Monthly Archives: June 2009

| Sports

Aleksandra the great

Aleksandra Wozniak: Awesome

Aleksandra Wozniak: Awesome

A little hometownprovince pride for Blainville’s Aleksandra Wozniak. A day after posting a huge upset to the No. 5 women’s tennis player in the world (who had just come from a Roland Garros championship), she took down another higher-ranked player today at an England tournament and is in the quarterfinals.

Canada’s male star in the tournament also advanced to the quarterfinals. Just imagine if they both won a title…

UPDATE (June 18): They win again! Off to the semifinals.

UPDATE (June 19): Wozniak loses to Wozniacki (again), but Dancevic is in the final.

| Montreal, Opinion

Brownstein the auto warrior

On the left: Heroes. On the right: Terrorists.

On the left: Heroes. On the right: Terrorists.

The Gazette’s Bill Brownstein is on a driver’s rights binge this week. On Monday, he was on CFCF talking about how the city was “held hostage” by the Tour de l’Île, and repeating the anti-cyclist talking points:

  • The Tour de l’Île shut down the city and prevented people from getting to hospitals
  • Why can’t the Tour de l’Île be held on the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve where it won’t bother anyone?
  • Cops never ticket cyclists and always ticket drivers
  • Drivers would like to walk and cycle everywhere, but it’s impossible in this city
  • Drivers are an oppressed majority, and having a handful of bike paths and Bixi stations scattered around the city is going way too far
  • Removable poles along bike paths are better than permanent concrete medians like we have on de Maisonneuve Blvd.

Of course, there are counter-arguments to all these. The tours’ routes were constructed to allow car traffic through wherever safely possible (and for crying out loud, it’s one weekend day a year), emergency vehicles were given priority, and holding it on another island would defeat the purpose of a Tour de l’Île, wouldn’t it?

When you consider how much space in this city is reserved solely for four-wheel transportation, and how many traffic rules are designed solely to prevent them from crashing into each other, you wonder if people who say drivers are oppressed aren’t on some crazy drug.

Sadly, Brownstein’s throwaway half-joking suggestion of a “car party” might very well come true if drivers’ limitless sense of entitlement continues to grow.

This tunnel under de Maisonneuve Blvd. will link Concordia's Hall and Library buildings with the Guy-Concordia metro station.

This tunnel under de Maisonneuve Blvd. will link Concordia's Hall and Library buildings with the Guy-Concordia metro station.

Today, in his newspaper column, Brownstein talks about the tunnel being constructed at Concordia’s downtown campus that would connect the two older buildings at de Maisonneuve and Mackay with the Guy-Concordia metro station (and, just as importantly, the two newer buildings):

Are you kidding me? The students can’t handle the two-block trek outside! Has this exercise really been worth it? Construction on that corner has done a marvellous job of crippling traffic for motorists and cyclists alike.

While this is true, consider what will happen once the tunnel is built. Students will no longer have to go outside to get between the metro and the Hall Building. They will no longer have to jaywalk across de Maisonneuve Blvd., and they’ll no longer be an annoying swarm for drivers to contend with on a daily basis. Not to mention how much easier it will be to transport equipment between buildings. This construction will actually be good for drivers.

Brownstein also talks about Old Montreal being closed to traffic and the horror that’s causing by forcing drivers to walk a couple of blocks to their overpriced restaurants overpriced hotels with their bags. (Bonus points if you notice the blatant hypocrisy here.)

Sorry Bill, you haven’t made a convert out of me.

CORRECTION (June 25): Brownstein was talking about Old Montreal hotels needing to send bellboys blocks away to pick up bags, not people needing to walk to overpriced restaurants. Fagstein regrets the error.

| Montreal, Opinion, Photos

Overdrive

Front

I thought this vehicle only existed in Simpsons parody form until now.

Right

Note the rig-style side mirrors, roof-mounted horns and lights.

Truck left

And the handlebars and step needed to get inside.

Truck driver

You know, if your truck is so big you have to get on your tippy-toes to peek into the window, maybe it’s too big for you to drive.

