TERB In Need of a Banner
Toronto Escorts

Something a little more local..anyone cares??

happywanderer

the chivalrous lech
Jun 12, 2002
1,542
3
0
central toronto
The language issue is a very old (and tired) one here. Bill 101 in Quebec was, I don't know if it still is, a hated bit of legislation. The double standard that's present is obvious and exasperating, but what are we going to do...


TTFN
 

oldjones

CanBarelyRe Member
Aug 18, 2001
24,495
11
38
Why would anyone care about a bylaw that requires equal prominence for our two official languages on new business signs in a town split pretty evenly* French and English?
Interestingly, it was Canadian Tire (who had thoughtlessly erected all English signs on their new store) who proposed the bylaw. They said it would help other new business from making similar blunders.

* It's actually 68% French. This suggests CanTire's store-builders weren't nearly as intelligent or market conscious as right-wing (gotta get the politics in) apologists would hope. It also suggests the bylaw will protect the minority English interests from more market-driven and less socially responsible business people who might erect French only signs to appeal to their principle market.
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
You guys don't get it.

The goverment imposed bilingualism is hurting Canada. if you don't beleive look at the stats of Montreal.

Compare the number of businesses in the 70's to today. Montreal is dying, much to the benefit of Toronto
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
0
0
The Vegetative State
langeweile said:
You guys don't get it.

The goverment imposed bilingualism is hurting Canada. if you don't beleive look at the stats of Montreal.

Compare the number of businesses in the 70's to today. Montreal is dying, much to the benefit of Toronto
Actually, Montreal has been on the economic rebound since the mid-90's.

Quebec's language laws are dumb, but, having lived in Quebec for quite a few years, I can tell you that the only people who care are a few zealots on both the French and English side.
 

oldjones

CanBarelyRe Member
Aug 18, 2001
24,495
11
38
If the English in Montreal had behaved with the hard-headed economic sense that free markets are supposed to produce, there would be no Quebec language law today. It was their pigheaded insistance on behaving and doing business as if 90% of the population were simply temporarily misguided in their language that spawned modern separatism and drove them out of Québec. Even the most submissive rebel after generations of being told to "Talk white."
As for downtown industrial space going begging; don't see many facories in downtown TO. Lotsa parking lots where they once stood (here we tax empty factories as if they were running, so they're torn down fast), and lotsa signs along the QEW where there's still a hope of industrial tenants. It's modern times: factories are as far from downtown—like Asia—as they can get. Nothing to do w/ language. In fact the global economy wants multi-lingual people, even if they speak two European languages and no Chinese. Bilingualism was and is one of the best things the feds ever did for this country.
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
oldjones said:
If the English in Montreal had behaved with the hard-headed economic sense that free markets are supposed to produce, there would be no Quebec language law today. It was their pigheaded insistance on behaving and doing business as if 90% of the population were simply temporarily misguided in their language that spawned modern separatism and drove them out of Québec. Even the most submissive rebel after generations of being told to "Talk white."
As for downtown industrial space going begging; don't see many facories in downtown TO. Lotsa parking lots where they once stood (here we tax empty factories as if they were running, so they're torn down fast), and lotsa signs along the QEW where there's still a hope of industrial tenants. It's modern times: factories are as far from downtown—like Asia—as they can get. Nothing to do w/ language. In fact the global economy wants multi-lingual people, even if they speak two European languages and no Chinese. Bilingualism was and is one of the best things the feds ever did for this country.
Outside of QC the whole issue on biligualism is a little more than lipservice.
After having lived in QC first and now in ON there is big difference as to the level of spoken french, especially outside of goverment business.
I agree that it can't hurt to speak another language. I happen to speak four of them myself. The problem is in the approach.

Large areas of QC are not speaking any english at all. This on the North American continet were the vast majority speaks english. In essence the QC goverment put's their citizens at a disadvantage, if you don't speak english, where can you work in Canada or the USA.
If anything learning spanish or portugese makes more sense. In a way the language development should be left up to it's natural develpment.
After having lived in Chicago(which has the second largest hispanic populatiion in the USA) and in Texas( another state with a large hispnic popukation), certainly I will make sure that my kids learn spanish. In the not so distant future spanish/portugese will be the domimant language in the Americas.
Other than for sentimental reasons I fail to see reason for goverment enforced french language preservation.
Don't you think it would make more sense to teach kids spamish/portugese?
Given the realities of current society it would make a whole lot more sense.
 

slowandeasy

Why am I here?
May 4, 2003
7,232
0
36
GTA
Perfect solution by a free economy

langeweile said:
I ahve lived in QC for about a year.
Driving down 40 in to downtown Montreal, you can see over 50% of industrial space for rent or for sale.
Pretty depressing.
This is textbook.... and a great example of what happens when we allow market forces to drive the economy.

