Friends,
Right now, I should be doing one of two things.
One, I should be working on a certain screenplay, because I am in negotiations to option it to a producer.
Two, I should be getting some sleep, because I have work in a few scant hours.
Instead, I am doing something out of a sense of civic duty. It is an unwholesome feeling and I cannot recommend against it enough.
There are some among us, including myself, who have recently been banished as fringe elements, from the ranks and privileges of the Facebook group of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Our expulsion was due for many reasons. These included posting the simple facts as seen from the front line on Quebec’s War on Anglos. This underreported and ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing by attrition has continued to be ignored by the Liberal Party. They have ignored us and they have denied us, by silencing the voices raised in dissent of that Official Party Line.
Sit back and contemplate that Machiavellian concept a moment, then we shall continue.
The Liberals have long since become our alleged last best hope. But let us face the truth: neither in the ranks of the Provincial nor the Federal Liberals are there any Anglophone Quebecers to be seen nor heard. If they are there, they are silent, token chair moisteners for the most cynical of reasons. Beyond these harem castratos, we have no voice in government.
Nor have we any true presence of note in Federal or Provincial civil service, though we do come close with a few Ottawa transplants living in the City Formerly Known as Hull.
The death of Hull for the rise of Gatineau is one of the most flagrant examples of the cultural erasure of the Anglophone Communities of Quebec. Our schools, our churches, our temples have been closed. Our municipal services have dried up, and good luck finding much English text at the UQAM Library. Oh, it may be available, but it’s certainly not available to nous, les autres. We would be auslander—I’m sorry, I meant l’etranger, and not in any Bohemian Paris Anais Nin kind of way.
How many of our neighbourhoods have buildings where our parents and grandparents once went to school, where they played, where they grew up and fell in love, buildings that are closed to us and our children? How many of these buildings still retain any benefit to our community? Sun Youth, to be sure, but who else? How many of us have alma maters that no longer exist? How many of our schools have been erased? How many of us didn’t even get to graduate from one school because it was closed and we were shipped off to another school?
After the 1995 referendum, how many of our hospitals were closed in unnecessary reprisal cuts? What is often never said about the goddamn health care crisis in Quebec is that it was Parizeau, Landry, Marois and Harel who created the crisis to begin with, laying off nurses, forcing doctors to retire or move out of province and closing scores of hospitals.
And let us not forget Louise Harel’s language Gestapo, what she turned the Office de la Langue Francaise into, that saw attacks on Greek, Jewish and Chinese businesses in their respective communities. The response from our so called community was pathetic, at best: a bunch of mumbling passive aggressive yuppies banded together to strut and fret their hour for the camera and sound-bites on CJAD.
What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is true leadership. Not the blunt aggressiveness of Howard Galganov, and certainly not the passive aggressive smile-for-the-camera-boys photo op of Alliance Quebec.
What we need is to unite our diverse communities, Black, Jewish, Muslim, Italian, Mohawk, Innu, Greek, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Irish, Scot, English, Polish, Ukrainian, Hindu, Sikh, and all those I have failed to mention, to get each and every English-speaking natural-born and immigrant citizen of Quebec, starting in Montreal and growing outwards to all our community strongholds, and join together to speak—and vote—with one voice.
We need to do this with plain talk about hard facts. We need to do this by putting truth to the lies told to cover up our ongoing deletion. Oppressed minorities the world over have only ever garnered sympathy or attention when they united, when the cried out with one voice. Even as our heritage, cultures, histories and communities continue to be eroded by the Franco-supremacist laws and attitudes, there are groups who compare the Francophone Quebecer to the Tibetans and the Chechens, even to the Palestinians and Darfur.
Not only is that attitude insulting to the Anglophones of Quebec given the scourging of the last 40 years, but it is extremely offensive to the Tibetan, Palestinian, Chechen and Darfur refugees, and all those who have suffered under such brutal oppression.
In no way can we compare ourselves to these communities, either. However, in no way are we the best-treated minority in the world, as the Separatists like to claim. What outreach to the English-speaking Quebecers have the Francophone communities ever made? What outreach from either successive Liberal or Pequiste governments have we been offered? We have been wholeheartedly rejected by the Power Elite in Quebec.
Likewise, what has been offered us from Canada? What have the Federal Liberals done for us? The last constitutional crisis in Canada was set off by the ineptitude of the Conservatives under the flailing Lyin’ Brian Mulroney. His disastrous and patently absurd Meech Lake accords were the genesis of the Bloc Quebecois, who broke away from the Tories.
It is time we united our communities and did the same. We will offer the hand of friendship to those in Francophone Quebec who offer it. We will likewise do the same for those from the so-called Rest of Canada who do the same. But it is time to rebuke those who have rejected and denied us. It is time to stand up against all those who have failed us in Ottawa and in Quebec City.
We must unite our communities under the banner of our own political party, both Provincial and Federal. We must strive to take enough votes away from the other parties to ensure that no majority government can be formed, and that our so-called “traditional allies” in Parliament and Provincial Assembly cannot hope to form a coalition without us.
Our democratic rights have been stolen from us. We must therefore seize them back, and the best way to return democratic force to our communities is to elect enough representatives to office to ensure our voice is heard and our rights and heritage protected.
All it took to defeat Meech Lake were a handful of no votes. That’s all that kept the separatists from stealing the referendum in 1995. Let us make our voices be heard, again.
But how? Oh, I have read that phrase in all its splendid forms these last several hours, as I read group messages and message board threads, wall posts and weblogs. Thou fools, you cannot see the forest for the trees!
We have Facebook groups. We have weblogs. We have message boards, we have email. We have Google, Wikipedia, we have radio-bloody-phone-in shows, newspapers, spraypaint and blank walls, printers, faxes, stores and shops, schools and churches, and yet you all scratch your heads and wonder how to do it?
We are the voices of our community! Join Montreal Hellenic Society Facebook groups. Join Montreal Jewish Facebook groups. Join the Asian groups, the Black groups, the Queer groups and every other goddamn English-speaking Montreal or Quebec-oriented internetz group you can fucking find! Talk to people who are ready to speak to their communities! Talk to students at McGill, Concordia, at Bishop’s, at Dawson and Marianapolis, at John Abbott; talk to people at the fucking Fairview Mall parking lot if that’s what it takes!
The price of failure to act is nothing short of our erasure from Quebec culture and history. They’ve already taken away most of our topography. How long before Valleyfield is renamed, or Sherbrooke Street overwritten? How long before another school closes, another friend or family member moves west, or south?
Our communities must unite, and take back what is ours. But it starts with us reaching out to one another. It starts with us.
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