One of the comments I got on that post was from one of those residents, who said he was worried about his kids having to cross a busy street to get to school every day.

I decided to interview the man for a Justify Your Existence piece. I figured I’d totally get him on that, but turns out I learned a thing or two (something I always enjoy doing as a journalist). Rather than drive to work every day, he takes a bike when he has to, and the rest of the time he works at home. His wife will use the family vehicle, in order to take the kids to school (they have three, ranging in age from about 3 to about 9, if I remember correctly). He’s very pro-environment and anti-car, despite living in a modest home in the suburbs.

Though still somewhat NIMBYish, the guy came off as a concerned father criticizing the creation of roads for the benefit of personal vehicles over public transportation.

Nice guy, nice wife, adorable kids. A fun way to spend an evening.

So why do I bring this up again?

The guy, 34-year-old Nicolas Stone, was arraigned in Longueuil today on charges he lured a 13-year-old girl into exposing herself online, and then had sex with her at least twice. I got a call from work to double-check it was the same guy.

The photo at right is stolen from his Facebook profile, since a scheduled photo shoot for that article fell through (had it happened, the paper would be running file art of the guy and his kids tomorrow).

All this to say, you can never tell just by looking at someone.

And this guy was worried about his kids crossing a busy street…

UPDATE: Let’s be careful with wording (unlike 940 News who don’t think they have to qualify calling him a “predator”) since he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. All of this is alleged by police. And you never know, there could be a completely innocent explanation for a 34-year-old father of three having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

UPDATE (May 28): He’s been denied bail.

See also:

• May 23, 2008 — Bouchard-Taylor love wasting paper (literally)
• March 27, 2008 — Media critic, criticize thyself
• March 25, 2008 — There are no generic people

More metro trains, less wait time

The STM is adding 145 new departures every week to all but the yellow line. The goal is to reduce waiting times and get more people using the metro.

The change is most visible outside of rush hour. That means the very early morning, during the day, late evenings, at night and on the weekend. On weekdays outside of rush hour, the waiting times will all be reduced by at least a minute and a half - a rather noticeable change.

Going out today, I decided to time the intervals between metro trains. Sure enough, for orange line trains going through downtown at 6:45pm, the trains were just under six minutes apart on average, which the STM says is an improvement on the previous eight minutes.

Though the wait times during rush hour (when almost all trains are already in service) won’t come down much, this move might serve to eventually lighten that load a bit. An extended rush hour means that fewer travellers will organize their schedules around rush hour to take advantage of the short waits.

I can’t be the only one who prefers to travel during peak hours because of how much faster it is. Extending rush hour will spread this tendency out a bit and hopefully make it spike a bit less as the whistle blows at 5pm.

More bus service means less bus service?

The other part to this service improvement is the more interesting one: the STM has announced additional buses being added to three popular lines: 18 Beaubien, 24 Sherbrooke and 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu. It’s also making the 54 Charland/Chabanel a rush-hour-plus-between-rush-hours service, which is becoming more and more popular (but to me only seems frustrating because the service stops by 7pm).

Today I went to the Beaubien metro bus stop for the 18 bus and observed as buses passed to pick up passengers headed east for the evening rush hour. Most of the buses had their seats filled, but none were so packed that nobody else could get on. They were running on intervals of about 3-4 minutes during rush hour’s peak (5:30pm), and 6-7 minutes just after rush hour (6:30pm).

This, despite complaints from the employees’ union that there’s a bus shortage affecting service.

Here’s the problem: The schedule itself hasn’t improved. If anything, service is being reduced on these three lines.

Curious to get some numbers on the improvements to these three lines, I checked out the Planibus schedules on the STM’s website, and compared the times to the older schedules that had just expired. In some cases, there were improvements to wait times and extended rush hours. In other cases, however, wait times were increased rather than decreased.

It’s difficult to tell the changes during the “six minutes or less” rush hour where the number of departures can’t be counted on the schedule. But since the STM implied that the changes were to “extend rush hours,” let’s assume the number of departures during those times hasn’t changed.

For the rest of the time, here’s what I found:

18 Beaubien:

• +1: Westbound on weekdays, departures between 11:32 and 12:07 go from 5 to 6
• +1: Westbound on Saturdays, departures between 13:08 and 13:56 go from 6 to 7
• -2: Westbound on Sundays, departures between 11:08 and 12:47 go from 12 to 10
• -1: Eastbound on Sundays, departures between 18:48 and 20:01 go from 7 to 6

TOTAL: 1 fewer departure outside of rush hour.