If the Quebecois do not understand how this economy works, then they suffer the consequences financially.

Unfortunately, the Federal govt continues to prop up the economy in Quebec in a number of ways. I can remember one situation, where a company from Manitoba was bidding on a Federal project versus a Quebec company. The Manitoba company had the low bid, but the contract was awarded to Quebec (i think it was a $500 million airline project). Then you have the sponsorship scandal etc...

Back to the language laws.... I don't think it's that so much as the fact that Quebec was what??? less than 1% away from separating in that referendum???!!!!....

Still shaking my head at that.



I was in favor of Quebec Separating and taking their part of the country's debt with them...

OK, i was not in favor of Quebec Separating, but sometimes it seems like stupid people need a little tough love for them to catch on....
 

onthebottom

Never Been Justly Banned
Jan 10, 2002
40,558
23
38
Hooterville
www.scubadiving.com
I can see why you guys focus so much on US politics - your issues are boring and small - and that's probably a good thing. The big issues on this board - pizza gate, some local minister not flying the maple leaf because of transfer payments and dual language signs. Are there no large issues in Canada to debate or have you settled all the real issues.

OTB
 

slowpoke

New member
Oct 22, 2004
2,899
0
0
Toronto
onthebottom said:
I can see why you guys focus so much on US politics - your issues are boring and small - and that's probably a good thing. The big issues on this board - pizza gate, some local minister not flying the maple leaf because of transfer payments and dual language signs. Are there no large issues in Canada to debate or have you settled all the real issues.
OTB
The Quebec issue may be boring to you, OTB, but it is a big deal here in Canada. In Oct 1995, the province of Quebec came within a whisker of voting to separate from the rest of Canada. Nobody really knows how it would have played out if the separatists had gotten just a few percent more of the overall vote, but it had the potential to spin out of control and put the unity of our country in jeopardy. Boring to an outsider, perhaps, but not to us.

I'm sure a large portion of the world's fascination with US politics is because of your ugly assed foreign policy. The last election was a case in point: A Bush win = many more deaths and the very real possibility that he may choose to pre-emptively "project" his US interests by invading another ME country; A Kerry win = maybe the slaughter will begin to slow down. If the US had stayed isolationist since Viet Nam, your internal politics would seem boring and inconsequential too. Trying to ignore US politics would be like living on the same street as Charles Manson and not keeping an eye on him.
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
slowpoke said:
The Quebec issue may be boring to you, OTB, but it is a big deal here in Canada. In Oct 1995, the province of Quebec came within a whisker of voting to separate from the rest of Canada. Nobody really knows how it would have played out if the separatists had gotten just a few percent more of the overall vote, but it had the potential to spin out of control and put the unity of our country in jeopardy. Boring to an outsider, perhaps, but not to us.

I'm sure a large portion of the world's fascination with US politics is because of your ugly assed foreign policy. The last election was a case in point: A Bush win = many more deaths and the very real possibility that he may choose to pre-emptively "project" his US interests by invading another ME country; A Kerry win = maybe the slaughter will begin to slow down. If the US had stayed isolationist since Viet Nam, your internal politics would seem boring and inconsequential too. Trying to ignore US politics would seem like living on the same street as Charles Manson and not paying close attention.
Anti-Americanism is not due to Bush. i has been around ever since I can remember...and that is quiet a while....
 

slowpoke

New member
Oct 22, 2004
2,899
0
0
Toronto
langeweile said:
Anti-Americanism is not due to Bush. i has been around ever since I can remember...and that is quiet a while....
And the US has been playing Texas Rangers with the whole world ever since I can remember. My memory of politics goes all the way back to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
The froth


They are large, we are small, and they are next door: I find it easier to explain Canadian anti-Americanism than almost any other kind. It has nothing to do with the War of 1812 or any free trade agreement, it is more a question of physics, the natural order of things.

But add, if you will, the matter of identity. If you are an English Canadian, I ask you to search your heart, and answer this question truthfully: Whom do you hate more, the Americans or the French Canadians?

Of course you hate the Americans more. There is, after all, something pleasantly exotic about people who live and think in French. What makes the Americans unbearable is that they are so damnably easy to understand. It is the one finally unforgiveable thing -- for our hatred of them slides unconsciously into self-hatred, and nothing more animates malice than that. Our anti- Americanism most resembles the domestic U.S. kind of liberal moral triumphalism.

