Heh, people from France feel the same way about Québécois.
Say no more.
Jan Wong is a retard. She was a Maoist, for God’s sake, who turned people in to the Cultural Revolution. I’ve never read anything by her that wasn’t stupid.
Race-baiting is very popular in the Toronto media; Quebec may have been the target this time, but it’s not just directed towards Quebec. The U.S. is a popular target as well. Three years ago the Toronto Star ran a front page article claiming the Toronto Blue Jays were racist because they had only 3 black players out of 25 when the league average was four or five. I mean, that’s the kind of petty mudslinging that goes on here.
Every city’s media is convinced their city is a paradise on earth, but Toronto’s is especially repugnant in this regard, and the centerpeice of the braggadocio is “We’re so multicultural.” It’s often claimed that “Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world,” although I have never seen any quantify, exactly, what specific data defines “multicultural” and how Toronto’s at the top of that list. It also seems absurd once you’ve been to New York or London.
But as a consequence, wthe Toronto media likes to paint everywhere ELSE as being two steps shy of a Klan meeting. To read Toronto papers (well, the Star and the Globe, anyway) you’d think Calgary was entirely comprised of cowboys, Vancouver cops regularly beat Sikhs and Chinese to death, and Halifax held bi-weekly cross-burnings. Their impression of the U.S. is of a dystopia filled with Bible-thumping extremists who burn Muslims alive in the Wal-Mart parking lot every Sunday morning. Meanwhile, according to those papers (the Star’s the worst, though) the federal government steals a billion dollars every two weeks from Toronto schoolchildren.
Toronto is a nice city but it isn’t really much different from Chicago.
Since Montreal is also Toronto’s mainrival as a great Canadian metropolis, you’re gonna get some of this shit, too. It’s worth noting that a wildly disproportionate number of murders in Toronto are committed by Jamaican immigrants, but you don’t see the media saying the same shit about Toronto.
And thanks for the compliment.
I hate to say this, but there is a certain amout of xenophobia in Quebec, and it’s not pleasant.
For the record, I am Quebec born and raised, speak both languages (father is english, mother is french) but did all my schooling in English, and lived in Ontario (Hamilton) for the past 6 years for school/work while my husband graduated. I have seen the “multiculturalism” of Toronto/GTA/Golden Horseshoe, and the “multiculturalsim” of Montreal.
And although I realise that the article in question has to do with Montreal, the third “multiculturalism”, or lack thereof, in Québec is in all the other regions of the province. The rest of Québec is fairly xenophobic, from what I’ve seen in the past 2 months of living here again (I have to say, I never noticed anything growing up, but that might be because I lived in Sherbrooke, a decidedly white-bread city!)
I love my family and in-laws. They are smart, educated people, but most of them never even lived in Montreal, and I was sorely disappointed in them when I saw their reactions to a couple of things. In a restaurant in Drummondville, a Muslim couple with their baby walks in to eat the brunch buffet. For some reason, this lead to comments of “I’m surprised they want to eat here” and “you’d think she’d want to stop wearing her head scarf now that she’s in Canada”. At an Ikea, I saw people stare in a fairly disgusted way at a Hindu couple wearing more or less traditional clothes. My mom and aunt felt the need to point them out “Oh look, Immigrants”. My aunt has openly blamed “ethnic people” for her either losing her job or being passed up for a promotion.
Anectode doesn’t equal data, but these are the types of comments I’ve heard a LOT since I’ve come back home to Québec, and not just from my family. I mean, seeing the attention and looks the people I mentioned above got, it was pretty obvious that “they” weren’t welcome. I think this attitude towards immigrants or people of obvious cultural minorites sometimes gets brushed aside, with the assumption that the language issues are more prevalent, but I really get the creepy feeling that it’s much more pervasive than I want to believe.
I also think that a lot of the perceived problems between the English and the French in Québec have been resolved, in terms of access to education, jobs, etc. but the need to blame someone for whatever slights or problems people have is still there. There is a “cultural” need to blame someone, and it’s shifting from the English to the underlying opinions on immigrants (particularly Muslims). The québecois self-identity is one that they’d had to struggle to be allowed/able to express (hence, I think, the idea of “pur laine” québecois) and the “others” threaten that, I think.
