@Timewalker, you mentioned Gordon Lightfoot...have you ever seen him in concert? He is my favorite singer of all time. I've been to two of his concerts (both in Omaha, where I live), which I enjoyed immensely, though I wish I'd got the chance to see him at Massey Hall in Toronto...
Sadly, I've never been able to see him in concert. My city is halfway between Calgary and Edmonton, which means we usually get overlooked by the top performers. It's been a catch-22; they don't come here because we don't have the larger venues, and the larger venues haven't been built because without the top performers, what's the point?
Sometimes (okay, most times), our local city council can be a pack of short-sighted idiots.
I was first introduced to his music in my Grade 7 music class in junior high. The teacher had us listen to and learn "Early Morning Rain" and "Did She Mention My Name?".
I've played the organ for most of my life, and play mostly by ear - if I listen to a song I like, I can pick it up and learn to play it. So that's what happened with these two Gordon Lightfoot songs... and my grandmother really liked them. There were times when she would specifically ask me to play "Early Morning Rain" for her.
I do have to say that I prefer the Irish Rovers' version of "The Great Canadian Railroad Trilogy" over Lightfoot's version. Theirs is more expressive, and it's another song I picked up and learned.
Btw, I saw Stomping Tom's son perform last year. He was great. In some ways, he was even better than his Dad as he seemed to bring a lot of emotion and empathy to everything he sang, with interesting stories and perspectives about his Dad
That must have been wonderful.
I never saw Stompin' Tom in concert either, but my mother cleaned his motel room.
He was passing through between appearances in Calgary and Edmonton in the early '70s and stayed the night at a motel along the highway, near the acreage where my family lived at the time. My mother was a housekeeper there, and mentioned that Stompin' Tom Connors had been there. I don't think she actually met him, though.
Yes, it's true. That just goes to show how much diversity as a country we do have, though. And I think it's great that they are quite different. Well, I'm a bit young in relation to the PQ, as I was born in 77, so I wasn't around then. You make some great points. I think there are certainly areas where they could improve. As for the FN, I agree. But that's not really specific to Quebec as it's happened nearly everywhere. I really wish they'd get better representation. These are the kind of lessons everyone needs to learn from.
It appears, then, that you're coming from a position of growing up with language police and not knowing a time when anglophone businesspeople weren't hauled into court and fined over a stupid thing like an apostrophe in the name of the business or signs that had the French words a centimetre too short.
Sure, I guess I should have meant before confederation. Maybe territories? There was a time where there was very little claimed and Quebec was the largest of them. Some of the other territories joined later.
Quebec has had centuries to develop a sense of "self" as a culture, as the person on the other forum keeps telling me. Alberta has only been part of Confederation since 1905.
However, my view is that while this is historically interesting, it's insufficient basis to make the older province more "elite" than the rest of them (I hesitate to use that word, given how it gets tossed around by the right-wing, but I can't think of a better one at the moment).
As for L'Anse-aux-Meadows, wasn't that settlement more recently rediscovered though? They might have visited it first, but it took us a long time for us to understand what we were seeing, and I don't think settlers even realized the significance if they did notice it. Wonder what they would have made of it.
The L'Anse-aux-Meadows site was discovered in 1960.
According to Wikipedia, the locals thought it was the remains of Indian dwellings. When the Ingstads (Helge and Anne) started excavating, they realized that it was really a Viking settlement dating to approximately 1000 CE.
I first read about this in high school (in the late '70s) and did one of my Canadian history term projects about it in college.
Well, I have to admit some of their attitude is a head-scratcher for me too. I certainly don't fully understand why, and the french-only signs, and even the recent decision to only offer French greetings are puzzling, and I don't agree with.
What, they only greet people in French, now? O-kay... Not cool. There have been various reports in the news over the years of people needing emergency medical services and the personnel won't speak to them in English. One of these people was a pregnant woman who was in a car accident. She was so panicked that every scrap of French she knew just flew right out of her mind and she was trying to explain to the dispatcher what had happened... and they blew her off because she wasn't speaking French. Other people have said they were treated like crap in the hospital for not speaking French to the nurses.
Naturally a hospital can't be expected to have staff fluent in every language, but to refuse to speak to a patient or a patient's family member in English?
Those, especially the greetings, take things a bit too far one direction.
It basically says, "Speak French or go away." So I will stay away.
I also don't really understand the sentiment behind wanting to separate, as I feel they have a lot to offer to Canada as a whole. Overall, what's the point? What would it offer? Nothing really. I'm just merely trying to understand and illustrate why things might be the way they are, that the attitudes might draw from those early days. Paranoid maybe?
It isn't what they have to offer Canada; it's what they think Canada owes them. As I said, it's like a child who says he wants to run away but still wants everything provided. The separatist politicians have convinced their voters that if Quebec separates, it can still use Canadian institutions (ie. banks, postal services, infrastructure, pension plans, currency, and a host of other things) but make its own totally independent decisions.
Nope. It's one or the other. Having one's cake and eating it too doesn't work.
That's something the western separatists need to understand, too. We do have separatists here, and they are some of the worst crackpots I've ever heard. They're among the people who were tossed out of the Reform Party because Preston Manning himself considered them unelectable and detrimental to his efforts to make his party seem respectable to voters outside of Alberta. So now there are two or three fringe separatist parties here, and they run the odd (sometimes really odd) candidate in some riding or other in federal elections.
As for Trudeau, yeah, that wasn't the smartest move. He should have been more sensitive about it. Quebec be Quebec, I guess. He is from Montreal, of afterall...
Strictly speaking, he's from Ottawa - that's where he was born. But he grew up in the French-Canadian culture, and according to an article I read a month or two ago, there were even specific floors or rooms in the house (I assume he meant 24 Sussex, for the most part) where he and his brothers were required to speak French. If they wanted to speak English, they had to go to a different part of the house.
I guess that's one way to ensure the kids grow up bilingual. I wonder if Margaret was held to that standard as well.
My great grandparents and my grandmother were from Montreal. But no one had french names.
Montreal is more cosmopolitan. Quebec City is where things are more French and there's less patience with English-speakers.
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