What was your biggest surprise/favourite thing about the cities you've visited?

[vid]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

My time in this country has essentially taught me that Canadians don't understand the dynamics of their own country, and that goes for Canadians in EVERY province.

I wonder, to which degree does the fact that each of us lives more than hour away from the nearest neighbouring city affect this ignorance?

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by vid

I wonder, to which degree does the fact that each of us lives more than hour away from the nearest neighbouring city affect this ignorance?

Now, that's a very good question. I've met many Quebecers from the "regions" whose impression of Montreal is "just arabs and black people" , but the same is true in reverse, many Montrealers (myself included), often label the ROQ (rest of Quebec) as white, religious (catholic) and closed-minded.

This country suffers from a deep disassociation syndrome which is prevalent also in respective provinces.


If Quebec was a country, Montreal would be its Toronto.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

One of the things I loved learning during my time at Concordia was that students from the ROC thought that Montreal was a sea of white francophones, which is far from the truth.

Maybe that has changed, but we spent decades hearing about how it was a huge concern of the Quebec government that immigrants weren't learning French and that it was necessary to force them into French schools etc. I guess we're guilty of not keeping up with the latest developments, which seem to be that that policy has begun to work.

[red-paladin]

Originally Posted by vid

c) European ethnic groups also provide cultural diversity, despite their lack of brown skin and the fact that they speak a language closely related to English, like Polish, Finnish or Italian.

Finnish is a language from east of the Urals (Like Hungarian), and other Indo-European languages from the middle east are more closely related to English.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by red-paladin

Finnish is a language from east of the Urals (Like Hungarian), and other Indo-European languages from the middle east are more closely related to English.

True, Finns are also less caucasian than Iranians.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

I can speak for Montreal enough to say that this is wrong. Every single one of the "non-whites" (pakistani, black-african, north-african, south asian) I personally know and work with/for speak french as a first language and english as a second. Their parent's native tongue is always third.

I was being very tongue-in-cheek with my comment. Relating to some school law that may or may not even be in force anymore wherein people were forced to send their children to schools in the different languages based solely on place of birth. I deliberately had it reversed to poke fun at the policy as from what I recall it was immigrant children who were forced into French schools while locals could still send their kids to English schools. Either way it always struck me as an amusing way to promote (some might say extinguish) cultural diversity.

If all the immigrants' children are now just speaking French anyway, then Montreal sounds about as diverse as Calgary on the language front. Except with some uppity Anglos thrown in to stir the pot of course.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by vid

I wonder, to which degree does the fact that each of us lives more than hour away from the nearest neighbouring city affect this ignorance?

Not much. Go look at the UK (and the broader European continent) sometime. Or the US.

Hell, I've witnessed this within CITIES. Growing up in Winnipeg was amusing due partly to the legacy of the Unicity plan. You'd think people had grown up on entirely different continents considering just how "provincial" they thought and behaved sometimes.

I think it's just part of the human condition to know (or care) virtually nothing about people not within our close circles.

[vid]

I was sarcastically mocking the general assumption that first generation Finns, Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, and other ethnic communities of European descent don't count as ethnic diversity because they're not visible minorities.

Things like Oktoberfest and saunas are given less weight than an Indian cultural festival or a Japanese restaurant when discussing multiculturalism in this country. And aboriginal culture is always sort of an after-thought. It's part of the mix too, isn't it?

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by freeweed

I

If all the immigrants' children are now just speaking French anyway, then Montreal sounds about as diverse as Calgary on the language front. Except with some uppity Anglos thrown in to stir the pot of course.

Yes, they all speak french, english + their "native language", yes.

Honestly, 3 times out 4, "ROC people" that I have met and moved here were always surprised to see "non-white" Montrealers speaker french, english, AND their "native" language.

On the flip side, a colleague of mine recently came back from Vancouver and told me it was "just japanese people". For the record, I was forced to refrain from slapping him good.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

On the flip side, a colleague of mine recently came back from Vancouver and told me it was "just japanese people". For the record, I was forced refrained from slapping him good.

Yeah, when Japan took over Hong Kong, all the Koreans left and moved to Vancouver. Or something.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

Yes, they all speak french, english + their "native language", yes.

Honestly, 3 times out 4, "ROC people" that I have met and moved here were always surprised to see "non-white" Montrealers speaker french, english, AND their "native" language.

As I said, that is likely because we ROC people were told endlessly for decades that one of the main reasons that language laws were necessary and justified was that immigrants to Quebec were not learning to speak French. So it's not surprising that we have the impression that a lot of immigrants in Quebec don't speak French very well.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

I've met many Quebecers from the "regions" whose impression of Montreal is "just arabs and black people" ,

I'm from the ROQ (I've lived in Montreal for the last 5 years though, so more than enough to see things from a different perspective) and people in my hometown (small town in the Eastern Townships) are convinced that Montreal is a criminal hellhole, with eternal traffic jams and crazy traffic even on small residential streets. They probably think it is common to hear gunshots in some neighbourhoods. The traffic can be bad during rush hours, but other than that the the way they see the city is ridiculous.

