The Collapse Of Montreal

I attended a funeral for a great uncle last night and was treated to a rather interesting but not surprising conversation with two business well-read, cultured and successful guys from Edmonton and Toronto.

It went something along the lines of "what have you guys done to Montreal?"

They both remember a time when Montreal was the city in Canada. This country's New York, London and Chicago, and Paris rolled into one. We were the trailblazing metropolis all of Canada admired and flocked to visit. We were the business, cultural, sports and party capital of this great, gigantic land. As one of the gentleman put it, "you had the Expos, a harbor, bilingual pride and the girls. You had all the natural advantages no city in this country had or has."

Now?

All we have is a shell of a former great town. It's wallowing in corruption and dysfunction, no Expos, most businesses have long since moved their HQ's and none are returning, the town is under pressure from language zealots, and impossibly high taxes. We still have the lovely gals but so does Kiev.

It's worse than that of course. We have a defunct, province swimming in debt that's barely competing on any level with other regions on the continent - except for fucking 'manifestations' reminiscent of European strikes. There's little to be proud of here.

It seems one community is pleased with itself sipping cafe and acting hip all in one 'common' language while the rest of us look on as if caged in District 9 in disbelief. We know who wrecked this city - another take on 'Je me souviens.'

All for cultural reasons and nothing else. It's become sickeningly annoying listening to the Parti-Quebecois this time around. They're more nonsensical than they've ever been. More irrelevant to the 21st century you can't get. This insanity of fighting one language to enhance another is pure, pure madness. And it's god damn prejudicial at its base root despite their best efforts to put up strawman logic to the contrary.

Just a quick digression. To me, I saw all I needed to see about our business mentality during the Expos debacle and sale of Montreal Canadiens the first time around back in the 1990s. It was clear to anyone paying attention how small potatoes we had become. Remove one family from the equation and we have nothing but business elites that act like petty warlords. The Americans schooled us in both cases. We left ourselves open to a couple of carpetbaggers (naifs like the town of Springfield when the Monorail guy game into town) in the Expos saga and sold a gold-standard hockey team to an American who then built its value up and sold it back to Canadians at a higher price.

One could only do one thing. /face palm.

My cousin and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders as they looked upon us with pity.

Look, as I explained, this is what you get when you vote in cultural nationalists who are roughly on par with this guy. You don't get a dynamic, progressive (and by that term I don't mean welfare programs) and enlightened society contributing to Western values. You get just the opposite.

The results are plain to see. Montreal is nowhere near on the level of Toronto. Its claim of 'Paris North' sticks, sure, but it hardly means much anymore.

Like the once mighty Montreal Canadiens, the city has collapsed.

But keep talking bullshit and listening to hobbits and orcs in the PQ. See how far you get.

First order of business, Montreal needs to push back. If Quebec City wants to play with fire, let them light a match in the rest of the province. Montreal is the engine of this province and we choose to be bilingual and pluralist. We must consider civil, quiet disobedience in this matter lest the city falls back further. Inspector fines you? Take Quebec to the human rights commission. It already has a file there so why not? You pay your taxes here. You employ citizens. You have every right to speak the language of your choice EN PAIX. Free of any kind of state coercion.

Simply don't comply. I don't know what the consequences of this would be but if enough businesses find a backbone to send a message, they'll back off because they - like a bunch of beggars - need the money.

Should a law like Bill 14 pass we shouldn't comply.

Take it from there.