Category Archives: Montréal Stories

Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Noire, Montréal Stories, Political commentary, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Video, What were they thinking?

Shit,

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My New Year is off to a phenomenal start.

Above is yet another great recent viral video coming out of my favourite goddam city. It features a municipal worker diligently clearing snow from a Villeray sidewalk. Except there’s no snow. Clearly our city’s efforts cut back on waste are getting off on the right foot.

Maisonneuve Magazine has popped the lid off a scandal we all assumed was going on, but dared not speak of. Perhaps people are fed-up, but it seems as though the snow-clearance operations of our already corrupt construction industry has been involved in significant bid-rigging for some time. Moreover, contractors and companies that don’t play ball face significant penalties, including intimidation, physical violence, fire-bombings and deliberate acts of sabotage. Click here for more; it’s an excellent if somewhat depressing read.

Another fantastic local viral video I’ve seen recently features local twit Jonathan Montalvo drunkenly trying to convince a gaggle of kids outside a bar how rich his dad is. He’s apparently getting into the club promotion scene, has t-shirts being printed and the like (he’s also got an agent, in case you’re interested in having this snot parade in front of your establishment accosting patrons and telling them how much better he is than them, a surefire way to attract the very finest locals). Unfortunately Mr. Popularity must have gotten cold feet of late, since just about video of the incident has been pulled from YouTube. I always find it adorable when memes get bashful.

Is this all it takes to secure $1,500 club appearance fees? Act like a gigantic dick?

Sometimes I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

And the shame parade continues. I know I’m not ordinarily pessimistic, and on the whole I think I’m still optimistic in general for the New Year. I can’t expect to ever live a year without dealing with some kind of malaise, so it may as well coincide with this so-called seasonal affective disorder we’ve conveniently dreamed up to account for being miserable. How quaint – the disorder’s acronym is sad.

Above is footage from a massive fist-fight and dish/bottle/table/chair tossing mele at the New Dynasty Restaurant in Old Chinatown on New Year’s Eve. After watching this video a few times I can only say it’s doesn’t look to be so cut and dry Black vs. Chinese, and the SPVM has no idea what provoked the incident; no one’s talking, so it was probably some really dumb-as-shit argument between a small number of people that degenerated into a free-for-all. People don’t talk much when they’re ashamed of themselves – not much intervening going on as you can see.

Yesterday a 34 year-old man, homeless, possibly mentally-ill and apparently incapable of speaking French was shot and killed by the SPVM as he had apparently failed to stop and identify himself at the officer’s request. What his initial offense was is unclear, but the man, identified as Farshad Mohammadi did attack one of the intervening constables with a ‘sharp-edged weapon’ leaving superficial wounds on one officer. Mohammadi was fatally shot at the station but died later in hospital. I’m not saying the constable acted irresponsibly, but I wonder what drew their suspicions and why the SPVM isn’t encouraged to use ‘non-lethal’ suppression devices first and foremost. Unfortunately, the incident is being investigated by the Sureté du Québec, as is our foolish custom.

And then, to wrap up our little shit storm, tonight’s boneheaded protest of the hiring of Randy Cunneyworth. The Movement Québec francais demonstration in front of the Bell Centre drew a crowd of 300 out-to-lunch locals who would like the NHL, somehow, to accord the Canadiens more Francophone, Québecois players, and further to insist the Canadiens fire Cunneyworth, replace him with x and further eliminate English language music and announcements. If there’s one place government doesn’t need to stick its nose, it has to be the internationally successful modern game of ice-hockey and it’s hands-down finest professional team. The Canadiens may be in a bad slump, but it has nothing to do with Cunneyworth’s linguistic short-comings. Language and culture has absolutely nothing to do with how the Canadiens play, nor how the modern game of hockey is played at the professional level. Yet the demonstrators would like you to believe that a predominantly Québecois team would in fact do better. How, or why that would be the case, was not an issue the demonstrators were capable of illustrating.