24 Sherbrooke:

• +2: Westbound on weekdays, morning rush hour is extended from 7:00-8:53 to 6:53-9:35. Between 9:00 and 9:30, interval drops from 8-9 minutes to 6 or less.
• +2: Westbound on weekdays, afternoon rush hour is extended earlier to add 16:02-16:43. Interval drops during this time from 7-9 minutes to 6 or less.
  
• +1: Eastbound on weekdays, morning rush hour is extended to add 8:24-8:40. Intervals reduced from 8 minutes to 6 or less.
• +1: Eastbound on weekdays, departures between 15:15 and 16:00 go from 5 to 6. Intervals reduced from 11 minutes to 9.
• -5: Westbound on Saturdays between 12:15 and 17:15, intervals are increased from 15 minutes to 20 minutes
• -3: Eastbound on Saturdays between 12:15 and 15:00, intervals are increased from 15 minutes to 20 minutes
• -2: Westbound on Sundays between 12:30 and 15:15, intervals are increased from 15 minutes to 20 minutes
• -2: Eastbound on Sundays between 13:37 and 15:42, the number of departures drops from 10 to 8. Intervals increased from 12 minutes to 15
  
• -1: Eastbound on Sundays between 15:42 and 17:23, the number of departures drops from 9 to 8. Intervals increased from 11 minutes to 12

TOTAL: 7 fewer departures that I can count.

This is a huge missed opportunity for the 24. The Sherbrooke bus is notorious for having horrible service outside of rush hour. On weekdays after 6pm (Westbound) and 7:30pm (Eastbound), intervals climb dramatically to 20 minutes. After 7:30pm (Westbound) and 10:30pm (Eastbound), it climbs again to 30 minutes. That’s unacceptable for a bus that travels through downtown and through two metro stations.

People who were looking forward to shorter evening wait times for the 24 will be sadly disappointed. As will anyone trying to take this bus on the weekend, who are guaranteed to get even worse service than they had before.

121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu

Note: The previous schedule for the 121 was broken on the STM’s website, and so previous figures for eastbound departures are from a 2-year-old schedule.

• +1: Westbound on weekdays, 14:27-14:46 is added to the afternoon rush hour with at least one new departure.
• -1: Westbound on weekdays, the number of departures between 19:00 and 20:24 drops from 8 to 7.
• -1: Eastbound on weekdays, interval between 10:00-11:00 is increased from 10 to 14 minutes
• +1: Eastbound on weekdays between 11:00-12:30, intervals are reduced from 10 to 9 minutes
• +2: Eastbound on weekdays, evening rush hour adds 17:30-18:30. Intervals drop from 6-8 minutes to 6 or less.
• +1: Eastbound on weekdays between 19:00-20:00, intervals are reduced from 11-12 minutes to 10 minutes
• Westbound on Saturdays, the schedule is unchanged.
• -1: Eastbound on Saturdays between 6:30-9:30, the number of departures drops from 10 to 9. Intervals increase from 18 to 20 minutes.
• +2: Eastbound on Saturdays between 12:30-14:00, the number of departures increases from 10 to 12. Intervals decrease from 9 minutes to 7-8.
• +1: Eastbound on Saturdays between 15:00-16:15, intervals are reduced from 7 minutes to 6.
  
• +1: Eastbound on Saturdays between 18:30-19:30, the number of departures increases from 4 to 5. Intervals decrease from 15 minutes to 12.
  
• -1: Westbound on Sundays between 11:00-11:45, the number of departures drops from 7 to 6.
• -1: Westbound on Sundays between 13:15-14:00, intervals are increased from 6 minutes to 7.
• -1: Eastbound on Sundays between 11:30-13:00, intervals are increased from 12 to 14 minutes.
• -1: Eastbound on Sundays between 19:00-21:00, the number of departures drops from 7 to 6.

TOTAL: Two extra departures. Good news for weekday travellers, but Sunday service takes a beating.

54 Charland/Chabanel:

At least in the case of the 54, the STM was speaking the truth. The rush-hour schedule is unchanged. Departures are added between the rush hours (12 new departures eastbound, and 11 westbound), with an interval of 27 minutes between buses in either direction. Final departures of the day are at 6pm (Eastbound) and 6:15pm (Westbound).

I’ve sent a request to the STM for comment, but after 48 hours there has been no response.

