Canadian Idiots

Thanks must be directed Globe and Mail columnist Jan Wong for her recent article about the Dawson College shooting. More specifically, the attempt to draw a connection between Kimveer Gill's rage and linguistic alienation in Quebec.

So why thank her? It revealed the true nature of our disability to question our society critically. That's why.

We should be strong enough to take on debate in all its form without responding in kind to anything we deem to be wrong. To do otherwise, infers that we are in the right. Of course, we are far from being perfect.

To be frank, it was an absurd assertion to make. However, it does point to a deeper malaise in Canadian society in general. Never mind that many editors (ahem, The Montreal Gazette) seem to be sleeping at the switch - the G&M should not have, in my opinion, run the article.

One way to measure where a society stands on issues or if one wants to get a glimpse of our collective intellectual strength is to observe reactions to perceived insults. Canada quivers at the knees and foams at the mouth as saliva seeps down its chin whenever we are wounded in the abstract.

The reaction in Quebec was predictable. It's just another 'example' of why Canada does not 'understand' us. The article was used as a lame weapon to prove, among other things, why we should break away from Canada. If this is the sort of stuff that will make way for such claims, perhaps it's not the kind of club one should consider joining. Jan Wong started something and Quebec's political culture - in part playing the part of perpetual victim and subsequently embracing the concept of justified racism - as it is constructed finished it. What was the result? Tie game heading to shoot-out. If that.

The wrath was pointed in all the same tired direction. The Province's headlines and 'thinkers' went off in all sorts of directions, tangents and angles about Ms. Wong's misguided article.

Nothing of any substantial value was added. Just tiny bits of parochialism masking as sophisticated pondering. We've been hard wired through years of selfish propaganda to react in this manner. The 'under siege' mentality pervades our free minds.

Too bad cooler heads did not prevail. Apparently she represents all of Canada Anglais. Itself a concept outmoded like hair mullets.

In other words, the reaction was no better than the action propelled by the piece.

If any Quebecer honestly believes that similar articles have never been spewed from our own backyard, then we are more delusional than first thought.*

Newspapers written in the Latin language offshoot through the years have been filled with just as many dubious acts of journalistic indiscretions. The Montreal Gazette itself has a contributor on its pages named Josée Legault.

She who has put together some rather mind-boggling dull gems worthy of a documentary that would make anyone's hair raise. It seems taking Nazi Germany and comparing it to contemporary issues is the game of a small-mind and fool. They all remind me of Beetle Bailey.

On a side example and by extension, many Quebecers (or Canadians for that matter) like to libel Don Cherry - through second hand information - as a 'racist' yet the curious question must be asked then: how is he any different than Bertrand Raymond, Rejean Tremblay, Jean Perron and Micehl Bergeron?

True free debate in Quebec does not exist. If it does, its pulse is weak and meek.

Canada is not to get a free pass either. Canadian political dogma stipulates you must never attack something like, for example, public health. If you do so, you are a dangerous and radical neocon. A puppet of the Americans.

Canada in general is a pathetic wasteland when it comes to meaningful debate. We are obsessed with stupidities that feed our insecure and thin-skinned DNA make up. When all else fails blame those same Americans.

Quebec cries about Canada. Quebec's anglos cry about French Quebec. And so on. It's annoying. It is an irritation because it's an albatross on our society.

Jan Wong wrote an article. It missed. Better-endowed minds did not find agreement in it. She was, nonetheless, free to do so. The G&M did not need to apologize.

For many years, I would sit in front of a television with my French-Canadian friends and family members and watch homegrown programming. The Quebecois humour (and film for that matter) industry is actually pretty sophisticated. Its cornerstone for a long time hinged on spoofing not only its own culture (also a way to measure cultural maturity) but that of the rest of Canada. In fact, it was the essence of their comedy sketches.

Unfortunately, they are not to pleased whenever they are spoofed themselves. They dismiss it as low-brow. Maybe it is.

However, it takes two to tango. Quebec should have shrugged this one off. The G&M was caught sleeping at the switch. Just like the New York Times does at times.

*Right about now, someone is glancing over this post missing the heart of its meaning and dismissing me as anti-Francophone. Let me intercept, rubbish.