There is a broader issue here – we need a winning sports team to keep our morale up, and we’ve been lucky, the Habs have had some exciting seasons recently. Moreover, the Bell Centre is consistently sold-out for Habs games, even live broadcasts of games played elsewhere. So while it sucks that our playoff chances are extremely slim, we need to get real here, it has nothing to do with Randy Cunneyworth’s inability to speak French.

It would have been nice to see those three-hundred people show up at Place du Peuple and support something worthwhile, by the way. Just another indicator what remains of the Indépendentiste movement is old and out of sync with the real problems of our world.

A discouraging start to the year. Here’s to better days ahead.

History and Culture, Kondiaronk Book Reviews, Montréal Stories, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Québec sovereignty, Social commentary

Kondiaronk Book Reviews {No.3} – Marc Levine’s Reconquest of Montreal

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I began reading this masterpiece around this time last year for my History of Montreal class (HIST-307 with Dr. Gossage at Con-U if you’re interested, I highly recommend it) and I could not advocate a better, more thoroughly researched study on the linguistic political battles that have so coloured Quebec and Montreal society since the dawn of the Quiet Revolution.

For the purposes of full disclosure, this is not a novel, nor pop history. It is an in-depth analysis of the rise of Quebec Separatism, how Bill 101 came to pass, and how that law, unpopular as it might be in certain circles, may have ultimately prevented Quebec independence, possibly forever.

A great deal has changed since the book was first published. In fact, it surprised me. I thought I knew this history particularly well, but I was quite mistaken. There’s a world of subtlety, nuance and intrigue Levine was able to weave into a complex sociological study. And he provides just about all the pertinent statistical information you’d ever want to read with regards to the linguistic battles that ultimately created Bill 101 as protector and preserver of the French language in Montreal.

Almost twenty years after the publication of Reconquest, Marc Levine’s sober analysis still holds a lot of weight, though his predictions have been tested time and again. Nowadays, with separatism on the decline and the PQ in near-total disarray, it may seem like a book of this nature (and provocative title) may be out-of-step. I would caution against such thinking – this is after all a book dedicated to a difficult area of study – recent Canadian history. And given Levine’s outsider perspective, he doesn’t get wrapped up in petty politics or the spin that otherwise distorts our discourse. He is laser-precise more often than not, and reveals the contradictions, hypocrisies and absurdities you might expect to find in a pan-nationalist confederation of ‘minorites-majoritaires’. It is ultimately a nation worth saving, worth fighting for, though I feel this might be required reading in order to know why. Even then, the solutions to our problems may seem a bitter pill to swallow. So be it.

I cannot over-state just how important this book is for anyone looking to get a firm grasp on who we are as people. An exceptional book that makes for a difficult yet ultimately rewarding read.

Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Noire, Montréal Stories, Scenes from the City

The White Horse of Fort Senneville

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Is it me or are we lacking in ghost stories in this city?

Every year Halloween comes around and I get asked if I know any decent local ghost stories. Each year I come up short. It’s a problem for me, because in my opinion it’s a demonstration of a slightly larger, more complex problem – lack of local folklore. What we know about our city is very often defined in terms of what can be demonstrated – we speak of our city in scientific terms, in measurements, in percentages. When we discuss culture, we often tend towards using scientific terminology to discuss our society. There is a reason for this, or perhaps there once was, when it was necessary to demonstrate our local society as a measurement against a larger, more imposing cultural mass. But I firmly believe those days to be of another era, and that we have the cultural and societal strength and confidence to begin loosening our previous approach. What I find odd is how little is written on points of common cultural experience, of shared history and discourse between the two majority-minority groups that so define our peculiar nation of nations.

Folklore is cultural currency. A strong local appreciation of a city’s folklore, it’s common history, will provide the local arts community with a strong foundation of reference material. Look back at the works of some of our great artists, past and present, many have demonstrated in their seminal works a profound attachment to local culture and society through an understanding of our folklore.