UPDATE (Jan. 16): I finally spoke to someone at the STM’s media relations. Apparently the service reductions are normal seasonal adjustments that happen every January as demand goes down. Look for an article with details on Saturday.

See also:

• June 25, 2008 — On the 515
• June 17, 2008 — STM to add more off-peak bus service starting Monday
• May 18, 2008 — Nuns’ Island hates public transit

Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.

No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.

Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.

Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?

See also:

• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers
• February 7, 2008 — Blogosphere PR is a waste of money
• January 6, 2008 — CRTC looking at eliminating top-40 radio restrictions

Tay Zonday has gone mainstream:

Cherry Chocolate Rain (via Transmission Marketing)It’s cute, but the fact that the original song “Chocolate Rain” was about how racism still permeates society, having its remix/sequel video done throwing money around, surrounded by gangsta rappers and video skanks and shelling a soft drink… I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be ironic.

Good for Tay Zonday for capitalizing on his immense success. As for Dr. Pepper’s marketing department…

UPDATE: I got an email from a company whose job it is to search the Internet for Tay Zonday blog posts, pointing out another version of the song promoting Comedy Central’s Last Laugh ‘07 tonight, singing about celebrity gossip (is that worse than a soft drink?). No word on when The Comedy Network will air the program in Canada.

See also:

• June 18, 2008 — I have a hot tip, officer
• June 17, 2008 — Please publsh and send a reporter
• February 29, 2008 — Santobama

The ad is for the Taser C2, which comes in different colours and is apparently marketed as a form of self-defence mechanism for infants when they’re separated from their mothers.

It’s also “police proven”, as shown from the great Taser-saves-lives stories we’ve seen in the news lately. It’s a track record to be proud of.

For those of you unfamiliar with the cultural reference, Wired educates.

See also:

• No related posts

The article talks about the reluctance of journalists to admit their own mistakes. It’s something you find in all professions, but journalists have a special duty to get their facts right. In fact, it’s the only thing they have to do.

Naturally, the article talks about how great the Star is at their corrections (few Canadian publications have corrections pages) and how they want to get better.

One suggestion, that Silverman has I think given up making because few bother with it, is to actually correct articles online when you issue corrections about them.

As a random example, this article about Ontario’s civil courts makes a simple error, saying that someone is currently in a position when she’s not. The correction is online and everything, but the original error is still there (about halfway down the article), and no mention is made of a correction.

For a more serious example, this correction notes that the Star violated a publication ban by revealing the names of victims in an inquiry. Unfortunately, at least one of the original articles, which has the full names of six children in it, is still online. (I won’t link to it because I don’t want to violate the publication ban myself, but it’s Googlable.)

In case the nature of the problem isn’t blatantly obvious by now, the original articles are emailed, del.icio.used, Dugg and otherwise passed around, and people can read them days after the fact, learning the false information with no clue that a correction has already been issued.

Newspapers, radio stations and TV networks can’t go back in time and unpublish something, but website articles can and must be altered to correct inaccuracies, preferably with a note describing the nature of the error and how it was corrected.

Why is that so hard to understand?

See also:

• December 12, 2007 — Regret the Error roundup
• December 3, 2007 — Toronto Sun on media errors
• June 27, 2008 — Paris-Match screws up on Quebec

I first started noticing the show for its special comments, scathing, well-written burn jobs on the Bush administration, that appear occasionally at the end of his show and get huge play online.

But the rest of his show stands in stark contrast. His criticisms are petty, his sarcasm isn’t anywhere near as funny as he thinks it is, his segments are filled with celebrity gossip and fluff, and his ego means he doesn’t realize he’s just as bad as those people he criticizes, particularly Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.

A prime example of this happened on Friday’s show, when Olbermann went on one of his many diatribes against O’Reilly, wasting his time picking on the most petty of O’Reilly’s mistakes. (Olbermann and O’Reilly take jabs at each other because they compete directly with each other and have a long-standing feud. Amazingly, they even spar over minute details of their own ratings demographics, an issue only they could possibly care about.)

Olbermann criticized O’Reilly for saying that the Book of Revelation was written 5,000 years ago. Of course, because it’s part of the New Testament, that’s obviously not true. Olbermann explained this by saying that Jesus Christ (whose life preceded the Book of Revelation) died 2007 years ago, and he is the basis for the calendar we now use.

Of course, in criticizing this irrelevant detail, Olbermann himself got Biblical history wrong. The calendar is based on the date of Jesus’s birth, not his death, which came at about 33 A.D. (Of course, whether he was born 2007 years ago or 2013 years ago or at some other time near those dates is still a matter for debate.)

