It's Beginning to Smell a lot Like....The Same Old Crap

We've just gotten through another Halloween and now head straight towards Chrismukkah with a brief pitstop at Remembrance Day for some serious reflection and gratitude before we become moronic consumers once again. Before I get to the main point of this post I'd just like to say how happy I am that the former Druid harvest festival has become just another excuse for young women to get dressed up as alluring/skanky temptresses. Within 10 years I predict that all Christian and Jewish holidays will go the same route. C'mon Muslim babes.....don't be such party poopers!!!!

Ok...back to the main topic. I'm writing this blog in Quebec, the last bastion of the French language in North America and the area with the most insecure populace on the continent (with the exception of those Mexicans who live at the base of active volcanos). Every few years some seperatist leaning politician or pundit decides to ratchet up the rhetoric and stoke the fears for their own personal gain. We are currently undergoing a resurgence of this type of behaviour with a travelling road show of a commission about "Reasonable Accomodation" for immigrants (read: orthodox Muslims and Jews and BTW doesn't that turn of phrase sound more like something you'd find on a cheap motel sign?) that is basically a soapbox for xenophobes and is only serving to stir up shit. Ever ready to pile on when the time is right, Pauline Marois, the smug and annoying leader of the indepence minded Parti Quebecois, has proposed among other things, that new immigrants learn to speak French before they can vote! Who cares if this is illegal, the point is to throw some jingoistic tinder on the ever smouldering embers of fear-based nationalism. Now we have news reports that the state of the French language among students is of a dismal quality....the state of everyone's language is of a dismal quality...join the club!!!

With this perennial language and cultural tension as the backdrop Remembrance Day approaches and with it the annual sale of poppy lapel pins to raise money for our veterans (of all races and mother tongues) and to offer a public display of the deepest gratitude to these men and women who among other things, saved the world from the nazis through their great sacrifice and heroism.

There is pressure on the French of Quebec to assert their difference from the ROC (rest of Canada) and they often go to great and sometimes ludicrous lengths to assert their distinct society status. Turn on any newscast or talk show and the obvious disparity is plain to see; virtually all the English talking heads are sporting poppies while maybe only 5% (that's being charitable) of their French counterparts are. Yes there was a Quebec conscription crisis before WW1 and another lesser one during WW2 (whipped up by an aging xenophobe and present day national hero, Henri Bourassa) but many Quebecers fought valiantly and proudly. To dishonour them by taking such a petty and misplaced stand is almost criminal and definitely idiotic.

Tomorrow I'm going to find me a shriveled old veteran, hand him a crisp 20 and drive him to the nearest French language TV station where we will donate a whole box of poppies to their on-air staff...anybody want in??