Folklore is extremely important. Its typically packaged as morality tale wrapped in pertinent historical and cultural information, designed to convey an idea about why we live where we do, and why our society is how it is. Montréal, as a result of its history and linguistic divisions, has so far largely turned its back on developing the common folklore. Perhaps this is as a result of the Quiet Revolution, which aimed to turn away completely from the Grand Noirceur and the perceived backwardness of our provincial, agrarian past. But if there is a legitimate interest on the part of Québecois nationalists, sovereignists and/or cultural enthusiasts to protect the local French dialect and the cultural heritage of the people of Québec, what would be better than developing a local folklore, in which the stories are designed to be as relatable to the Montréal experience as possible regardless of which language they’re expressed in. For this, we need to take a good long look at who we were as a city, as a people, hundreds of years ago.

Montréal’s colonial era history has always fascinated me, though partially as a result of it being so overshadowed by American and Spanish colonial era history. We were intimately involved in the early history of the United States, Great Britain and the halcyon days of the Bourbon monarchy in France, and yet we retreat from the realities of the colonial experience.

When I was younger I heard stories of frontier folklore with an American colonial bent, whether in literature or through television and movies. It made me wonder what life was like back then, only here. Who were the ghosts of our past, and what perspective on the human experience could be gleaned through such stories. In my search I came across one story that’s always stuck with me. It’s the story of the ghost of a white horse, said to run down Gouin Boulevard in Ste-Genevieve. There are rapids in the Back River by Riverdale High School, by the park at the top of Boul. des Sources, and they are named after this galloping spectre.

As best I know it, the story goes like this. There are the remnants of a fort built by the French colonial administration in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, once called Fort Senneville. The fort has been destroyed twice, once by the Iroquois (in 1691) and then by Benedict Arnold in 1776 (though at the time it wasn’t in use by any party, and Arnold destroyed it so it could not be used by the advancing British regulars, Canadien militia and Iroquois warriors making their way up from Les Cédres). It was built to defend the vital trading post and community at Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, not to mention the king’s road which linked Ste-Anne’s with Ste-Genevieve to the North and Pointe-Claire, Lachine and Ville-Marie to the East. It was during this first attack on the fort in 1691 that a dispatcher was sent out along the King’s Road to Ste-Genevieve, to warn of the possibility of attack. Riding a white horse he sped off down the trail, only to be killed by the attacking Iroquois. The horse carried on, terrified from violence and the deafening blasts of muskets, galloping down the well-trod trail until it eventually came upon the sleeping village of Ste-Genevieve. As one might imagine, a terrified horse would make enough noise to wake up the residents, and they were able to piece together what had happened what with the mangled corpse I can only assume was being dragged by the horse. The story goes on that the horse dies of exhaustion and that the spirit of the terrified horse would surge forth from the powerful rapids nearby each year on the anniversary of this fateful ride, determined to simultaneously remind the inhabitants to be vigilant and to look for his dead master.

Anyways, that’s what I heard. Two cops my brother found creeping around the fort a few years ago related it pretty much as I just did.

Something tells me it’s a bit of a mess story-wise, perhaps the synthesis of a variety of different local legends. I’d certainly like to know more about this if any of you know.

And aside from that, as far as ghost stories go, well, what would be worse than finding yourself on Senneville Road or Gouin Boulevard only to see the white flash of a mad steed barreling down you? I guarantee at the very least this spirit has certainly caused a couple traffic accidents.

Besides – when was the last time Mary Gallagher turned up? It’s time we find ourselves some new ghosts, no?

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Stories, Political commentary, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Sovereign Socialist

Reflections on Occupy Montréal

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A couple of weeks ago I took a walk with my roommate down to Square Victoria in the middle of a downpour to see if the police had taken any precautions, set up barriers or were otherwise surveilling the area in preparation for the confrontation I was fairly certain I would witness the following day, when Montréalers from all walks of life would participate in an international day of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I think I was legitimately concerned the SPVM would take a cue from the OPP/SQ/TPS G8/G20 playbook and we’d have a repeat of any anti-police brutality march in this city (that is to say, mass police brutality). Instead I found nothing, no precautions. I was surprised.

