seabee

Wow! The final solution! Genocide! Yeah, Canada! (for legal purposes, I am being sarcastict.) How, if and when do you intend to perpetrate an act that will be condemned by the internal community (except, of course, a few dictatorships)?

Just goes to show what many other countries have already learned: Conquering is the easy part; keeping it conquered is the hard, costly, time consuming, seemingly endless part.

Excuse my confusion. What happened at the Plains of Abraham? In other words, might makes right. Back to the middle ages....

What would be "their place"? Submission to the Conqueror?

There is a real potential that the PLQ will come to be known in Québec as the "anglo" party. I don't like the idea, but it is a possibility.

I think this smells bad, but for DGE (Directeur Général des Élections) only. Let us review chronologically. In the middle of last week, not even a week before the election, he issues a directive to say that islamist women would not have to show their face to identify themselves. This, to start with, was totally useless, as he had received no demand for such a measure. Also, the law already has provisions relating to people who refuse to show their face, whether it be for medical, esthetic,religious or any other reason. Then, the total number of women in the entire province who would do this is less than 20. In Québec, there two non-negociable principles: gender equality, and separation of church and state. The way the media reported the directive was interpreted as a violation of both these principles. His office was flooded with hundres of letters and emails of protest. So were the media. And a few web sites opened and encouraged people to go to vote wearing masks, à la Darth Vader or à la Ben Laden. This would have incredibly slowed down the voting process. All politicians had to take a stand, and none supported the DGE, including Charest. Then, he reversed his position entirely, saying that all these women would have to show their faces. This is in violation of the election law as I explained above. He should simply have explained how the law allows for people who don't show their faces to vote if they take other, more elaborate steps to identify themselves. Furthermore, a commission has been created by the government, with unanimous support from all parties, to study the problems related to the question of reasonable accomodations; the DGE could have waited for its report. The DGE needlessly created this whole mess, and in trying to repair it, only made it worse. He is probably already looking for another job.

Québécois love anglophones. In fact, many thing every Québécois household should have one at its service. [this is the symetrical transposition of what the English were saying in the 1950's]

Even though I can't provide the specific references, in think the above numbers are about right, with one detail to correct. Outside Québec, the percentage of people who speak french is considerably higher than 4%, but if you subtract from these numbers those who speak french as a mother tongue, then the percentage drops to about 4%. In other words, this figure refers to people who have learned french as a second language. It is also correct that there are very large areas, particularly in rural area, that no french is spoken at all.

Good Gollie! The world's greatest democracy has states that have the equivalent of Québec's Law 101? Are the U.S. getting to be as racist as Québec?

In other words, in an anglophone university, a group of immigrants caused a riot when a cultural minority invites a former prime-minister of a foreign country to speak to them as if he were their leader. This could have happened in any university in the anglosphore. The fact it happened in Quebec, where there is freedom of speech in any language, is irrelevant.

Fair and square? From the 12th of July to noon on Sept. 13, the English threw at least 15,000 cannon balls, bombs and fire bombs on the city of Québec, whose total population was about 9,000. Wolfe's avowed intention was to entirely destroy the city. Then, he sent an expedition to Kamouraska with the instruction of destroying every building, barn (with the exception of churches which could be used as hospitals for their wounded or sick soldiers, or quarter-master for the officiers. They were also to burn all harvests, chop down fruit trees, kill all farm animals and burn boats all along the south coast up to Lévis, a distance of over 100 km.. And another detachment with identical instructions was sent to la Malbaie on the north shore up to Montmorency. And there was no french military presence anywhere on the south shore, nor on the north shore east of Montmorency. And, for good measure, the same was done to Île d'Orleans; again, there was no french military presence there. All in all, by September 15th, between 15,000 and 20,000 civilians had intentionnaly been made shelterless with the winter soon coming. And the food depletion was a sure garantee that many would die of starvation, if not of exposure first, all this considering that the entire population of the colony of Canada was about 60,000. This was intentional as first written by Wolfe in the preceding month of March, and repeated, even in french, several times later. All this for no military purpose whatsoever. It fits the international definition of a genocide. The people had the right to speak their language and practice their religion before the English arrived and took these rights away using violence. At best, they gave back those rights, as a mugger might give its victims its wallet after having emptied it.

And nothing about the War of Conquest, also called in the U.S. the French and Indian War, and in Europe the Seven Year War. Churchill descrbed this period as the real first word War. A rather serious omission.

It is quite sickening to see that Europeans, particulary the Spanish and the Anglo-saxons, always want to impose their wills upon others. This is at the root of the present Québec-Canada problem.

Drop all minimum wage laws, and you will soon find that a lot of people realize that they would be better off on welfare than having a job. What is the next step? abolishing welfare? Make war on poverty; kill the poor?

Not only should minimum wage should be abolished, but slavery should be made legal once again. I'm being sarcastic, of course. But this would be the logical folow-up.

