications.
Commercial signs must be primarily in French, if another language is displayed, its script must be smaller than the French script. Of course, once you have such a ridiculous law on the books, you have to hire equally ridiculous bureaucrats to enforce it and sure enough, there are city employees wandering through the streets of Montreal, measuring letters on signs and handing out citations to businesses whose non-French is bigger than their French. Sigmund Freud, call your sign painter.
One of the more ludicrous instances in the enforcement of the “letter of the law” arrived in December when the city cited a purveyor of Jewish tombstones whose Hebrew lettering outsized his French by a few millimeters. If nationalist elements in the Province of Quebec want to declare a cultural war, they should pick their targets carefully, and I don’t think a Jewish graveyard is the place to draw a line in the sand. If anything, the Quebecois should look to the Jews as a model of cultural survival in a turbulent and indifferent world.
It gets even more complicated in the Chinese Quarter, where signs are in Chinese, French and English. It’s like ground zero at the tower of Babel. Other bureaucrats patrol the ether, to apprehend businesses whose web pages are not sufficiently Francophonic.
The proper role of government is to establish “no parking” zones and to ensure everyone gets a fair shake. By trying to promote one culture over another, government is absurd at best and grotesque at worst. If all those bureaucrats really need something to do, there’s plenty of ice that still needs chopping.
Montreal is a wonderful city and Quebec has a wonderful culture. It has thrived for three centuries without the ugly crutch of nationalism and would do well to cast it aside now.
The Letter of the Law
I was in Montreal last weekend; it was my first visit in many years. I found a city still half-buried in ice from last month’s storm. Everywhere, streets and sidewalks carried glaciers four to six inches thick. Some homeowners were attacking with sledgehammers and chisels, cutting the ice into blocks and stacking them against the walls of their houses. Downtown, workers with ropes tied around their waists sent tons of ice and snow crashing from the rooftops into the streets below.
Everyone I spoke with was in high spirits; yes, they agreed the ice storm was terrible, but there was no point moping about it. In the old city, right on the St. Lawrence, the municipal ice rink at Basin Bonsecours was crowded with locals. It was a wonderful display of defiance and resiliency. If life sends you ice, put on your skates.
Adversity builds character and that must explain why I like Montreal so well. It has been 238 years since France lost her Canadian colony, but as far as I can tell, Quebec has not given one inch to the English-speaking culture that surrounds her. We live in a world in which every language that is not English is under assault and Quebec not only manages to hold its tongue, but Quebecois is a thriving language. That this little piece of old Europe can remain intact hard against the broadcasting behemoth that is the United States is a cultural event worth celebrating. Like many celebrations though, Quebec’s party may have gotten a little out of hand. It seems this particular party has been crashed by politicians, and while Quebec may enjoy a distinct society, jingoist politics are all too recognizable. There are now laws in Quebec which forbid the use of languages other than French in certain applications.
Commercial signs must be primarily in French, if another language is displayed, its script must be smaller than the French script. Of course, once you have such a ridiculous law on the books, you have to hire equally ridiculous bureaucrats to enforce it and sure enough, there are city employees wandering through the streets of Montreal, measuring letters on signs and handing out citations to businesses whose non-French is bigger than their French. Sigmund Freud, call your sign painter.
One of the more ludicrous instances in the enforcement of the “letter of the law” arrived in December when the city cited a purveyor of Jewish tombstones whose Hebrew lettering outsized his French by a few millimeters. If nationalist elements in the Province of Quebec want to declare a cultural war, they should pick their targets carefully, and I don’t think a Jewish graveyard is the place to draw a line in the sand. If anything, the Quebecois should look to the Jews as a model of cultural survival in a turbulent and indifferent world.
It gets even more complicated in the Chinese Quarter, where signs are in Chinese, French and English. It’s like ground zero at the tower of Babel. Other bureaucrats patrol the ether, to apprehend businesses whose web pages are not sufficiently Francophonic.
The proper role of government is to establish “no parking” zones and to ensure everyone gets a fair shake. By trying to promote one culture over another, government is absurd at best and grotesque at worst. If all those bureaucrats really need something to do, there’s plenty of ice that still needs chopping.
Montreal is a wonderful city and Quebec has a wonderful culture. It has thrived for three centuries without the ugly crutch of nationalism and would do well to cast it aside now.
Laissez faire, s’il vous plait.
(c) Mark Floegel 1998