The next day the weather was generally cooperative, though at times unsure of itself, non-committal. It provided a hallucinatory experience as I crossed René-Lévesque to make my way to a late lunch with some friends, looking West along the boulevard into a sea of golden raindrops filling the cavernous corporate trench with a universe of temporary stars. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen lately.

My first experience with Occupy Montréal had been earlier that day when it was just getting going. It was so typically Canadian, so typically Montréal – overt contrasts, peaceful cohabitation, clean, neat, orderly, pleasant. There were very few police officers, though an unfortunate number of individuals who felt compelled to look like an anarchist stereotype ripped from the pages of a hysterical RCMP training manual from the last Red Scare. My previous concerns about the possibility of any real aggression from police were mitigated when I observed a grandfatherly police captain making gooney faces with a toddler, the child’s mother, a demonstrator, was laughing warmly. We had nothing to worry about.

I returned later in the afternoon to find myself involved in a march that tore through the retail heart of the city, blocking traffic and effectively stopping all activity on Ste-Catherine’s as we barrelled down towards Concordia. Then we looped on Mackay back onto Ste-Catherine’s, made our way down past the Place des Arts, into the Old Financial Quarter on St. James and finally back to the Square. If I didn’t know any better I could swear that the SPVM planned for this and let it happen in order to let the crowd diffuse its frustrations. I’m almost certain it had a police escort come to think of it. What I found curious and clever was how they managed to keep the demonstrators and the Habs fans separate. The numerous people I saw walking around the tent city earlier with head-sets must have had something to do with this very peculiar march. I smell smart, subtle policing, if such a thing can exist.

From what I’ve seen since, I would suspect local authorities are under the impression once Winter sets in most will clear out, as that is without a doubt the path of least resistance. As I walked around on the 15th and since, I’ve noticed that the membership of the MPQ were eager to set-up camp – part of me wondered whether or not it was just exceptionally opportunistic. The MPQ isn’t much more than an army surplus store owner and his merry band of grown-up toy soldiers. The RRQ was around, as were a bunch of unilingual Anglophone student activists missing out on a real opportunity to get to know their new Francophone brothers and sisters. Perhaps things have changed since then, I’ve only passed by a few times since. I was put-off by some drunk shmuck I encountered in the formidable tent-city who was wondering (aloud) why there was gender segregation in the tents. I didn’t want to acknowledge him, so I just looked directly in his eyes and gave him a ‘move along’ look. Hard to resist. It’s part of a common theme I saw throughout my time there – it was almost as if pot consumption was about to become a death-penalty offence, and everyone was doing their utmost to consume as much as they could before the law went into effect. My personal philosophy with regards to the consumption and distribution of narcotics notwithstanding, there was far more consumption than demonstration; I suppose we can just lump antiquated laws regarding marijuana consumption in with the very new laws that make corporations people and allow governments to play fast and loose with the People’s money as just another injustice against the working man by the hypocritical elites, but I’d prefer to stay more focused.

Yes, it’s been said before ad nauseum, but let’s face it – lack of focus is an easy problem to pick at by the mainstream media. If the direction was in place the collective would ensure it had both a list of short and long term demands, in addition to an exit strategy.

Without an exit strategy, there are only two options, one of which you can almost bank on. Either the authorities let it fizzle out on its own (which will be very demoralizing for the movement and the youth), or they clean house. Without an exit strategy, demands, and a cohesive (though, probably multi-faceted) argument, this movement, regardless of where it finds itself, is doomed to fail.

We are fortunate we have been spared the violence that has befallen Oakland, Rome and New York City. Its too early to say what will happen here.

There is something worthwhile in this local version of the Occupy Wall Street protest; it unites youth, it allows the frustrated public a chance to vent. People learn, people teach, people work together. Pass by Square-Victoria and see a veritable self-supporting community in the midst of a commercial no-man’s land. Witness the industrious 99%, backbone of the modern, stable social-democracy. Times are tough and the tent-cities are doing a good job providing. Let the example shine.

