Obama's Inauguration: As Seen Down There By Someone From Up Here

Here's another translated Pierre Foglia column, originally published in La Presse's Saturday Edition, January 17th 2009. Sad, Sad Song (Greensboro)Winter is a little bit here as well. They are not used to it. You should see the lady of the Bed and Breakfast, wrapped like an Eskimo when she went to open her hardware store – she owns a hardware store in the neighbouring town. You’re going seal hunting, Anne? We left at the same time, but I was heading towards the countryside, I was going to Annie Lee’s, who is Anne’s housemaid. Black, obviously. It’s written in Obama’s book, in Dreams from My Father, page 45: “...black women come to white people houses to wash their laundry or clean their houses. Blacks are there without being there, indistinct presences, silent.” Indistinct and silent, that’s exactly Annie Lee. Housemaids are not people that give great interviews. I know them well: my mother has been a housemaid all her life and, thinking about it, she was a little N!gg3r too, my mom, more than Obama’s mom anyways. So, I was going to Annie Lee’s, a few miles from the Bed, by the countryside that used to be cotton-filled, now dug with aquaculture lakes where catfish are raised. We are in the Catfish Capital of the World. Annie Lee, I started to wheedle her one morning while she was working at Anne’s. Beautiful floor! You’re doing it on your knees? Then, another time: you have kids? Seven, she said. Then I saw her hesitate, recount mentally. Huh, eight she corrected. I don’t know if this explain that but, when she got married at 17 years old, she already had two, one when she was 14 and one at 15. Curiously, the man with whom she lives, Dayton – they don’t have kids together – hesitated as well over the same question: six? Huh, seven. No, wait: eight, I have eight! This detail says that this is not the same Blacks as usual. No Black reporters, no Black artists, no Black cabbies, no Black Presidents of the United States. Southern Blacks, like there is not even in Obama’s books. In Obama’s books, Blacks are all urban. Here, they are still in the cotton fields, even if there are no more cotton fields. I’ll say something terrible: they are still slaves even if there are no more slaves. Sad, sad song. They are on long broken country roads, many in trailers. Not Annie Lee, who lives in a big 18-rooms house on three or four acres of wooden land, a horse in a pen, walnut trees behind. Told like that, it sounds like a “Country farm for sale in a charming setting”. Not at all. A tinkered hovel, not a dump, but not far, with car carcasses and old tools lying on the ground here and there. Dayton wasn’t there. He was hunting, at the end of the property. Come for dinner tonight, invited Annie Lee, Dayton will be there, and there will also be Jasmin, my grand-daughter. When I returned during the evening, Dayton proudly showed the deer he killed that morning, hung by its legs to a tree. Half was already missing, given to friends. His first deer of the year. There was a lot of firsts, that day. I was the first White invited to their table, but it wasn’t race that made the biggest difference. You won’t believe it: It was religion. I had questions prepared, one about religion that I asked first, to get rid of it: You’re a Baptist? Yes. You? Huh, me? Huh... I’m nothing. Oh I shouldn’t have. He came back to that all night long. Nothing? How is it possible? You’re the first one I meet. He even said at one moment: I really am in shock. Well, you didn’t go out much! But he did. He worked for 15 years in Detroit for GM. He used heroin long enough to see terrible things, but apparently never as terrible as an atheist. He wouldn’t let it go all night. We were talking about something else, he would bring it back suddenly: Who makes the day? Huh? Huh? Who makes the night? Why are you getting up in the morning? Would you believe it, old man, I get up in the morning to go interview creationist N!gg3rs. I just thought it. In terms of