Truck driving

Especially when you’re taking it to a bar on Bishop Street.

| Montreal

Boulos defends Harel

Karim Boulos, the anglo at Vision Montreal, wants us to know Louise Harel is not to be feared by our people. As a Liberal and federalist, even he can find a way to support her, because she believes in the same things Benoît Labonté believes in: centralization and improving services and bring more environmentally friendly and cookies and puppies and happy children and such.

He promises to highlight electoral platforms “as soon as the parties render them public”.

I’m waiting too.

| Media

Journal Lockout Digest: FTQ traitors

It’s hard to argue that your employees should make huge concessions when you’re in the process of bidding for an eight-figure sports franchise. And yet, that’s exactly what Quebecor is doing.

But the Quebecor bid for the Canadiens took a new twist this week when it was discovered that it’s being supported by the Fonds de solidarité of the FTQ. The FTQ labour union.

Needless to say that’s raised a few eyebrows among the media, not to mention the folks at Rue Frontenac. The STIJM calls it immoral, Martin Leclerc is calling for heads to roll, Michel Van de Walle calls it treason, Serge Touchette is revolted and Beaudet takes a whack at the issue in cartoon form. There was even a protest, another protest at the Bell Centre, and an open letter to Jean Charest.

Aside from the union implications, the deal is also making some worried about what would happen to Canadiens games on RDS if Quebecor and its “king of convergence” at Planète Quebecor were to buy the team. The Gazette’s Pat Hickey calls it “a bit scary”, Mike Boone agrees and unions aren’t crazy about it either. There’s even a Facebook group to keep Quebecor from buying the team.

Back to the table, please

Remembering that there’s a labour conflict going on, labour minister David Whissell wants both sides to return to the negotiating table. Though he says he doesn’t take sides since the conflict is with a private corporation.

Inside the conflict

Radio-Canada’s Desautels has a piece about the Journal de Montréal conflict. The audio is online in Windows Media audio.

Défi Chicoutimi

25 of the Journal’s 253 locked-out workers have embarked on a bicycle trip from Montreal to Chicoutimi (via Quebec City) to express solidarity with their locked-out colleagues at Le Réveil. You can read about their departure, Day 1 and two reports about Day 2.

Those who couldn’t make it on bikes hit the golf course.

Bonne Fête

The Journal de Montréal is 45 years old. Not quite the birthday it expected. Thoughts from:

Rue Frontenac expands

Reinforcing the fact that they’re in this for the long haul, Rue Frontenac has added a new section, Détente, for weekend lifestyle features. It also has a special from Jean-Michel Nahas looking at the various candidates for mayor of Montreal.

TVA Publications likes this union thing

Rue Frontenac reports that ad salespeople at TVA Publications are looking to form a union. They’ve requested accreditation. TVA Publications, in addition to abusing freelancers, is mostly ununionized.

And…

Another pot shot at the Journal’s manque de rigueur…

Meanwhile, at the Journal de Québec

Remember that labour board decision that Quebecor said they’d appeal? They’re appealing it.

| Media

Canwest gets another break

Like tonight’s episode of House, the latest Canwest announcement is a repeat. That doesn’t stop CBC, Reuters, CP, Variety and, of course, Canwest itself from writing stories about it.

The next date for our calendars is June 30, when this recapitalization plan will have to be figured out (or another deadline agreed on).

Meanwhile, my employer’s employer is reportedly looking to save $20 million in labour costs through union concessions. It has sent letters to unions but says it isn’t a done deal that they’re officially making such requests. If they were, it would include managers like Dennis Skulsky (who is being given an honorary degree, by the way), but not Leonard Asper. Still, the unions aren’t impressed.

The Gazette’s union, the Montreal Newspaper Guild, says it “has received no communication of any kind, verbal or written, from Canwest or Gazette management requesting us to consider any salary or other concessions in our contractual relationship in any of our units.”

The Gazette’s editorial and reader sales departments have been without a contract since June 2008.

| In the news, Media, Montreal

It’s a crime wave!

Editor: Hey reporter, do a story about all these shootings, will ya?

Reporter: Sure.

(Later)

Reporter: Police say they have no evidence there’s a link between these shootings. It doesn’t look like there’s anything in common other than they all happened within 24 hours of each other.

Editor: Be sure to put that in your story somewhere near the bottom, you know, after you’ve convinced everyone that the entire city is on a shooting spree.