"I have nothing against the American people, my problem is with the Bush Administration and U.S. government policies." (Which the great majority of Americans happen to support.) ... Oh please don't stoop to that, it insults my intelligence and will demean yours. Within a minute, the sort of person who says that is going on about the mores of Texas and the vulgarity of Hollywood and ... the various other things we share.

Indeed, it is quite the other way around. We are constantly looking for some American policy that we can show as "typical" -- because it fits with some stereotype we have created of the mass, crass U.S. society. They get their news from television, and drive SUVs, and live in sprawling suburbs, and eat junk, and are vastly overweight -- just like us.

Except it is worse in the case of the Americans, because on average they have more money. And there are few moral flaws in another human being as grave as having more money.

Now, hatred of one's neighbour as a projection of self-hatred is a universal phenomenon. Croats hate Serbs (or, vice versa) because they speak the same language (though they both deny it), Pakistanis hate Indians (or, vice versa), Welshman hate Englishmen (though not vice versa; the English have never noticed). The Europeans hate the U.S. the more they come to resemble Americans outwardly. It seems the Americans alone are capable of liking themselves just the way they are (another reason to hate them).

The Welsh hate the English for themselves, but also because their hatred is ignored. They find the English obtusely insensitive to their taunts, addressed as it were to the Englishmen's ankles. It was the Irish who discovered the only way to get an Englishman's full attention from that height was to bite him.
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
It is this policy that has recently come up for review, and even for public debate in Canada. Our natural dislike of the Americans is reaching the point of boiling over. The proximate cause is the prospective war in Iraq. Or rather, it has provided a plausible opportunity.

The French and Germans having taken the lead, we suddenly have cover. These "Old Europeans" (whom we also hate, but less than we do the Americans because the Atlantic Ocean is so wide) have started biting the U.S. at the United Nations, and wherever else they may be exposed. There is safety in numbers -- all little people think that -- and we instinctively sense the chance to pile on.

There are many things to be said against the Irish, I'm sure, but one thing I have tended to admire is their reckless independent courage. Which is to say, they have the habit of lashing out in their own right, against a much larger enemy or neighbour, without so much as a cursory preparatory trawl for allies. This is genuinely feisty. They are, at least according to history and legend, a guileless species, unable to wait for the crowd to form before pitching the first brick.

Whereas we have guile. We are more like the Scots, and wait until the French are snapping at the face of our "ancient enemy" before leaping on his back. Hence our prime minister's cautiously-phrased insults to the U.S. in his speech in Chicago the other week, and our rather hapless manoeuvre at the Security Council to subvert the American (British, and Spanish) diplomatic position from a fresh Canadian angle -- presenting ourselves as "honest brokers" between the Americans and the people who are trying to hurt them.

I could criticize the judgement of our governing party, but not on grounds of climbing on a limb. In this case, I must start by conceding they are acting with fairly broad national support. For even after discounting the loaded questions, a glance at the polls and in the pubs reveals that Canadians have got ourselves into a copious anti-American lather, and we do expect our government to find a way to express this. Our government responds by following the trend of public opinion, reticently but consistently. It does not lead.

And this, at a time of unprecedented crisis in our Western alliance, which depends for its direction as for the bulk of its strength on the United States. The prime ministers Blair in Britain, Aznar in Spain, Berlusconi in Italy, have elected to lead, and thus necessarily to resist a tide of cheap anti- Americanism. President Chirac of France and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany have elected to surf that tide, to wherever it washes up. Our own prime minister is never so obvious, but rides both ways, and sideways, carried by the tide, but pointing his little surfboard in a variety of directions, a cork upon the sea.

Of all these countries, Canada has the most to lose, for Canada is by far the most dependant upon the goodwill and accommodation of the United States. Therefore Canada has the government that can least afford to indulge the anti- American froth.


David Warren

© Ottawa Citizen
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
slowpoke said:
And the US has been playing Texas Rangers with the whole world ever since I can remember. My memory of politics goes all the way back to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

I appreciate your honesty...at least you are not hidding behind the "It's not you..it is Bush" myth.
Like some others here...
 

slowpoke

New member
Oct 22, 2004
2,899
0
0
Toronto
langeweile said:
I appreciate your honesty...at least you are not hidding behind the "It's not you..it is Bush" myth.
Like some others here...
I'm not hiding behind the Bush "myth" but his policies have made Americans much less popular worldwide than they were before he started all his Iraq bullsh*t. IMHO, US global popularity was slowly improving since Viet Nam, especially during the Clinton presidency. But it has suffered a drastic setback under Dubya.