civilities, it went rather well. Dinner was decent, chicken with beans, the sweet potatoes mash pie was amusing, we drank tea. The grand-daughter, Jasmin, who is huge, didn’t say a word. Annie Lee, not much either. It was between Dayton and me. A messy interview. Anyways, I would have done my column with everything else, as I always do. Still, I was really destabilized by two...what shall we say? Two holes in the conversation, two abysses that opened abruptly below my feet. First abyss: Italy. He asked where I was from. I said Italy. I saw to his face that neither he nor Annie had the slightest idea of what I was talking about. Italy? I could have said Moldavia or Tatarstan. The second abyss was when Dayton cell phone rang. Instead of a ringtone or a little tune, we heard the voice of a TV announcer on the election night: The next President of the United States...Then it cuts, and on a rap rythm, Ho-Ho-Ho-Bama, bam-bam-bama... I jumped on that one. I said: It’s an incredible victory. For once, Blacks voted together, said Dayton. And a few Whites too, I added. We don’t care about Whites. We just needed Blacks to hold together. Oops friend! We have a little number problem. You are just 12%. How come 12%? We (the Blacks) are in majority in this country. I was flabbergasted. I didn’t imagine this misinformed, disconnected misery to be that culturally, socially disorganised. Sad, sad song. Like many Whites, I knew of racism only its folklore, not its real effects. All night, by my fault, we never got out of the folkore. My booklet was full of folk notes. How was it when you were a kid? Tell me, N!gg3r. Tell the white reporter, tell, so that he could make a little Erskine Caldwell, maybe a Steinbeck of himself. And the N!gg3r to tell: can’t drink at the same fountain as Whites. Can’t go out with a White woman. Can’t go to the same school. Can’t sit in the front of the bus. Can’t pass by the front door when we would deliver something at the White’s houses, or to be paid for a job. And the Ku Klux Klan? Tell, N!gg3r. Tell to the white reporter a few horror stories about the Ku Klux Klan. No said Dayton, I didn’t witness horror stories with the KKK. There was a KKK chapter here, we knew them, it was just like another social club, ordinary racists. Whites don’t know anything about Southern ordinary racism that holds the Southern Blacks to the bottom and keeps them there. Marching for rights doesn’t matter. Tell me, Dayton, what did change in your relations with Whites between now and then? He never heard about Italy, he doesn’t know how many Blacks there is in the United States, but on this, he has encyclopaedic knowledge. What changed? Everything. And nothing. What changed is that they don’t treat us like shit. What didn’t change is that they think exactly like before that we are shit. What didn’t change is that everything is organized exactly like before so we remain shit. You think Obama can change that? I don’t know. You know what you should do? Greensboro’s largest employer is a fish factory, Heartland Catfish, where every aquaculture farm in the region delivers their catfish. You should visit it. And what would I see? Everything. I went. Fishes are transported by tank trucks to the factory, a chute dumps them on a conveyor where they go, open mouths, towards mechanical knives that will thread them alive one by one, to finish, at the end of the chain, in bins filled with ice. All along the path, workers sort, remove the slag, cut with frightening speed fins that were missed by mechanic knives. You know, the theatre of Japanese cooks? This, but eight hours a day. Workers often cut their fingers. Straight cuts. There is 150 of them on the chain. Apart from a few Latinos, all of them are Black. The factory is a freezer, below the freezing point. Water everywhere. Earning $6.25 an hour, 40 hours, $250 gross at the end of the week. The few Whites in the factory are foremen, accountants, shipping managers. The same work structure than in the cotton fields before the abolition of slavery.