Reporter: Uhh… ok.

| Media, Montreal

La Presse to stop publishing Sundays

It’s official: La Presse will no longer be publishing on Sundays as a way of saving $3 million a year. The last Sunday paper comes out June 28.

Take the news through your favourite corporate filter:

Gesca wants to save $26 million. Half of that will come from reducing expenses, including cutting the Sunday issue, reducing the width of the paper by an inch and cancelling internships. It is asking for the other half to come from concessions from employees (including managers), and is throwing out thinly-veiled threats to shut down the paper entirely. La Presse’s union has been without a contract since Dec. 31.

Cyberpresse and other Gesca papers aren’t affected by these demands, though there is still an open call for buyouts.

La Presse’s union says it is studying the concession demands, which would come with a promise that 15% of profits (should the paper become profitable again) would go back to employees.

UPDATE (June 18): Lagacé discusses the business model affecting newspapers (of which La Presse and Gesca are not immune) and predicts that employees will have to make some concessions, though he argues against those who say journalists are overpaid. Yves Boisvert waxes poetic about the physical newspaper and how it will soon be a thing of the past.

| Montreal, Opinion, Technology

Dear NESTEA®

Thank you for your email inviting me to your marketing event. Actually, to be fair, it wasn’t from you. The emails were from MS&L Worldwide, the company handling marketing for your marketing event.

And thank you for your second email three days later from another person at the same marketing company inviting me again to the same marketing event.

I guess that’s what you mean by “aggressively represent the interests of our clients”. Maybe that’s what won you your Silver Anvil Award. How else can you deliver “measurable business results for many of the world’s largest companies and most successful brands, including … General Motors“? Your 70-year-old company whose history seems to be nothing but corporate merger after corporate merger, is clearly in the best position to do this kind of marketing. Especially when you’re doing marketing of a Canadian event from your office in Ann Arbor, Mich., instead of Toronto (or, say, Montreal).

Such a big firm, I feel a bit silly doing this. But can I offer a few suggestions for future marketing campaigns?

  • Both emails begin with “Hi Steve”. Why are we on a first-name basis? We’ve never met. Is it because you don’t take bloggers seriously? Is it because you so desperately need to sound like you’re part of our demographic that formalities have been deemed undesirable?
  • You constantly refer to the brand name NESTEA® in capital letters and with that R symbol (except for that one time you accidentally used the French “MD”). Are you afraid I’m going to steal your brand or something? Or worse, decapitalize it?
  • You’re offering me an all-expenses-paid junket to Mont Tremblant to see your marketing event in exchange for talking about it “on my blog, Facebook and Twitter”. Does this count? Is there something on my blog that gave you the impression that I can be bought like that? (Did you even read my blog before sending these emails?)
  • You’ve invited “pro athletes” (actually Olympic snowboarders, does that qualify as “professional athlete”?) and Sam Roberts to your event. I think the Virgin Festival at Jean Drapeau Park has you beat on the guest list. They’ve got New Kids on the Block and Jonathan Roy!
  • You’ve linked to your Twitter account, which has only a single update pointing to your press release. It’s a wonder you only have six followers. Your corporate hash tag also doesn’t inspire yet.
  • You use the word “awesome.” You seem to be very attached to this word, judging from your forgettable Flash-based product placement video game. What 50-year-old middle manager decided that using “awesome” and “ultimate” would appeal to us?
  • Both your emails conclude with the standard corporate disclaimer boilerplate text, suggesting that I can’t divulge its contents if I’m not the intended recipient. Should I email back to confirm that I’m the intended recipient? Maybe it was meant for some other Steve?
  • You link to your Facebook page. Actually, you don’t. You link to it from your Twitter account and tell me to search for it in your email instead of just including a link. I took a peek, and noticed that there are lots of questions from the public on that page (click on “Just Fans” on the Wall), and none of them have answers. Your Facebook event page also leaves lots of questions unanswered (though you do repeat many times that it’s free).
  • Your event doesn’t have a website. Or at least none that I could find.

I had contemplated taking you up on your invitation of free food (I’m not crazy about skiing or snowboarding) and discovering just how such giant marketing events work, how spending so much money could “impact behavioral changes” enough to justify the expense. Unfortunately, I’m working on Saturday so I can’t make it.

