matt_, qu’est-ce que c’est que “shibby”?
j’suis vieux codger de l’ouest qui ne connaît pas tous ces nouveux mots.
eunoia
matt_mcl
GingerOfTheNorth
detop
Northern Piper
Cool, since I’m part Scot AND Francophone, now I have twice as many reasons to celebrate !
[sub] opens another beer…[/sub]
And another good thing… I’m off tomorrow (and next monday too !). Yea !
Sassy, Thanks! Bwahaha!
I try so hard not to use babelfish, but sometimes I just don’t understand some of the words. Now I know y’all don’t have any idea what we’re talking about <evil grin>.
Bannockburn… sounds like something Pocahontas did when she wasn’t paying attention.
Sacre bleu cheese dressing!
Esprix
Si y’a pas d’bière icitte,
On crisse not’camp d’icitte.
**
[/QUOTE]
Ah les fraises et les framboises,
Du bon vin j’en ai bu;
Les fraises et les framboises,
Jamais j’en ai tant bu!
repeat ad nauseam since matt’s ex didn’t teach him any other verses
Shibby = geek for “cool”.
I used to enjoy Fete nationale (sorry, can’t find the accents on my keyboard)… until the parade in 1985 or 1986 (can’t remember exactly which year it was). The march was to start at Parc Lafontaine, and since I lived only a few blocks away I thought I would wander over and join in… turned up just in time to encounter a bunch of pure wooly bullies giving a Haitian woman and her two kids a bad time (guess they weren’t wooly enough) – the rough translation would be that it would be fine if they watched from the sidelines, but they shouldn’t join the march – it was a Quebecois event, not for immigrants.
It’s not just Jacques Parizeau talking about money and the ethnic vote, or Landry getting cranky with hispanic waiters – there is a racist streak running through a lot of Quebec nationalism, and too often it is given free reign at Fete nationale – that sea of blue and white gives me the willies… I hate institutional flag worship, reminds me of footage from Germany in the thirties and John Birch Society rallies in the states in the sixties.
The theme of the march that year was “We Could Be Giants” (again, a loose translation). I went home and listened to a song from REM’s album Document. The name of the song is “King of Birds” – it has a chorus that has come to mean a lot to me… “standing on the shoulders of giants / leaves me cold / leaves me cold / a mean idea to call my own / a hundred million birds fly”.
Having voted PQ when I was living in Quebec, I was glad that I moved away before the following election and wasn’t forced to make a choice come election time.
Well, bag, I suppose when the morning papers come in on Tuesday, we’ll find out if anything like that has happened. But I get completely different vibes in today’s Quebec. When opportunistic politicians open their yaps about how Canada is a prison or how Quebec is a zoo, the overwhelming feeling I get from everyone I know is a vast, “Whatever.”
When Mercier - formerly as PQ a riding as TMR is Liberal - split its vote between a social-democrat Liberal and a social-democrat independent, I think it was a pretty good sign that a very substantial portion of the population has recognized that the majority of the debate was a false-populist smokescreen to mask more important issues.
Racism is, sadly, not dead in Quebec. But when more than 70% of Quebecers - federalist or sovereignist - have ceased to care, it’s safe to say that the old ethnic strife is.
Pis la vie est belle.
As a Québécois, I apologize bagkitty. I know, I know, we have more than our share of room temperature IQ yahoos (of every denomination), but the saddest thing of all is,
WE DID IT TO OURSELVES !
Let me explain, before 1960 all schooling was controled by the Protestant (mostly English) and Catholic (mostly French) churches (we just got rid of the last confessional school boards a few years ago). And during that time, many allophone immigrants were told by the Catholic boards that they would be better off if they went to English schools (under the rationale of preserving la race canadienne-française, whatever that is). And later on the Francophones complained that immigrants and Anglophones were stealing their country ! Sheesh, talk about a lose/lose proposition.
[sub] I used to vote PQ too, not anymore. These jokers do not deserve to be the fathers of a new country.[/sub]
Salut tout le monde!
(and as written on my going-away tablecloth) Vive le Vancouver Libre!
I love babelfish, it makes my job oh-so-secure.
Hope you kids had a great time yesterday! I just watched the show from Parc Maisonneuve on TV. I’m in exile, what can I say? 
detop: No need to apologize - I am in no way trying to paint all of Quebec with the same brush… but the forum is MPSIMS and I just felt like posting that really sour memory.
Hell, I live in Alberta now, and if it were necessary to apologize for living surrounded by Neanderthals, I would be do nothing else.
Sorry if I rained on your parade. Bonne Fete.
bagkitty, have you been welcomed into the secret society of Beatific Albertan Dopers?
[sub]**I’m certainly not a Neanderthal! I’m in the Bow Valley![/sub]
Ginger: if I was, the ceremony was a secret.