That's Why it's Called Evolution...

Why the KKK is disappearing, apart from being blatantly anachronistic?

Because they kill their recruits during their initiation ritual.

The funniest part: She was supposed to go back to her home state to recruit more people!

I'd like to quote local Sherrif Jack Strain:

"The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind, I can't imagine anyone feeling endangered or at risk by any one of these kooks."

Nice try guys, what about quitting now?

Politicunts: American Elections, Part III

This guy might soon be victim of a road rage accident:



I'm flabbergasted. McCain-Palin supporters are classier every day!

Politicunts: American Elections, Part II

A good american:



Speechless..."Un imbécile heureux" (A happy idiot) as we'd say in Québec...

The Secret Lives of Hasidims

I'm straying away from politics today to offer another newspaper translation. I read the column a few days ago and promised myself to translate and post it, but the rare sight of a hasidim jew enjoying Monday Night Football in a sports bar on St.Laurent street convinced me to get on it ASAP.

Rima Elkouri is a La Presse reporter and columnist. She writes a lot about city life and the various cultural communities and minorities one will find in Montreal. I always loved her stories and topics.

I also have an insatiable curiosity for hasidic jews that goes back to my teenage years in the suburb of Boisbriand, where an important isolated community of hasidims live. I previously wrote a post referencing them.

Here's my translation of her very interesting paper on a "hasidic superwoman."

The Secret Lives of Hasidims

Rita is a woman as strong as she his private, who raises her seven children in the Mile-End. But we could have the impression that it's on another planet. Rita is a hasidic jew, and she respects to the letter the precepts of her religious movement. This does not stop her from having opinions on life, on the world. With one week to go before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, our journalist visited her on her balcony.

"It's okay with you if we sit on the balcony?"

"It's perfect."

Rita is my hasidic jew neighbour, well, almost. We are neighbours without actually be. Even if I see her almost every day on her balcony, even if we walk the same sidewalks, her universe is for the most part alien to mine. Our lives are skimming on each other without really touching.

On a summer night, while she was sitting on the balcony with her daughters, I introduced myself to my neighbour and asked if she would accept to open her door to me. Her immediate neighbour, who has known her for a long time, had already probed the terrain for me. Rita had a shy smile. I felt that she was too polite to say no, too modest to say yes. She first said she was not the kind to spread her life on the public place. But after a few hesitations, the mother of seven finally decided to meet me. "Come back in two weeks", she said, explaining that her daughter would be giving birth within the next few days and that she would be too busy to receive me during that period.

That's how I ended up in front of Rita's door on a Monday morning. I was a few steps away from my home. Yet, I felt like I was at a foreign country's border. In the land of "sirs with round hats", as observed on a saturday morning by my 4-years-old son while seeing a hasidic man wearing his traditional sabbath fur hat. A secret country that issues very few visas to foreign tourists.

I rang. It's the 7-years-old son that opened the door. In his "Sunday best", wearing the kippah, his payots neatly smoothed. I asked to speak with his mother. "One moment", he said. The house was busy. A teenager with long red hair came back to talk to me. "It's the baby's circumcision today, she said in a low voice, in english. Mom is asking if you can come back Tuesday or Wednesday."

I said I would come back. "I wish you a good day", politely said the young girl before closing the door.

The next day, I had an appointment with Rita at 2:30PM. She appeared on her balcony wearing a navy blue tunic with blue and pink stripes. She was wearing opaque stockings and a gray headband. A make-up free face, glasses sitting on the nose. She unfolded two chairs.

Inside the house, the newly circumcised newborn was crying. "Is it because of the circumcision?"

"No! said Rita with the reassuring tone of a grand-mother that has seen a lot. It's a baby that was already crying a lot before. But he has been affected for sure. He will get over it!"

An elderly man, black hat and white beard, exits the house while saluting Rita. "It's the rabbi that did the circumcision. He came to make sure everything was alright."

Hasidic Superwoman

I spent two afternoons on Rita's balcony talking circumcision and breastfeeding, man-woman relations and hasidic marriages, of the contrast between her community and the society surrounding it, the silence of the ones and the curiosity of the others, of good and less good neighbourood, of tensions and temptations.

While talking, Rita appeared as a pragmatic woman, a strong character, who is not afraid to voice her opinions. A mother hen and a watchful neighbour that knows all the neighbourhood gossip. A kind of superwoman as we see more and more in the hasidic community, reconciling work and big family. Conservative to the nails, yes, of course, but on many levels more open and respectful than I first thought. A secret woman, also. Rita's name is not Rita. It was out of question to talk about all these subjects while revealing her name to the public. I could have insisted. But I was afraid I would lose my visa.