No doubt O’Reilly will pounce on that fact on his show Monday, causing Olbermann to respond in kind, and the cycle will continue.

It’s an unintentionally hilarious journalistic trainwreck, and I can’t help but check in on it every now and then.

See also:

• May 15, 2008 — We’ll do it live, then we will dance
• January 31, 2008 — MSNBC does bridge mashup

Why do I think this is insane? Look at a map of the mall (click to embiggen):

The red areas (which represent just about everything but the buildings) are parking lots and roads. The green areas (which are just about invisible) represent foliage (trees, grass), which fill spaces that they haven’t figured out a way to park a car in yet.

It gets worse. Besides enough space to park 4,000 cars simultaneously (600 of which are underground), the giant strip mall from hell has absolutely no provisions for pedestrians. Traffic lights have no pedestrian crosswalks. Sidewalks abruptly end forcing people to walk through parking lots. The closest bus comes only every half hour, and it doesn’t enter the mall. There are no bike paths anywhere on or near mall grounds, and very little bike parking space.

So you’ll forgive me if statements like this make me laugh:

«Ici, l’environnement, c’est devenu une priorité. Maintenant, quand le temps est venu de faire une dépense, on essaie toujours de trouver un moyen de réduire nos dépenses en énergie. C’est important de trouver des façons écologiques de gérer nos activités», précise de son côté le directeur-adjoint, Raymond St-Jacques.

«Ce projet est un bel exemple de responsabilité sociale et un effort important pour l’environnement, de dire la mairesse de l’arrondissement d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Marie-Andrée Beaudoin. Nous les félicitons et il nous fait grand plaisir de soutenir ce projet par la cueillette des matières recyclables sur le site-même du Marché Central.»

Reading further, you get the real reason behind this move (which, of course, should have been done years ago):

D’ici peu, le mégacentre commercial aimerait obtenir la désignation environnementale Go Green, une certification canadienne remise aux établissements commerciaux qui réduisent leurs dépenses en eau, en électricité et autres, afin d’innover et d’améliorer leurs pratiques environnementales.

In other words, it’s a B.S. PR stunt designed to get a B.S. corporate “green” certification that doesn’t mean anything, and convince the yuppie SUV drivers that by putting a used water bottle into a green bin they’re doing their part for the environment.

Shutting Marché Central down would do the environment far better than any PR stunt they can think of.

And shame on “journalist” Philippe Boisvert and Courrier Bordeaux-Cartierville for allowing a company to fool them so easily with smoke and mirrors.

UPDATE: Chris DeWolf agrees with me.

See also:

• October 29, 2007 — Krispy Kreme forgot location, location, location

It appears that La Presse’s letter of the week for Oct. 27, about the oversexualization of young girls, was plagiarized from quoted* a Patrick Lagacé column a month before.

As Lagacé puts it: Plagiarized in your own paper, c’est fort en ta…

* The story gets better: The letter actually properly referenced Lagacé’s column. But the citation was cut from the letter before it was published, leaving only the copied text. Now Lagacé, and a copy editor somewhere in the La Presse editorial department, are eating a double serving of crow.

I’m trying not to laugh.

See also:

• May 15, 2008 — TVA mad at La Presse for suggesting they have managers
• November 29, 2007 — Bid for a date with Patrick Lagacé
• September 19, 2007 — Cyberpresse bloggers shutting up

It looks like they’ve opted for the first choice, appointing VP Services Michael Di Grappa as “acting president” (not to be confused with “interim president” whom they will appoint later, or “president” whom they will appoint … later later).

And while a search committee finds a new president (and a new provost), a special executive committee will find an interim president.

Confused yet?

Di Grappa doesn’t have a PhD. His highest academic credentials are a Master’s of public policy at New York University. He also doesn’t have much academic experience. As VP Services, he’s responsible for making sure the escalators run the buildings stay upright, classrooms have video projectors, and registration happens properly.

Considering the apparent very short nature of this appointment, it’s not like it’ll matter very much. Plus the fact that as a senior administrator for seven years he’s been involved in major administration decision-making.

As sad as it is, it’s probably the best solution to a horrible problem that Concordia’s board of governors has no one to blame but itself. Unfortunately it creates a situation where people the guy running a university granting PhDs hasn’t earned one himself.

