NB - to my regular blog readers, excuse the tangent here, but the local provincial extremists attempted something in my 'hood recently that is not acceptable, so I stepped in to protect the community. Normally I would agree with the principle of not disparaging an individual, however the cyber-bullying of a few individuals in this province warrant a smack-down.
Last Friday, activity in a Facebook group called 'Au Québec, c'est en français' indicated that there would be an anti-English speaking march in neighbourhoods that were ‘traditionally’ English speaking, and now completely bilingual. I wrote to the group on Friday, 16th of July, the following to dissuade them from the offensive march:
Je considère ceci comme un acte d’extrémisme. Le français existe au Québec depuis 400 ans, et bien protégé déjà…autant qu’on passe trop de temps sur les lois qui ne font qu’harcelé notre minorité surtout. Il faut s’assurer que parler la langue /du client est plus importante que la projection de ce que le reste de la province veut faire sur la métropole avec ces communautés diverses. Creating ethnic divisions like this, and walking around in gangs in the street to make Anglophones feel unwelcome in their own home, their own province…(I added more when it was live, but you get the message).
Promouvoir le français doit être fait d’une façon plus constructive que le harcèlement aux arrondissements bilingues. J’habite TMR [Ville Mont-Royal] et nous sommes heureux et vivre en paix (c’est moitié anglo/franco btw). Leave your insecurity out of our neighbourhood. Whoever told you Montreal wasn’t also an English speaking city lied to you (look at the three other corners of the city’s flag[: Scotland, Ireland, England are there too - Montreal is a four nations city, a cosmopolitain city]), do not blame failed and illegitimate referendums or the power of the Lingua Franca [over business and international relations] upon us. Nous ne sommes pas un bouc-émissaire pour cette autre fausse tempête en ce qui concerne la perte du français au Québec.
English is an official language in large number of communities [about fifty see list, plus all Federal institutions] in Quebec, and this is a bilingual country, so this street gang style linguistic attack is inacceptable. C’est bien partie la tolérance de notre cher Guy Favreau, eh ? Si vous marchez dans cette ridicule campagne, oui, vous allez confirmer ce que je dis.
I am a Champion for Canada, et Le Québec est Inclus dans Mon Pays
So after trying to talk some sense into the extremist group, which had about 220 confirmed attendees of their Anglophobic Anti-Bill 103 march (Au Québec, c’est le français / in QC, it’s the French language), I was, of course, attacked and eventually blocked from the two-thousand something member group.
Three times, publically Mr Préfontaine called me a Racist, here is the first instance Friday afternoon, 16 July [comments are in brakets], and stupid spelling mistakes are fixed in both languages to improve readability:
Louis Préfontaine
Yvan Major
... là.
Ce que je souhaite est de rassembler les québécois et québécoises autour de la langue national, le français.
Pour les unilingues anglophones qui n'aiment pas le français, je crois qu'il y a tellement de choix dans 9 provinces au Canada et 50 états américains ou l'anglais domine que de vouloir garder notre Québec en français est vraiment pas trop demandé.
[thanks for all who will be there, invite your friends who make an effort to speak French. In the end, we don't want perfection, but the effort and respect of the French language in its complexity. I'm far from perfect in French, but my efforts are there.
What I hope is to gather Quebeckers around the 'national' language, French.
For the unilingual Anglophones that don't like French, I believe there is so much choice in the nine other provinces of Canada and in the U.S.A, where English dominates, that to want to keep our province a French province is not too much to ask. ]
See More [this means if you speak English, go live somewhere else, even if QC is your home – we want to keep QC French (only)]
The best part of all this is however, for our community, is that after attacking misguided individuals such as Monsieur Préfontaine, head on, exposes this self-entitled territorialism over the language space. There are several of us in this group, the Defence Association of Anglophone Quebec, that are protecting our rights in this way, in many other different ways, and I applaud them all in countering this evil (no names need mentioning, you know who you are) because all these efforts seem to be paying off quite well (stopping Michèl Brulé’s hate literature was another, or helping Nancy Wood when CBC management had their brain fart this Spring). Louis Préfontaine, and men like him, show us how quickly they fall on their own sword – and Michel Laroque, a friend of mine, describes this beautifully in French as you can see above (voir les beaux commentaries de Michel Laroque ci-haute).
Might I suggest next time that Louis wants to point the finger of that word beginning with an R we need not to repeat, that he looks first, up at the guy he was protecting with respect to the Canoe Article in Question, Ex-Premier Landry, over his Anglo/Xenophobic comments when Sabia’s candidature as the head of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (QC’s Pension plan Deposit and Investment Fund) was announced.
Also, I am pretty sure this man will attempt to repudiate my complaint openly (as do most in the sovereigntist militant camp), but as you can see for yourself, the proof is above; there is no way to disclaim his repetitive slanderous remarks and personal attacks from this FrancoSupremacist. I guess I hit my mark too well? After discussing with a fellow Canadian SQL Server MVP the other day, exposing extremists by calling them upon the laws they violate openly, seems to be working quite effectively, it catches them completely off guard. The result of this supposed march amongst bilingual neighbourhoods was a pathetic 15 person march on Saturday (from our field observations). I am glad, and hope that stepping into that group of two thousand persons last Friday made them think twice about joining the ranks of some of Quebec’s most deceitful Chumps who openly violate Section 10 of the French Language Charter by discriminating against individuals based on language.
Yours Sincerely,
Hugo Shebbeare
PS:
For those who might consider fighting militants such as this a waste of time, I hear you, but going after the leadership of these extremist groups openly means to our brethren across Canada that we too no longer wish to let these persons preach hatred repetitively (il faut frapper fort ces extrémistes, tel que je fais) and proves that we are not apathetic to the consequences of their actions, which in themselves are not only violations of the French Language Charter, but also the Criminal Code of Canada (I shall confirm with a solicitor shortly). The latter by indirectly inciting hatred of our community, by means of attacking English institutions as if they are alien to QC, therefore reinforcing, once again, my thesis: militant sovereigntists’ and their multiple attempts to continue the ethnic cleansing of the province of QC of it’s Anglophones by whatever insincere means they can think of. Louis Préfontaine and his buddies, as you can see in the Facebook Event/Group are outwardly, involuntarily anti-English by announcing a march throughout several bilingual parts of town (which they think are majority Anglophone) – yet this person has to nerve to use the R word on me for questioning his motivations. Yes, the insane have taken over the asylum if I am confirmed as one, especially considering all I am asking this man to do is not to walk through the streets to harass anyone specifically (because the "Parade' route was definitely targeting the Allo/Anglo minority).
PS. Cool article (à lire, SVP! ) ....It was the decades of war, and the years of forced ethnic homogenization afterward, that solidified the European myth that national borders are tied to single ethnic and linguistic groups. Only now, after that illusion has been unmasked on big-screen TV, have people begun to cheer for ...something else.
(I wish everyone would understand this, and our ethnic divisions would just fade away as they should - cette article fait le point sur un sujet extremement important)See More