Driving in Montreal is a nightmare for most people there, it is not uncommon to see people headed to Laval drive all the way to the ferry in Sorel instead of crossing the bridges because this idea scares the s*** out of them. The idea of driving on the Decarie, the Turcot or the Metropolitan scares most of people there. They usually go to Montreal once every 2-3 years, if not every 5 years. Some others never go and probably didn't see MTL in person since Expo 67. My dad just return from a trip to New Brunswick and didn't like driving in St.John because it was "too big and the highways were confusing".

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Andy6

As I said, that is likely because we ROC people were told endlessly for decades that one of the main reasons that language laws were necessary and justified was that immigrants to Quebec were not learning to speak French. So it's not surprising that we have the impression that a lot of immigrants in Quebec don't speak French very well.

To be honest, there is still a chunk of them that do not (speak French). But it is way smaller than it was before.

There are also quite a few immigrants who speak their native language plus French, but not English.

I don't live in Montreal but I do live in Gatineau right next to Ottawa, and in my street and neighbourhood there are people who speak Portuguese and French, Wolof and French, Arabic and French, Haitian Creole and French, and little or no English. The dynamics are similar in much of Montreal.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Quebec's flag also features the St. George's cross, as does Montreal's. Don't tell Pauline Marois!

The cross on the Quebec flag is not St George's. St. George's is red.

The Quebec flag is an adaptation of an old flag of royal France.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The cross on the Quebec flag is not St George's. St. George's is red.

The Quebec flag is an adaptation of an old flag of royal France.

Oh, okay sorry ... I didn't realize it had to be red but the Wikipedia article does say that.

[vid]

Really? Because I checked the Wikipedia article and it didn't mention the St. George's Cross at all.

The Fleurdelisé takes its white cross from the ancient royal flags of France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Quebec

Also, the only mention of Quebec on the page for St George's Cross is to mention Montreal's flag.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Georges_Cross

So no, the Wikipedia article does not say that.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by vid

So no, the Wikipedia article does not say that.

I think you misunderstood my comment.

[vid]

By "does say that" I thought you were referring to your claim that the Quebec flag is based on the St. George's Cross.

[someone123]

The pop culture concept of "diversity" is a real mess. I've yet to hear a definition of diversity that is self-consistent, meaningful, and has significant implications.

The most common formulation is something like:

1) Diversity is good.
2) The percentage of total visible minorities or the number of major groups making up a substantial percentage of the total population more or less determine diversity.
3) Diversity is somehow morally superior, or something.
4) Also diversity is how you get good restaurants and multicultural festivals.

I don't really know where to start with (1) and (3). They're mostly meaningless and they are partly incompatible with the brand of political correctness that tends to go along with the "diversity" talk. Is Lagos inferior to a hypothetical version of the city with fewer black people and more white people, or is there just something exceptional about North America?

(2) is highly debatable. In Toronto and Vancouver there are large, relatively segregated ethnic enclaves that are poorly integrated into the larger population. Normally it seems like there's either segregation (politically unacceptable) or assimilation (reduces diversity and therefore also bad). The only "good" situation as far as I can tell is one where there's a steady stream of foreign newcomers. That's a highly unusual and most likely unsustainable arrangement.

I'm not even sure the restaurant thing is true (and it makes immigration seem a lot more self-serving than the moralizing would suggest it is, but whatever). There are some excellent food cities that are not really that diverse in the sense described above. There's also a lot of pretty awful working class food that really doesn't add much to a city. Vancouver has a few good Chinese restaurants and a large number of mediocre ones. You don't actually need a large minority group for restaurants to pop up -- in lots of Canadian cities you find Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, etc. etc. restaurants run by a single person or family. And of course there's no law saying you have to be from a given country to open up a restaurant featuring that type of cuisine. Here in Vancouver it seems a safe bet to say that most sushi places are run by non-Japanese people. Around here most of them are owned by Koreans. Lots of cities have the restaurants without the large minority groups.

[kool maudit]

the statements of the quebec government almost always fail to represent montreal's metropolitan circumstance. that's quebec city -- and there's definitely some internal quebec bitterness about this!

beyond that, i sort of promised myself i'd stop talking about montreal and quebec with non-montreal canadians of either the french or english variety. it sounds churlish, but i had a long car ride back from prizren the other day, and i spent the whole trip dealing with the whole "those frenchies sure know how to shoot themselves in the foot!" thing.

it's not entirely inaccurate, but if it's not accompanied by any knowledge of the roots of quebec nationalism/the church in quebec/the circumstance on the ground in montreal it gets pretty tiresome (my debate partner was a very well-meaning and otherwise informed fellow from waterloo).

i cut it off when an aside about the "reasonable accommodation" thing raised by that one small-town mayor five years ago (or whatever) led into a lurid fantasy about the likelihood of a holocaust in an independent quebec. i've always been a federalist.... but jesus christ. know what i mean?