On preview, this post is a little random and unfocused, and I realise a lot of it isn’t very well expressed. I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something ugly simmering under the surface here, and it’s aimed at the “others”. I’m going to post this anyways, even if I’m not too happy with what I’ve just said and how!
I can honestly say that I have never noticed an anti-Quebec or anti-Francophone bias in any Canadian media. I lived in Western Canada my entire life, save for one year in Ontario (Kingston) and since 2002 in the US. My car radio is tuned to CBC (satellite radio) and I do not notice it on the CBC, either. I think that’s something I would really notice.
It could be that I avoided the Ontario papers like the plague, and that my media was all from Western Canada and America.
Interestingly, Wong’s comments are touching off something of a firestorm in English Canada.
Stephen Harper himself has written a letter to the Globe demanding an apology:
http://weblogs.macleans.ca/paulwells/
Wong may not be long for the Globe. Nobody with a functioning brain will miss her.
For those who read French, a scathing piece-by-piece take-apart of Jan Wong’s column appeared in La Presse:
[/quote]
Sorry - here’s the link.
And a reader asked an interesting question. If Fabrikant and Gill were driven to distraction by the oppression of the evil pure laine Quebecois… why did they shoot up anglophone schools?
I wasn’t aware of her political background, but has she repudiated it?
If that article was as you describe it, I can only say :rolleyes:.
Do you think the National Post is a better paper? That’s not the impression that I get, it’s a quite right-wing newspaper and I don’t have the impression that their columnists are really the epitome of tolerance. As for the Toronto Star, since they’re in fact quite left-wing, I presume that you disagree with their editorial stance; do you think this may be partly colouring the impression you have of them?
You’re welcome. 
Realise that if we exclude Montreal and a few other places, most of Quebec is actually fairly ethnically homogeneous. I live in Gatineau, you’ve been raised in Sherbrooke, and while you say that most people are white there, both cities are still a point where the French and English cultures meet. But take a ordinary guy from a small town in the Laurentides or Saguenay, he might have never actually met people from other ethnic or cultural backgrounds and only have his impressions, coloured by hearsay, to judge people with. Do you think he acts differently than how another guy from a small town in Central Ontario would?
Fear of Islam isn’t restricted to Quebec, mnemosyne, I think it’s quite common among the Western World. I’m doing my best to try to quell this fear, at least on this message board. As for the “she’d want to stop wearing her head scarf now that she’s in Canada”, a lot of people don’t realise that for many Muslim women, wearing a head covering is a personal decision. They think that she does it because she’s obligated, by her country’s laws or her husband or something else. Anecdote: at the last federal election, Monia Mazigh – wife of Maher Arar – ran for Parliament for the NDP in an Ottawa-region riding. Seeing her on TV, with head covering and all, my mother told me that she wouldn’t vote for a woman with a head scarf, for fear that she’s in fact being controlled by her husband. Her basis for this opinion was the Muslim women she meets in her job as nurse in an Ottawa hospital.
Maybe they thought they were Muslims. 
Seriously, people are often afraid of what they don’t know.
This is the kind of things we hear in many places, especially where positive discrimination programs exist. They aren’t always popular with everyone.
Now, I strongly disagree with your “explanation”. People are afraid of what they don’t know, and with Muslims often tied, rightly or wrongly, with terrorism, misogyny and refusal to integrate in host societies in the last few years, people who aren’t actually exposed to real Muslims just like you and me tend to be even more afraid of them. But my culture isn’t a blame-the-other culture. I know that you’re not bigoted against Quebec, or else you wouldn’t live in Montreal, but this sound dangerously like something Pierre Trudeau would say to convince people that the “Canadian” culture he’s trying to propagate is so very superior to the backward “Quebec” culture.
On the other hand, I’ve seen expressed the sentiment that the secularity that pervades Quebec society since the Quiet Revolution is making it difficult for immigrants who often are very deeply religious to integrate into this society. I’m not sure how much I agree with this, since I believe it’s mostly the big cities who have become strongly secular, but it’s true that the need for a secular society is an argument that’s been expressed in some debates, such as the debate over Sikhs wearing kirpans in public schools.