Rita is 43-years-old. She is the mother of seven children, but in fact, she had eight. One of her firstborn twins died when she was 5 of a chronic lung disease. "She had her last sigh sitting on my knees, she says, the voice strangled by emotions. Sixteen years later, the wound still hurts. She suffered so much that I tell myself that she's better now. This is my consolation", she says in a low voice.

Children are Rita's whole life. Her firstborn, already married, is 21-years-old. The youngest one is 3-years-old. Between the two, there is a 20-years-old daughter, also married, 14-years-old twins (a boy and a girl) and two other sons, aged 11 and 7. "They bring me so much happiness. When I hold my 11-days-old grand-kid, it just makes me want more" she says, moved.

She recalls, laughing, that time when she was transporting her kids in her triple stroller that she called her "tchoo-tchoo-train", non-jewish neighbours stopped her to say: "You know we admire you?" Why? she wondered. For Rita, there's nothing more natural than having a children swarm around her. "Is there any other way to live?"

Respect the Other's Culture

Born in Israel, Rita landed in Montreal while she was very young. She always lived in the Mile-End. Her mother was from Romania, her father, from Poland, both were Holocaust survivors. She teaches yiddish and religion. Her husband too. "For me, the two only options were either to work as a secretary for a religious person or to teach. It was the only way to respect the Jewish calendar."

There was a time where it was almost impossible for a majority of hasidic jews to pursue college or university studies. Because in an inward-looking community where man and woman live parallel lives, mixing sexes is not encouraged. But since 1985, upon a request by the Ministry of Education, Marie-Victorin Cégep administers college level programs offered in Montreal jewish schools. That's how Rita's older daughters both got a college degree as youth education technicians without ever stepping in a real Cégep.

Even if non-jews always talk to her in english, Rita speaks french well. "Before, I was shy to speak french. I can't say that I master the past perfect! But I tell myself: 'We live in Quebec. We want to be respected. If I want my culture to be respected, I must respect the culture of others.'"

Love Behind Closed Doors

I talked for a while with Rita of what she refers as the "invisible border" between
her community and the rest of society. On both sides of this border, there is a lot of misunderstanding. She remembers a conversation she had with a man who addressed her in the bus. He started talking about the Outremont hasidims, about the fact that they buy more and more houses in the neighbourhood. Rita answered that houses were for sale for everybody and that, if people didn't want to sell them, they didn't have to. The man kept going, saying his hasidic neighbours were not saluting him, she tells. "Did you try to salute them? asked Rita, who has a personal rule to say hello to everyone that wants to salute her, jews or not

That said, it's important to know that, inside the community itself, there is strict rules regarding the conduct between men and women. You can't salute anybody, anywhere. "Men can't socialize with women that are not in their immediate families. Myself, if I meet my son-in-law, I can't say hello. It's a question of modesty.

Even between husband and wife, modesty is required. You can't show emotions. You can't hold hands on the sidewalk. Let's not talk about kissing in public. "Love is lived behind closed doors. There's even couples that won't sit on the same couch if their kids are there.

Keeping Children Away from Temptations

The cocoon voluntarily created by hasidic jews is linked to their need to perpetuate an heritage which rules are numerous and rigid, says Rita. "To keep children away from temptations, it must be that way. It has all to do with our beliefs. It's not because there is something negative with the others.

What are those "temptations" she refers to, by the way? It goes from consuming pork or non-kosher food to premarital sex. "It's so common that we have no choice but to protect our children, says Rita. My 11-years-old son saw his two sisters become pregnant. He doesn't know how they became pregnant, but he knows it happens right after being married."

Rita tells me how embarassed she was when her children heard a man on the street refer to the mother of his children as his girlfriend. "They asked me a ton of questions. I told them he just called her that way..."