I feel compelled to end on a cautionary note, however. It is fundamentally important that the demonstrators, the protesters and occupiers out there know why they personally are participating. It’s all you need to know. Don’t speak of vague notions, don’t list all the problems with the world from a progressive-socialist perspective, just know your own personal reason. You will doubtless find many people who share your point of view and can relate, but to each his own. What is important next is maintaining the media’s focus. Let us show ourselves to the media, to show our personal reasons for protest, and let us go forth and tell them precisely we, as a collective of individuals, would go out and live in a tent city in solidarity with this growing and impressive social movement.

There can be no question we have a legitimate right to protest our current conditions here in Canada. Government is both corrupt and repressive, civil liberties are squashed in the name of public security, our economy is too reliant on corrosive American investment and trade, we allow social policy to be dictated to us like children by Washington and frankly, the less said about what we’ve allowed to happen to our once world-class healthcare and public education services, the better. It is only within the last few years that I have begun feeling ashamed of my country and my people. We’re better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

I’m also less than convinced Stephen Harper is the economic mastermind he purports to be. The middle class is disappearing faster here than South of the 49th, and our elites have a far greater stranglehold on our political and economic machine than I think we care to admit. Our media has been taking cues from the worst shlock you’d find on Fox News; in sum, there’s plenty to complain about, plenty that requires urgent and dramatic action.

But this movement will go nowhere unless those already mobilized can effectively articulate their own messages of protest, justified in media-savvy terms designed for maximal political impact. We have to play the game better than those who are already the established experts.

More on this later.

Arts & the City, History and Culture, Kondiaronk Book Reviews, Montréal Noire, Montréal Stories, Scenes from the City

Kondiaronk Book Review – Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory

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Don Bell was what you might consider a kind of boulevardier back in the 1960s and 1970s, keeping abreast of the freaks and geeks which make urban living so goddam enjoyable. He compiled a variety of anecdotes into the aforementioned compendium which became a big local and national hit back in 1972. Though I can imagine almost everyone interviewed by Bell is likely dead by now (save for a few old hippies), the characters are paradoxically products of their era and somehow timeless as well. We don’t have the same calibre of local eccentrics like we used to, in my honest opinion, but we’ll never be short on characters. Bell demonstrates clearly the source of so much creative inspiration in his honest and down-to-earth portrayals of a host of characters from early 70s Montréal, from local big shot showbiz types in their halcyon days to the silent and methodical Greek pool-sharks, from old-money dilettantes to new age gurus and the caffein-addled over-night crew staffing the Mile End bagel shops. Don Bell was looking for what the creatively-inclined see in the people and faces of this city, a never-ending supply of complex reactions and adjustments to the human experience. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, at times ill at ease with those living on the fringes of our society, the stories and scenarios he relates seems to steer away from the pulp curb-side reporting of Al Palmer in his Montreal Confidential as though he was interested principally in offering a societal and cultural almanac.

It’s been something I’ve been looking for for quite some time now – to capture that fleeting feeling of knowing the spirit, hydra-esque though it may be, a location may generate. In another sense I find myself looking for the zeitgeist in the built and natural environment, and by extension how such an environment may impact the people and colour their character. I think Marsan was looking for this, and Richler was certainly aware of it, and yet for some reason I don’t think we care as much about it anymore. That or we have forgotten what we came so close to defining. Either way, the people always seem to be at least able to feel in their spines, and know it to exist if only to know its indelible imprint. Don Bell saw the city in the citizen, and how the city, as a living, breathing super-organism, defines lives and lifestyles for its inhabitants. He demonstrates the beacon-esque qualities of a modern city in its prime, and the seedier elements of the underbelly, the harsh-realities of the lives of the people in the guts of a gigantic machine. Required reading for any boulevardier, urbanist, or Montreal history & literature enthusiast. Also, it caused a fair bit of controversy, but you’ll have to read it to find out why.

Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Noire, Montréal Stories, Political commentary, Scenes from the City, Social commentary

Sun News Network, where facts take a back-seat to convenience…

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I guess I’m first to catch the glaring flaw here. Yay for history majors!