And if that’s not bad enough news for Concordia, Valery Fabrikant is in the news again. Meanwhile, McGill has decided to raise $750 million just for the heck of it.

UPDATE (Oct. 20): David Bernans, the non-student student activist, has naturally started a Facebook group advocating Di Grappa’s immediate dismissal. I’m sure Concordia will act immediately based on his demands.

UPDATE (Oct. 30): A letter-writer to The Link points out that Columbia and Harvard had presidents who were PhD-less.

UPDATE (Oct. 23): The Concordian has an interview with Di Grappa, who stresses that the position is temporary. The Link has a similar interview.

See also:

• June 12, 2008 — Concordia’s Lowy gets honourary degree
• April 2, 2008 — CUPFA using YouTube
• February 28, 2008 — Welcome to the blogosphere

Oops.

See also:

• March 1, 2008 — Local newspaper union news
• June 29, 2008 — Welcome Canadians
• June 29, 2008 — Indefinite lockout

Mike Boone, today on A6:

“…it is easier to throw a pork chop past a wolf than it is to slip an error or ambiguity past the crackerjack Gazette copy desk.”

From another article on that same page about burials resuming:

“The 129 gravediggers and maintenance staff, members of the Confdration (sic*) des syndicats nationaux, have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2003. The workers’ last contract expired on Dec. 31, 2003.”

And in today’s corrections box:

“An Agence France-Presse story in Friday’s paper said former U.S. president Richard Nixon was impeached. In fact, Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolutions could be heard by the full House. The Gazette regrets the error.”

* The Gazette still doesn’t know how to upload articles with accents to its website.

See also:

• June 9, 2008 — No regrets
• April 21, 2008 — No more erorrs in the Gazzete
• September 18, 2007 — Mike Boone LIES!

Remember Dennis Trudeau? He used to be the anchor of CBC Newswatch (that was before CBC gutted local TV news — a decision they’ve thankfully begun to reverse). Two years ago he decided to retire, though he left the door open to other projects, saying he had “lots of ideas” he wanted to work on:

“In this wired world of 500 television channels, opportunities are limitless. I might like to be a commentator. I might like to write. But I do want to try something different from the daily news grind.”

Today comes the news that Trudeau will be joining 940 News as the new morning man, starting Sept. 3, along with Aphrodite Salas (who will move from her current late-morning show on the same station).

Trudeau is no stranger to radio. He’s hosted Daybreak, As it Happens and Cross-Country checkup. I’m sure he’ll do well in front of a microphone. But why oh why would someone who’s tired of the daily news grind agree to host a weekday morning radio show from 5:30 to 10 a.m.?

As for Ken Connors, who currently hosts the show, he’ll move to a “new” afternoon drive-time show on Q92.

UPDATE (Aug. 29): Two weeks later, Mike Boone adds his take with some words from Mr. Trudeau, who insists he’s never retired. It also adds a clarification: that it was Ken Connors moving to Q92 that prompted the station to seek Trudeau, rather than the other way around.

See also:

• December 29, 2007 — 940 News announces new lineup
• June 25, 2008 — MP3 isn’t good enough for Corus
• June 24, 2008 — Natasha has a new job

Talk-shows hosts, bloggers, columnists, pundits and letter-writers have all had fun with that online poll, organized by the august historical magazine The Beaver, in which respondents named Pierre Trudeau “the worst Canadian.”

…

It’s all good fun, we suppose, but it should also be a reminder online polls of this sort are not worth the paper they aren’t printed on.

I looked up the story, and most of the bloggers I’ve found saw right through the lame, transparent attempt to get free publicity. The paragraph leaves out the paper itself in those it names as having “had fun”. After all, it put the non-story on its front page Tuesday morning, one day after the Beaver issued a press release about it. (Little tip folks: Get something on Canada Newswire that’s not business-related and some paper somewhere will rewrite it into a story to fill space. Don’t bother trying to support your outrageous claims with facts, nobody cares about those.)

The editorial makes a couple of points: that online reader surveys shouldn’t be taken at face value (duh), and that “participatory journalism” has its problems:

Reader-participation journalism, a clear trend in print as well as online, has many virtues and can be a valuable tool.

But without the constraints of rigorous sample-selection techniques and careful choice of questions, the findings of some such processes are not only laughable, as with the Trudeau choice, but they can also be potentially dangerously misleading.

Just in case it wasn’t clear yet that mainstream media has no clue what participatory journalism is, here we go.