At the same time, she makes sure to explain to her kids that rules that apply to hasidims do not apply to all. "When my children ask me why the neighbour drives his car on a Saturday, I explain that the neighbour was not born jewish and that he's allowed to drive his car on sabbath."

Despite everything, Rita has always allowed her children to play with the neighbours. The electric car that she won in a contest, every little kid that wanted, jewish or not, was allowed to try it and push the invisible border a little further.

The worst, according to Rita, would be to have a kid that would turn his back on the community. There's more and more, she says. "For their parents, it's worse than if they were dead."

TV Forbidden

To maintain the cocoon undisturbed, it's impossible for the majority of hasidim to be exposed to TV, radio or internet. You never listen to the news, then? "People that want to listen to the news do it in their car."

It's also out of question to risk eating non-kosher food at the neighbours' place, as sympathetic as they seem to be. "Even if we are served only fruits, if those fruits have been cut with a knife that was used to cut pork, we have a problem."

What kind of problem? What happens to someone that eats a non-kosher fruit? A rational question in an universe that is not. "We are born in this tradition and we believe it, simply. If it happens, there is a terrible feeling of guilt. We tell ourselves that we were not cautious enough. We feel that our soul has been spoiled and that we will need to atone our fault. If not, we'll be punished. And if you sin voluntarily, there is hell."

How does Rita see the future of her expanding community in a society that looks so different? Even if she is conscious that tensions exist, Rita believes in peaceful cohabitation. Live and let live. It's out of question to impose hasidic rules to society, she says. But it's out of question to abandon her heritage. Hence the invisible border, that intrigue some and irritate others. It doesn't mean that we can't talk. "I wish that people would ask me more questions!"

We can talk. We must talk. But we can't be friends? I asked Rita, while guessing the answer. She looked puzzled. Then, philosophically, she answered while looking in my eyes: "If there is 26 rocks in front of us and that there is 25 on which we can't walk, how can we do it? There is too many differences in our respective lifestyles. And who can say: I am strong enough to resist temptations?"

I left Rita with her cauldrons and her kids protected against "temptations". I went back on the other side of the border, a little less ignorant but as curious. I will need more than one visa to discover the secret of my hasidic neighbours.

Canadian Columnist Pisses Off the American Right, Fox News Leads the Charge

Fox News, and all conservatives on this continent, the Canadian equivalent included, are pissed about this column:

The Alaskan who went 'outside'
Heather Mallick

I was born in a northern Canadian settlement so small it was accessible most of the year only by a Bombardier, a sort of huge military tank built for passengers. It was like a transport plane, a big iron bulb with caterpillar tracks. I swear we had a paddle-steamer for supplies in the summer.

Take that, Sarah Palin. The place was six times smaller than Wasilla, Alaska, the town that birthed John McCain's strange vice-presidential "soulmate", as weird as that disconnected eerie smile that floats on his face as he stands next to her.

My credentials are solid; Palin cannot out-hick me. Until I fled at 18, I never lived in a northern town of more than 12,000 people. My towns were full of Sarah Palins. These types are fine, such as they are, until they leave town and turn fraudulent. They label themselves "the salt of the earth". It's when they try to make that a qualification for a greater glory that things turn unpleasant.

I never claimed a higher moral standing for coming from a great big empty on the map. Small towns are places that smart people escape from, for privacy, for variety, for intellect, for survival. Palin should have stayed home.

Canada has lots of hockey moms. They're called Fran and Nancy. They have cruel haircuts and their voices shake the rafters of the rink as their rink-rats play. How can I translate the hearty, jollying-along Palin for British audiences? She's a working class Joan Hunter Dunn. It's those volleyball shoulders and field-hockey thighs, the energy, the bullying, and the utter self-confidence in every lie she tells.

Salt-of-the-earthers don't lie! But Palins do. I watched Palin last night, my mouth open, my eyeballs drying out, my hand making shaky notes. I read them aghast.