Viet Nam was a colossal tragedy but it seems like an honest mistake compared to the latest US slaughter in Iraq. Viet Nam was all about stopping communism with no apparent hidden agenda, no obvious resource grab etc. It escalated gradually over a period of years so the blame spans no less that 3 presidents, all conveniently dead.

So Viet Nam didn't have that cold blooded, calculated quality that was so evident during Dubya's pre-invasion promo. Which is why, IMHO, Bush has single handedly done more harm to US credibility than Viet Nam ever could have. Bush is the poster boy for Iraq and he's the only president, in my recollection, whose deeds are sufficiently horrendous and premeditated for him to possibly qualify for war criminal status.
 

oldjones

CanBarelyRe Member
Aug 18, 2001
24,495
11
38
langeweile said:
Outside of QC the whole issue on biligualism is a little more than lipservice.
After having lived in QC first and now in ON there is big difference as to the level of spoken french, especially outside of goverment business.
I agree that it can't hurt to speak another language. I happen to speak four of them myself. The problem is in the approach.

Large areas of QC are not speaking any english at all. This on the North American continet were the vast majority speaks english. In essence the QC goverment put's their citizens at a disadvantage, if you don't speak english, where can you work in Canada or the USA.
If anything learning spanish or portugese makes more sense. In a way the language development should be left up to it's natural develpment.
After having lived in Chicago(which has the second largest hispanic populatiion in the USA) and in Texas( another state with a large hispnic popukation), certainly I will make sure that my kids learn spanish. In the not so distant future spanish/portugese will be the domimant language in the Americas.
Other than for sentimental reasons I fail to see reason for goverment enforced french language preservation.
Don't you think it would make more sense to teach kids spamish/portugese?
Given the realities of current society it would make a whole lot more sense.
Sorry, how does this account for empty factories in Montreal, or show how bilingualism is hurting this country? Weren't those your original points?
But you digress and I follow: If there were no borders dividing the US from Canada and Mexico, the examples of American statistics you quote might be persuasive. But your country spends a fortune annually to stem th influx of Spanish speakers from the south, and our wee country's stats are different. As your country has the right to refuse to recognize its bilingual reality, please allow ours the right to recognize ours as we choose.
 

onthebottom

Never Been Justly Banned
Jan 10, 2002
40,558
23
38
Hooterville
www.scubadiving.com
slowpoke said:
The Quebec issue may be boring to you, OTB, but it is a big deal here in Canada. In Oct 1995, the province of Quebec came within a whisker of voting to separate from the rest of Canada. Nobody really knows how it would have played out if the separatists had gotten just a few percent more of the overall vote, but it had the potential to spin out of control and put the unity of our country in jeopardy. Boring to an outsider, perhaps, but not to us.

I'm sure a large portion of the world's fascination with US politics is because of your ugly assed foreign policy. The last election was a case in point: A Bush win = many more deaths and the very real possibility that he may choose to pre-emptively "project" his US interests by invading another ME country; A Kerry win = maybe the slaughter will begin to slow down. If the US had stayed isolationist since Viet Nam, your internal politics would seem boring and inconsequential too. Trying to ignore US politics would be like living on the same street as Charles Manson and not keeping an eye on him.
Interesting, I thought that was settled in 1995 - was that your last big issue?

I said it was a GOOD thing that you had only small and uninteresting issues - the Chinese CURSE is that you live in Interesting Times.

Why does every Canuck turn any comment about Canada into a Bash Bush Bash US rant......

OTB
 

langeweile

Banned
Sep 21, 2004
5,086
0
0
In a van down by the river
oldjones said:
Sorry, how does this account for empty factories in Montreal, or show how bilingualism is hurting this country? Weren't those your original points?
But you digress and I follow: If there were no borders dividing the US from Canada and Mexico, the examples of American statistics you quote might be persuasive. But your country spends a fortune annually to stem th influx of Spanish speakers from the south, and our wee country's stats are different. As your country has the right to refuse to recognize its bilingual reality, please allow ours the right to recognize ours as we choose.
I guess that is the difference between you and me. You prefer a goverment imposed bilingualism i let the market take care of it.

You have the right to do wahtever you want in your country. My point is that a lot of energy and money is spend on something that at best has only a sentimental value.
Your goverment spends millions of your tax dollars to uphold it. I could name at least two or three issues on which the money could be spend.
 
Toronto Escorts