It must be understood that Quebec culture does differ from other Canadian and American cultures in some ways. I think some describe it as more “European”. While English Canada and mostly the US are strongly committed to individual rights, Quebec intellectuals, like the ones in Europe, believe that in some cases the individual must yield to collective rights. This explains partly the whole debate over language laws. Americans and English Canadians might have trouble understanding this concept, but it’s not better or worse than the concept of the primality of individual rights, just different.
I could get behind this argument. If I were followed by a crocodile, I’d sure try to swim faster.
Depends what you’re looking for. The Post is very politically biased to be sure, in favour of the Conservatives, just as the Star is extremely pro-Liberal. The Globe is comparatively moderate when it comes to Canadian politiics. The Post, however, at least doesn’t play the “Toronto is the greatest city in the world” card. The Post is a much better written newspaper, hwoever; even accounting for the bias, it has better columnists and better reporting.
I’ve never noticed that the Post is racist, though.
No, no; the Toronto Star is not terribly left-wing at all. Its primarily editorial position is pro-Liberal Party, and the Liberals are centrist, not left-wing. If the Star was left-wing, they’d support the NDP, but they don’t.
I don’t like the Star’s almost psychotic level of bias, butI don’t like the Post’s, either. The papers all have their strengths; the Post is just better written than the other two, by far, and doesn’t play the “Toronto Toronto Toronto u suxxors!!!111” game. The Globe doesn’t bias towards any political party, so they tend to be fairer in their coverage of Canadian politics. The Star… er, well, they definitely have the most content, which is nice when you want a big thick Saturday paper to read while having lunch.
The Sun is a newspaper for children and retards.
Well, obviously, they were self-loathing anglos who had internalized the brutal racist…errr…linguist (??) attitudes of their vile and oppressive francophone overlords. By shooting up anglophone schools they were actualizing their self-contempt. I mean, duh! Do I have to explain everything around here?
Um, what? “Race-bating is very popular in Toronto media”?
All I can say is “not that I notice”. But then, I’m a Torontonian, and presumably used to seeing the rest of the world routinely demonized. :rolleyes:
I really do think that Toronto is pretty “multicultural”, in that a goodly portion of our city’s inhabitants are, well, immigrants. Of various cultures . But then, I only get that impression by living and working here.
Of course, the UN agrees, which is nice. Here are some statistics and data which is used to support that, in response to:
Though only from Wiki, it seems sound enough:
All of which has nothing whatever to do with Wong’s retarded rant, of course, other than to note that this is evidently a disease that is somewhat catching.
Well, yes, it is. Are you just kidding around or did you actually read what I wrote? I’m not saying Toronto isn’t multicultural, but that the meme in the press here is that it is the most multicultural city on earth - indeed, that it’s some sort of unique experience in all of human history. (And I’ve lived and worked in Toronto, too.)
Your cite in fact contradicts this claim by stating Miami is the actual #1, and furthermore provides - as I had already pointed out - a perfect example of why such claims are suspect, since it uses only “Foreign-born population” as its measurement. What about the diversity of cultures among those who’re “Foreign-born”?
The actual difference between Toronto and other large immigrant centres, like New York, London, Miami, Vancouver, Los Angeles or what have you in terms of “multiculturalism” is nil. Toronto’s a big city. It’s just like Chicago. (It used to be just like Minneapolis-St. Paul, but it grew up and got better than that.) It’s a great place but it’s not some unique accomplishment.
So Toronto shouldn’t try to play up things about itself?
What’s next, rob the Big Apple title from New York because Manhatten has no oversized Apple Trees?!?!
I mean come on! It’s just a way to advertise itself. I’m sure it is not totally unique… though I love the festivals the city helps out with (Taste of the Danforth, carabana etc), and am not familar enough to know whether other cities back these festivals (probably do)
Toronto has to sell itself to the outside. Lord knows enough people bash the place.
The site says that Miami is number 1, Toronto is number 2, but that Toronto is actually more diverse (as most of Miami’s population is Hispanic). Your complaint was that you had never seen any actual evidence of an exceptional degree of “multiculturalism”. Well, here’s some. You can quibble and argue, but a good case can certainly be made that, if these figures are accepted, Toronto is objectively ‘the most multicultural big city on earth’. The difference between such cities is not “nil”, although one may equally argue (as I suspect you may) that it is not particularly meaningful either.
