A lot has happened since last I wrote here. These are some of the stand-out stories of the past six months:
There’s a new Prime Minister of Canada, for one. We approve this choice, as the other major candidate was problematic for us. The problematic guy was favored for a long time, but then the opinion of the electorate shifted rapidly due to The Goings On Chez US–not enough to quite give the new Prime Minister a majority government, but still a big sigh of relief was heard when the results came in.
Montreal had a mild winter until February, when it got bombed with two heavy snowstorms within four days. The City couldn’t clear the roads and sidewalks for over a week, so a lot of la vie à Montréal came to a standstill. The city continues to struggle with how to respond to (and pay for) the problems created by climate change, especially since the aging infrastructure here is very fragile and constantly needs repair due to extreme weather.
Quebec’s French language agency is still “saving French” by insisting that supporting the Montreal hockey team by saying “Go Habs Go” is not allowed on public transport signs, and one must say “Allez Canadiens Allez” instead. Later the English phrase was given a pass, being historical and all, but it was too late for the Canadiens who got into the Stanley Cup playoffs but were eliminated pretty quickly.
Speaking of having no respect for French, Quebec is insisting that school students vouvoyer instead of calling teachers by their first names, and other society-rotting indignities. For those who don’t know French, to vouvoyer is to use formal address (vous) instead of the informal tutoyer (tu). In general, one uses the formal in society, unless given express permission to tutoyer.
Also, students in Quebec can now no longer bring cell phones into class, even if they call their phones by their formal names.
Quebec Premier François Legault’s hardline policy on secularism bit him on the butt when the Pope died. The secularism laws are meant to ward off religious discrimination by government employees, but have pretty much been targeted at conservative Muslims who wear hijabs instead all the Catholic symbols and street names everywhere. Legault wanted to fly flags at half-mast when Pope Francis went to heaven, but that idea got quashed by other government officials because Secularism. Legault argued that the gesture was not religious but cultural in nature, like ya do when you want to break your own biased rules.
Quebec has a history of separatist movements and now Alberta wants to be a sovereign nation too. It’s a different flavor of separatism though; Quebec’s francophonie essentially wanted to create a safe space for being French, and be governed in the French way, whereas Alberta is Cowboy Country, hard Conservative (Alberta Premier Danielle Smith thinks the current admin of Chez US is great). They want to ride the autonomy pony hard, even if it’s running right into a wall (or should I say, partition?) Anyway, TBA.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, the world-famous singer who was outed as a Pretendian by the CBC last year, is no longer depicted in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights (in other news, Canada has a human rights museum, hmm). Some of her other awards and honors have also been revoked.
She’s been fairly quiet lately. She had a long run posing as an Indigenous person, and she did some good along the way. However…yeah, you can go over the situation again here if you like.
On a more personal note, though most things went pretty smoothly with our move-in, it was nice to restart our ritual of going to the Jardin botanique every week to relax and revel in nature. As the weather starts to warm up here, we’re seeing rapid changes in the landscape. Here are comparison photos of the main “welcome garden” of the Jardin from our first week, then our next visit seven days later. Pretty dramatic:
Finally, I learned the French word for a little moving van, seeing as I had to rent one to get our stored stuff to our new apartment: fourgonnette.
And thus I reach a fourgonne conclusion.
À bientôt!