Did she really joke, "You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."?

Did she just blow kisses to the audience?

Did she just say, "We need to produce more of our own oil and gas. Take it from a gal who knows the North Slope. We've got lots of both."?

Yes, she did lie about billion-gallon slurps of oil and gas available for Americans to blow, about her support of Alaska's notorious pork-barrel "bridge to nowhere", about which particular citizens will see tax increases under Obama (only the richest, and she knows that).

She also lied when she slobbered over small-town folks (an American version of British farm life, except British farmers have a point). The granite honesty of hicks is a cliche, a fantasy, a meme of American life, as much as the working-class solidarity of Tony Blair was in 1997, and where did that get anyone?

But most of all, she lied about the north and the virtues it supposedly confers on citizens. Canadians watch this with horror. To us, Alaska is the back of beyond. Americans feel the same way. Alaskans are a bunch of Ted Stevens, that enraged screaming old senator who explained that the internet was not a big truck, it was more like a "bunch of tubes". He was arrested and charged with taking bribes, but handily won the August senatorial primary.

We love our own north to the point of covering our eyes and humming as it melts (yesterday the BBC headlined the collapse of Canada's ice shelves; Canadian papers and websites missed the story) but Alaska is different from our north. We share a 1,500-mile border with a frontier state full of drunks and crazy people, of the blight that cheap-built structures bring to a glorious landscape. Canadian firms invest billions in the place and mine its ores. One hundred thousand Canadians visit Alaska every year, and we like to pass by in cruise ships. But it never goes further than that. Alaska is our redneck cousin, our Yukon territory forms a blessed buffer zone, and thank God he never visits. Alaska is the end of the line.

Palin got her first passport last year. (Americans didn't need a passport to enter Canada until recently). She seems to have visited us precisely once, not surprisingly since Alaskans regularly refer to the rest of the world as "outside". We are so foreign to her, this woman who might become US president.

What is native to her is smugness, her certainty that what's good for Wasilla is good for the world in all its infinite variety. It's a variety that Palin will never begin to grasp.

Since it was released in the US, she was subjected to various death threats and message boards were flooded with reactions, insults and the usual and repetitive anti-Canadian ramblings, which are sometimes funny.

Let's agree she went too far, and there's a fair share of "redneckness" on the Canadian side of the border, but the core of the subject remains; Palin is not "presidential", vice or not.

Also, the right has to stop using the small-town values as a symbol of virtue. Small towns are fled by people who can't share the town's "core" values because they would never fit in, being marginalized for being different.

It's not that the values themselves are fundamentally wrong, just that the population is smaller, the jobs variety more limited, hence limiting the diversity of lifestyles, and, by extension of point-of-views and values. Therefore, ending with a more uniformed, one size-fits-all set of values, it kicks the "odd ones" to the "wicked life" of the cities, where sheer population size and actual diversity in lifestyles, jobs and origins will allow people to find others that share their views and interests.

There's nothing basically wrong with city virtues, the same way there's nothing basically wrong with small town ones, but neither can pretend to any actual form of moral high ground. People will be people, no matter where they are from, no matter where they fit best, for better or for worse.

Two Foreign Cents

I didn't post in a while. Why? I had nothing to say. My life has been pretty boring, consisting mostly of working, writing and learning.

I also decided to take my time to talk about the "Hérouxville Controversy". Many bloggers jump on news. I don't. I'd rather wait until the storm settles down to have a better perspective on the whole situation and avoid the assumptions, generalizations and unenlightened positions taken by people jumping at the fence too quickly.

Aside from the obvious, giving a far too big tribune to a small minority that doesn't have any concrete experience of the situtation (By the way, thanks for finally taking a stance about lapidation! Everytime I saw stonings of women in the streets, I thought someone oughta do something aboot it...), what pisses me off is that a sizable amount of the population, aggreeing with the "principles" of the "code of conduct", went pretty far in their opinions of something they barely know.