But what’s the big beef, anyway? Is the substance of your complaint that Toronto should not say that its multi-ethnic composition is a good thing, and a reason for civic pride? Or that somehow Torontonian civic pride is more offensive or grating than civic pride in other cities - most of which also trumpet aspects of themselves which exist, to a greater or lesser extent, elsewhere?
Any why would some retarded columnist garbaging Quebec trigger such an outpouring of vitriol on Toronto and its media anyway? It’s not like Wong is our city’s ambassador or something. It is launching into a polemic rant about Quebec based on a few nuts which got Wong in trouble in the first place. 
I mean really, “race bating”? “Petty mudslinging?” “especially repugnant”? I read the papers too, and while there are columnists good and bad, you hardly paint a fair portrait of the media here; and touting one’s “multiculturalism” hardly seems like a major offence (particularly where it is arguably true).
Maybe not, but some of their columnists seem rather hostile towards Quebec too. See Barbara Kay’s column, which I mentioned in my OP.
I stand corrected. I had heard that they were mostly pro-Liberal, but I thought they were more left-wing than that.
I’m not sure I would let children read the Toronto Sun. That can’t be good for building productive citizens out of them.
Out hear in British Columbia, we pretty well ignore whats going on in eastern Canada. That goes for the media as well. Occassionally I get pissed off at Quebec when I have to turn a package around on the store shelf so I can read it.
severus, is the no bashing of English Canada in Quebec ?
[QUOTE=Malthus]
But what’s the big beef, anyway? Is the substance of your complaint that Toronto should not say that its multi-ethnic composition is a good thing…/QUOTE]
Jesus. I didn’t even say anything bad about the city - only about its NEWSPAPERS - and you’re going absolutely bananas.
There is some amount of it, but usually it will be more defensive in nature. For example, I said that Jan Wong’s column could be a symptom of an undercurrent of bigotry against Quebec in the rest of Canada. Some people would be less objective about it, and bash English Canada over this. Or, you have the pacifists – whom I disagree with – claiming that the federal government’s foreign policy (war in Afghanistan, etc.) shows that English Canada is militaristic.
And of course you have the stereotypes, said more or less in joke. All Albertans are redneck cowboys, and things like that. There is a stereotype that anglophones are squares.
Ouff.
It’s ludicrous to deny that there’s anti-french sentiment that runs deep through English Canada, like veins of mold in stinky cheese.
Hell, one of the last times I saw my father, he was glued to CNN practically 24/7, watching the Serbo-Croation conflict unfold. After a few days, I asked him what it was about the situation that interested him so intently. I was gobsmacked to learn that he saw it as a “preview” of upcoming Canadian history: Clash of cultures and languages. Inevitable armed conflict. He honestly believed that, by now, there would be house-to-house fighting in Eastern Canada, and that Western Canadians would have to get involved and take up arms, or half the country would fall under Francophone dominion. We was concerned that francophones had too much influence in government and too much control over the armed forces. He was (apart from this and a deep and abiding misogyny) a rational and intelligent man. That’s obsessive xenophobia.
More recently, (yesterday, in fact,) my new manager let forth a stream of vitriol to me and my shop steward, venting about the “stupid frogs,” he was having difficulty with in dealing with some of our clients in Québec. I gently reminded him that when the workday ended both of the people he was addressing were going home to francophone women they loved.
I don’t understand this attitude. Happily, it’s still pretty shocking to be confronted with it. I don’t see it as pervading anglo media – and certainly not The Globe & Mail, which in large part shapes my Canadian Identity, such as it is. I listen to Radio-Canada from 5:30am to 7:00, and then read the Globe in transit and during morning break and lunch – without any noticeable feeling of dissonance.
I like Jan Wong, and Red China Blues is one of my favourite memoirs. Clearly, she is a woman capable of having poisonous beliefs and overcoming them through the application of her intellect and reflection of her heart. I wish her a long, long life. She may need another thirty years.