To begin, I watched the interview and I agree in principle that men can sometimes get the shit end of the legal stick when it comes to custody issues following a divorce. This is partially a reaction to having a justice system which at one point in the past uniquely served the interests of caucasian heterosexual adult males. Times have changed and we’re better off for it.

But theres a huge problem here.

Ms. Titus’ argument is in part based on the idea that the media doesn’t report the male victims of crimes or injustices of a psycho-sexual nature, that the victims, from a mainstream media perspective, seem to tend towards almost exclusively being women. As for the aggressors, they almost always seem to be men. Ms. Titus, in an effort to bring her point home refers to the four un-named male victims of the Montreal Massacre (aka Polytechnique Shooting) on Dec. 6th 1989. Her credibility then nose-dives because…

It never happened.

There were no men killed at the Polytechnique, save for the lone gunman. The four men she refers to were killed, wait for it:

a) three years later
b) at a different university
c) with a different weapon
d) for a fundamentally different reason
e) from a different person (also a man, now in jail, likely not to be paroled)

Ms. Titus used a tactic which has been well-used by Sun TV, Sun News, CNN, Fox News etc etc etc for years. It’s called ‘conflation’. Since most people can’t remember what happened last week, most people simply smush events together for their own convenience. Ask a history prof how maddening this is.

There’s absolutely no debate when it comes to the victims list from the Polytech Shooting – they were all women killed for being women by a man who claimed feminists had ruined his life. He stated as such in his suicide note. He only shot at women, he only killed women.

I cannot stress this enough. But because the Polytechnique Massacre and Concordia Massacre happened relatively close together, Ms. Titus has decided to apply four senseless male deaths at Concordia University to a crime committed three years earlier in hopes of bolstering her weak position and lack of credible evidence.

*** Author’s Note – October 10th 2011***

I’ve been corresponding with Ms. Titus and she alleges that she had received the incorrect information from students she interviewed. There was a linguistic barrier, as Ms. Titus cannot speak French, and she further alleges that the students led her to believe several men had been killed in the incident, though they could not pinpoint precisely where they had heard this. Ms. Titus insists that she corrected these statements, though I’ve yet to ascertain where such a retraction would have been posted.

That said, I don’t have much too say, I think she’s already done a number on her own credibility by admitting to using less than satisfactory research methods. While I can understand there is a pressure of sorts while appearing on unscripted live television, there is no excuse to use such flawed ‘information’ to form a core component of your argument. Frankly, if more people working in the 24-hr cable news industry made more of an effort to censor themselves and try, sincerely, to only speak the truth, or, to ensure that points are based on demonstrable facts, our society would be considerably less polarized. Instead, such infotainment organizations (like Sun News Network) are driven by spurious scandals and invented controversies. Facts take a back seat because pundits have no interest in finding the truth. This is a distinction between ‘media personality’ and ‘journalist/reporter’ our society must recognize, but unfortunately we are still functionally illiterate when it comes to most media and communications issues. Too many of us still only trust the town crier, and we need to evolve past this. Ms. Titus should have refrained from using this example to build her argument, but ultimately my objection lies not chiefly with her, but rather with Sun News for their selective omission, selective fact-checking, and custom-fit misinformation they traffic in.

But to ensure the record is clear, she does acknowledge the mistake and has apologized for making the assertion, incorrect as it is.

***

It’s not like Fox News North is going to do a god damn thing to help her get her facts straight and this in turn weakens us. We can’t have random, opportunistic people like this being supported by equally opportunistic assholes like Michael Coren, Sun News, Quebecor etc.

This is hardly great stuff, but I suppose I wouldn’t nearly be as disappointed if it weren’t for the fact that men’s rights forums and other commentators are falling-in step behind this, calling it good stuff, a decent argument etc. No one has noticed this crucial fabrication.

As a proud man, I choose to honour my pride by ensuring I know the facts before I open my mouth, and certainly before I go on TV in front of the 20 or 30 people who may or may not be watching Sun News.