The Falardeau File

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jef_cOVbH0aPM-19xLBlFD_bdlag

MONTREAL — Pierre Falardeau, the enfant terrible of Quebec cinema who suggested federalist anglophones should leave the province and once slammed Canada as a "colonizing power," has died of cancer in Montreal. He was 62.

After all, les gens need their own lebensraum.

Just ask the Cree.In 2008, he dismissed David Suzuki as "a bearded little Jap, just another nuisance from the West Coast" after the environmentalist said hewas disappointed in Quebecers who voted Conservative in the 2008 federal election.

I wonder how that reads in the original fascist?

In an open letter explaining why he refused to have his film entered in the competition, he wrote: "To be recognized for 'my genius' in Flin Flon or Saskatoon or Corner Brook leaves me as cold as their Rockies, mounted police and their Governor General.

But he didn't scruple to acceptTelefilm CANADA money, even if he had to fight for it.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign ... with French predominance

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/years+later/2018306/story.html

1989: " ...the Liberal government's use of the notwithstanding clause to override a Supreme Court decision that banning English on outdoor signs violated freedom of expression. The clause allowed the Liberal government to hastily pass Bill 178 to maintain the ban, a move that was regarded as a severe slap in the face from anglophones' traditional political ally."

1993: "The Liberal government changed the law four years later when the notwithstanding clause came up for renewal, finally allowing English on outdoor signs, with French predominance."

Corrupter and corrupter

Quebec union denies Hells Angels link; FTQ tries and fails to block investigative report by CBC's French-language service

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/09/23/quebec-ftq-hells.html

The head of Quebec's most powerful construction union is denying allegations the Hells Angels were involved in his election.

An investigative report by the [Radio-Canada] to be aired Thursday has revealed the role played by organized crime in the union vote.

Richard Goyette was elected director general of the construction wing of the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ-Construction) by a two-vote margin in November 2008, succeeding Joceyln Dupuis ...

"What if Montcalm had won?"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/what-if-montcalm-had-won/article1276863/

What if, 250 years ago, the Marquis de Montcalm had defeated James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham? Would French-speakers today be more numerous on this continent, more socially and culturally developed, more prosperous and secure? Would the Québécois be happier?

That assumption has been cherished by generations of nationalist weepers. Their lamentations will fill the air this weekend on the anniversary.

But is it justified? On the contrary, if you study the fate of each of France's American colonies in the years after 1759, it emerges unquestionably that only Quebec has prospered, and in French ...

"Ontario's performance shames Quebec"

http://tinyurl.com/ldorqc

Flexibility is a key part of the success. Individual school boards choose the best programs for their area and their students.

In Quebec, such flexibility is anathema. Faced with problems that a greater degree of autonomy might solve, Quebec's instinct is always to tighten its grip, write up more rules and demand more reports.

We can see the results: 100,000 more high-school dropouts since 2003. It's time Quebec tried looking outside its borders for solutions.

"A shameful waste of valuable manpower"

http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/shameful+waste+valuable+manpower/1944171/story.html

Quebec has the smallest proportion of foreign-trained doctors among its health-care practitioners, the Canadian Institute for Health Information has reported. With barely one in 10 of its doctors trained abroad, Quebec trails all other provinces ...

The provincial government has been assuring Quebecers for years that it is doing everything it can to make sure there are enough medical practitioners to look after them. And they believed the province.

Should they have? Saskatchewan managed to increase the number of doctors practising there. Half of them are foreign-trained. In Newfoundland and Labrador more than a third of doctors were trained outside Canada, along with one in four of Ontario's doctors ...

Old soldiers never die ... they just get played away

... I was quite involved with St Anne's after it was discovered that the new French management was hiring only French personnel as the English left and also applying French tests to the surviving English medical and nursing staff to see if they could stay ...

Despite its location in Quebec, 70 per cent of the patients were English, statistically reflecting the percentage of Quebec soldiers who went to World War II (and WWI for that matter).

So what happened was that a high number of patients were dying in French, which of course was viewed as no bad thing to those who are horror-struck by the prospect of a French guy dying in English.

The complaint came from a Dr Harry Polansky (latter a leader of the Canada Party which had an interesting history of its own), a dentist, while I was at the Suburban. I got him to write a detailed letter to the editor (letters to the editor have a slight measure of qualified privilege in libel law) outlining his charges.

After I published this, I went after the head hospital honcho, who despite his English name, was French, and did a few more stories, gathering more sources. Eventually, under considerable pressure, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages did what they called an "Enhanced Investigation" and found what we were saying was true.

Of course, nothing was done about it, other than supposedly ending the advertising for bilingual staff in French journals only.

Curiously, I wanted a copy of the report and press release from the Commission of the Official Languages office about six years ago to help a friend of mine (Kim McConnell of the Language Fairness movement in Ottawa which has Harold Galganov behind it), but they would not release it, even though they had made it public at the time. I think you would have to go to the Freedom of Information people to get it now ...

That's why they call it color television.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Dumont+turns+trash/1926405/story.html

The network is V, formerly known as TQS, and before that as Quatre-Saisons. Occasionally innovative - it was the first French-language network to recruit non-white on-air personalities - the network has been mainly known throughout its 22-year history for programming that is cheap in more than one sense of the word.

No, just the regular kind.

http://rabble.ca/babble/central-canada/quebec-election-partie-deux

"Anglophobes"?? Is that anything like "reverse racism"?

Nothing like a good "family" feud

http://tinyurl.com/lfl76t

The simplistic narrative of the Conquest of Quebec is not universally accepted even among the conquered.

If the national question is, as some francophones like to point out, really a family feud, let's hear all the voices.

OTTAWA — The mayor of Quebec City apparently isn't interested in the French royal coat of arms that a French-language advocacy group in Gatineau, Que., wants the Canadian War Museum to return to the city.

Jean-Paul Perreault, president of Imperatif francais, last week demanded that the carved pine coat of arms that sat atop one of Quebec City's gates until 1760 be returned because it was "looted by violence" after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.