The PBS documentary that presented this theory also said that those "whites" came from France. But actually, the whole theory,while interesting and worth further research, is very far from being widely accepted and definitely cannot be considered as fact until there is a lot of corroborating evidence. PBS also presented another documentary presenting the theory that the Chinese actually discovered America some 70 years before Colombus, and, you guessed it, also found chinese DNA in "natives", or amerindians. Dig far enough, and you will be able to prove that we all have DNA from Africa. As far as Amerindian commerce goes, it is well documented, particularly by the first French settlers in Acadia and in Canada the the various "indian" nations were traders. And archeological vestiges found in various locations indicated that they were originally from places hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers from where they were found.

Just make Saint-Valentine's day a national holiday. That would promote unity.

Many Canadians know little of their own criminal laws, provincial laws or town regulations. This is, understandably, even more so among newcomers. Knowing they frequently come from countries, regions or cultures where their laws and customs are quite different, it is only fair to inform them how our legislations or customs differ from theirs, if only to prevent them from getting needlessly in trouble with the authorites. No one, even in Hérouxville, will disagree that the document was very clumsily written. But in Montréal, whence the newspaper and TV stations are located, there has been numerous conflicts arising from various groups or people who have immigrated here and want dispensation from our laws and customs, sometimes resulting in litigious court cases that the media have amplified. It is quite understandable that people in regions that have few or no immigrants don't want to have these troubles happen to them. In fact, it seems that a very vast majority of people in Québec want a public debate to find how far reasonnable accomodation. That is not to say that they want no such accomodations; in fact, many have been made without any problem and are now part of daily live. But some are overboard, like these kindergartens where no pork product is going to be part of their meals, in case that it might offend someone, even though they are yet to receive a complaint. Is it fair that all kids be forbidden to have a ham sandwich on the basis that it might eventually offend someone? However, everybody agrees that they should offer choice of foods to respect not only other's religious conviction but simply personnal taste. At the same time, an ambulance was rudely evicted from a hospital because he had brought his non-kosher meal into the cafeteria; this was at the Jewish Montreal Hospital. Fortunately, a judge considered that accomodation goes in both directions and has condemned the hospital to a $10,000 fine; nobody would have protested if the hospital has simply asked to eat in another room. Multiculturalism is a sociological phenomenon that has a lot of very valuable aspects and can definitely help broaden the mind. But not at the cost of imposing on the hosts its own values as the only true values.

Submission to the state is exactly what the people of Hérouxville want; religious practices come second. Try walking into a bank with your face covered, and see what happens. You will soon find yourself with "racist" policemen who won't give a darn for your religious principles, whatever they may or may not be. Will you suggest next that Moslem men be allowed to execute their wives? or throw acid on them, or burn them alive? You should, if you don't want to pass for a "Whoville" hick...

Really? Some of the people in Whoville want to forbid islamic women from covering their face. Does that sound tolerant to you??? The federal criminal code prohibits being masked and remaining masked if asked to remove the mask by a government official or policeman or police women. Is that tolerance to you?

One thing that I have not seen reported in English-Canada: In the midst of the Hérouxville debate, an Iman from Montréal, accompanied by a Muslim women wearing a head scarf (but not covering her face) went to Hérouxville. They went to the grocery store, the Caisse Populaire, the post office, the local restaurant. Every where was the same; polite, warm and friendly reception. Not a single offensive word whatever. The worst "incident" was a rather spirited conversation with a restaurateur who had trouble believing that Muslims don't stone women in the first place, but no insult, no offensive word or action; it ended rapidly and turned into a very friendly conversation. Back in Montréal, the Iman was interviewed by the TVA network. Not only did he have nothing to reproach to Hérouxville and its residents, he rather condemned others who view Hérouxville as racist. Tolerance cannot tolerate intolerance. This how the Hérouxville resolution could be summed up. But it seems that goes against the grain of some anglo-canadians.

German? So? The Head of Canada, the Queen of England, is of German descent. Married to a Greek descendant. What is your point?

Your observation is quite valid. However, discussion on the Hérouxville case and the entire debate on "accomodements raisonnables" [reasonable accomodations?] that now rages on in Québec would require a thread of its own.

Living in Québec, I watched almost back to back "Little Mosque..." and "Pure Laine" (on télé-Québec). "Little Mosque...." is not bad at all, but very superficial and a tad too caricatural. On the other hand, "Pure Laine" is far more subtle, covers all aspects of multiculturalism, not only Muslims and (alleged) Christians, delves much more on obvious internal contadictions in a much more humourous way, and manages to find very unexpected turns of events. If "Little Mosque..." is the best that Engligh canadian tv has to offer on the issue of multiculturalim, it has a lot to learn from Québec.

Do I smell an aroma of "War Measures Act" in the backround, or is it just that of a police state?