At the risk of repeating myself, the following things are NOT participatory journalism:

1. Letting readers vote in multiple-choice online polls and writing a story about the results.
2. Blogs written by columnists and newspaper staffers
3. Publishing “online extras”
4. Writing about what you found on Facebook
5. Writing about what readers posted as comments to your blog
6. Republishing blog posts as articles
7. Republishing articles as blog posts
8. Asking readers for stories and quoting from them
9. Publishing writers’ email addresses with their stories

Many of these things are good ideas, but they’re not participatory journalism.

Sorry, mainstream media, but you got suckered in by a press release about an outrageous unscientific survey. Don’t blame it on bloggers and new forms of journalism that are entirely irrelevant here.

See also:

• February 16, 2008 — The McKibbin’s kinda-non-story
• December 25, 2007 — VISA reports from the future
• December 6, 2007 — Symantec survey thinks highly of Symantec

Sorry, dude.

See also:

• No related posts

Ironically, the website of the man he talks about is hosted here in Montreal.

See also:

• No related posts

What gets me about the video is not so much that some idiot is filming himself doing this, but the route he takes in it:

Google Maps says the logical route above would take 11 minutes, which sounds about right. The video is about 3 minutes long. Assuming it’s sped up at about 5 times normal, that means not only did he act like an idiot speeding, but he also lost time.

Idiot.

See also:

• February 11, 2008 — PicApp: Ads for copyright compliance?
• January 21, 2008 — Bye bye, ByeByeLogement
• January 19, 2008 — When 90% just isn’t good enough

1. Choose a popular song that everyone can recite the lyrics to from memory. It doesn’t matter if they don’t understand what the lyrics mean. In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t understand what the lyrics mean.
2. Choose a song whose chorus means something politically motivating. “Born in the U.S.A.”, “Born to run”, “Change the World” etc. “Money for Nothing” will never be a campaign song, unless the campaign is a parody. Yes, we all know the song’s chorus is nothing more than a metaphor for your last relationship, but take it literally.
3. Choose a song by an artist who isn’t in jail, accused of murdering someone, or otherwise in disrepute. Stay away from Michael Jackson songs.
4. Make sure the artist won’t be pissed off at your song selection and start campaigning for the other candidate (see Bruce Springsteen link above).
5. This one would seem self-evident, but choose a song by an artist who is a citizen of the country you’re running to lead. Choosing a song by a Canadian (and a French Canadian like Celine Dion) might give the wrong impression.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Nobody seems to have pointed this out yet except in passing. And only a few blogs are pointing out the silliness of Hillary Clinton using an old Air Canada theme song for her campaign.

UPDATE: The Gazette gave it front-page treatment, so I guess some people are noticing here at least.

See also:

• February 11, 2008 — PicApp: Ads for copyright compliance?
• January 21, 2008 — Bye bye, ByeByeLogement
• January 19, 2008 — When 90% just isn’t good enough

The website Canada Divided represents one of these groups. They think all Quebecers are francophones and all francophones are separatists. Without them, they argue, language purity can be achieved. French is not part of the “Canadian identity” and somehow represents “ethnic segregation” (a xenophobic website denouncing segregation — now that’s balls).

The website is pretty bare, just a web forum and some links to videos. The videos are posted to YouTube, including:

• This one where a skinhead oppressed anglophone seems to think that the only people hired to bilingual public-sector jobs in this country are unilingual francophones
• This one which warns that the media (which, as we all know, is part of a giant Jewish francophone conspiracy) is ignoring the growing threat of multiculturalism against our fine country.
• This one points out for all us stupid people that the French civil code, which Quebec law is based on, is actually COMMUNISM, and that Quebec is secretly annexing the rest of Canada.
• This one notes that all our health care funding issues are a direct result of the government wasting money promoting bilingualism.

Honestly, it’s really hard not to invoke the obvious comparisons that come to mind. Couldn’t they at least have picked a non-bald guy and had him speak in front of a non-black background, maybe have him smile a bit?

See also:

• January 6, 2008 — CRTC looking at eliminating top-40 radio restrictions
• December 25, 2007 — Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords
• November 23, 2007 — Gas company critics are hypocrites

Does anyone else find something amiss about this? I mean, if you’re going to reassure your customers that you speak a language, shouldn’t you send them that message at least in part in that language?

See also:

• February 11, 2008 — PicApp: Ads for copyright compliance?
• January 21, 2008 — Bye bye, ByeByeLogement
• January 19, 2008 — When 90% just isn’t good enough