In the last three weeks, I heard and read some of the most ignorant, bigot, and downright racist things I've witnessed in popular medias. People usually think, by being exposed to a situation by the medias, that they are "informed" and therefore can express an opinion.

But they are not informed, they are lead. And as sheeps, they follow the lead.

So, after about a year of reasonable accomodation-related headlines, playing on the majority's emotions that what they take as granted or traditional values are being attacked, and taken from them (The same way that same-sex marriage forbids a man and a woman to marry, you know), the cauldron exploded, and it became a huge debate.



My cousin Dominic and his wife Manon, successfully getting married despite constant homosexual attacks on familly values. They followed Catholic traditions, so close to our hearts, ignoring minorities pressures to force us to give up our lifestyle...[/sarcasm]

But the fact is, and I know as I've been witnessing it in many discussions, that people don't even know what is at stake. Worse, they mix everything and don't have the slightest awareness of the problems immigrants are facing and their reasons to move here. My roommate couldn't tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim, some people think Ramadan asks pregnant woman and sick people to fast. Mostly, they think that most of those "reasonable accomodations" are requested by the minorities themselves. Of course there is some, but most initiatives are coming from people who might have good intentions, but that are aiming a little too large (As we say in Québec, they are coming with their big shoes). Most ethnic and religious minorities just want to be allowed to keep their culture and follow their beliefs, they don't want to impose anything onto others.

A good exemple is Boisbriand's (my hometown) Hasidic Jewish community of Tosh, whose main intention is to allow its members to live their lives in complete communion with God. In their faith, every daily life action has a religious aspect, as God is everywhere. They have to follow a strict code and isolation is, in their minds, the best way to follow such rules without influence. It doesn't mean they are intolerant of others, I've witnessed on many occasions their friendly manners and their help in crisis situations, such as when a biker gang bomb exploded in a bar. They generally prefer to be left alone, and they don't ask anything special from anybody. Sure some hasidic jews asked for a male examinator when they did their driving license test, but again, it's a pretty mild request when you know that, in their faith, it's questionable for a married person to be in a close environment with someone of the other sex. They asked and it has been granted, but I'm sure they wouldn't have made a huge case of it if it couldn't be done. Québec society is secular, they expect that. Any minority group knows it will have to make compromises. But if they ask and the society accepts to accomodate, they'd be fools not to take it!

I'm also sick of hearing the famous "if they don't like it here, why won't they go back to their own country!". It's as bigot as the "I'm not racist, but [insert racist comment here]" line!

Listen: Immigrants are not coming to Québec because they can't wait to play hockey and eat in a maple shack! Maybe they came here because they don't see any opportunities in their own country, as life became unbearable. They decided to move somewhere else, accepting that they might lose some of their bearings in the process. They might have family already established here that motivated their choice to settle in the vicinity, or they heard we were a tolerant bunch that would allow them to keep their beliefs and culture. Most can't simply go back. They will see their children being assimilated in the melting pot, to various degrees, but we don't have to ask them to emulate us. Do we really want everyone to look alike? I don't, there's already that olympic diver that looks a little like me:



Alexandre Despaties, the only person I'm intolerant of, as I'm often being reminded of our likeliness, and I'm sure he is not.



Curse you, Alexandre! Why can't I capitalize on this and score with chicks?

Besides, all those people pissed at the waves of immigrants seem to forget another thing. North America is a land of immigrants, as a huge majority of us came here within the last few centuries, pushing aside the original inhabitants and their own culture and beliefs (We converted them to our religions for God's sake!). And our lifestyle, here in Québec, is a melting pot of various origins. Don't believe me? Walk around Montréal, look at the diversity in cuisines and music, to name very little, for which our city is renowned!

Not eveybody can study in Ethnic Relations, but searching a little further, asking questions to people living those situations, keeping an open mind and heart can help understanding.

Time to go back to my country...