Besides, this is more fun. And I can keep my dignity. And I don’t really care for iced tea.

Sincerely,

“Steve”

p.s. Building a snow hill in summer? That’s crazy. I should blog about that.

| In the news, Opinion

C’est quoi le 24 juin? (UPDATED)

UPDATE: L’Autre St-Jean seems to have changed its mind again. See below.

Quebec flag

As an anglophone Quebecer, it always annoys me when people confuse “Québécois” with “French-Canadian”. Not all Quebecers are francophone, and not all francophones in Canada live in Quebec.

It’s not just the Rest of Canada that does this, it’s also many of the Québécois themselves. Us anglos are really better off living in Toronto, where we belong. And French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec are ignored because they won’t be part of the new sovereign country anyway.

Thankfully, these views aren’t shared by the majority. Which is why I’m heartened at the near-universal outrage in the comments section of an article by La Presse’s Martin Croteau about two anglophone bands being banned from Fête Nationale celebrations on June 23. (The fact that hell is being raised by francophone publications (see also Voir, Bang Bang, Josée Legault) instead of just The Gazette, CJAD, CTV or The Suburban is also nice. Those outlets would be quickly dismissed for bringing up stories like this first.) There’s even a petition going around to bring them back (with requisite Facebook group).

It seems that the Autre St-Jean organizers were getting pressure from Fête Nationale directors (read: SSJB) and others to remove Bloodshot Bill and Lake of Stew from their event, even to the point where protests were threatened if they were allowed to go on. Though both are Quebec bands, their songs are in English, and that’s just not right, they argue. Fête Nationale is about celebrating a French Quebec.

This, of course, comes mere days after celebrating the fact that they were including anglophone bands and being more inclusive.

UPDATE (June 15): A short, bilingual message posted on the event’s website says they are “maintaining” their list of invitees, including the two anglo bands:

Montreal, June 15th 2009 – As the producer of L’AUTRE ST-JEAN, we, C4 productions, have been mandated by l’association Louis-Hébert to create an alternative musical event to celebrate our National Holiday.  In that sens, we maintain our choices for the line up of the event with Malajube, Vincent Vallières, Les Dales Hawerchuk, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Lake of Stew et Bloodshot Bill which represents forty minutes of anglophone music on a six hour show.

We wish that the event on June 23rd at Park ‘du Pélican’, which is, in our opinion, in the image of Québec and Montreal in 2009, will be peaceful.

More info will be communicated wednesday.

Mind you, in Quebec City, it’s still French-only.

Whether or not they’ll actually get to play, I think back to the basic question: What is the Fête Nationale supposed to be about anyway? Is it about language, culture, or about the province of Quebec?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Fête Saint-Jean-Baptiste was about language and culture before the Quebec government got its greedy little paws on it. It was about French culture, and by that logic you might consider having only francophone bands perform at such an event.

But the Quebec government turned it into the civic Fête nationale holiday, wrapping it in the fleur de lys, blocking off non-Quebec francophones and making it to Quebec what Canada Day is to Canada.

Perhaps it’s because of their proximity on the calendar, combined with the political Quebec-vs-Canada divide that’s overwhelmed our politics over the past half century that people see an equivalence. Patrick Lagacé suggests if we turned this around – francophones being banned from Canada Day celebrations because of threats of protests from Albertans who want it to be English-only – that the outrage would be much higher.

If we accept that le 24 juin is a civic holiday about celebrating the state, then the comparison has some credence. The only catch is that Quebec wants to be unilingual while Canada does not.

But if it’s about culture, then a more apt comparison would be with St. Patrick’s Day in Quebec (indeed, the holiday has its genesis from those who wanted a celebration of the Québécois on June 24 like that of the Irish on March 17). And anyone who’s been to a St. Paddy’s parade in this town knows they’re very liberal when it comes to who can call themselves Irish. It’s not just Scottish pipe bands that slip by. Ukrainians, Israelis, Chinese are all welcome. Just put a shamrock sticker on your cheek and some green in your beer and you’re accepted into the club. So even then, anglophones (and any other language) should be welcome.

Provincial civic holiday, or francophone cultural celebration? Which is it? And which should it be?