When I watched this movie, I got a sense of friction or animosity between French-Canadians and English-Canadians. Is there anything to this assumption. Are there laws in Quebec, such as the case in Canadian Bacon, that signs and trucks must be bi-lingual?
shareThe official language of Quebec is french. We have the law 101, who said that all the signs must be in french. There is friction in Canada between french and english, it's why the Quebeckers, we want to seperate ;)
shareThis has been ongoing since before Canada was a country. Quebec once belonged to France, then England came in and took over and divided the english/french in to Upper(english) and Lower(french) Canada. Throughout it's history the french speaking people in Quebec have been struggling to hold onto their own culture. In the 1960's a few angry Francophones, who felt alienated since their first language was french, and many government and corporate jobs required english speaking (this among many other things) led these alienated youth to create a revolutionary force known as the FLQ (by today's standards, they would be considered terrorists(of course anybody who wants to stand up to gov'ts is considered a terrorist these days)). Anyways they kidnap a Quebec MLA (Canadian equivalent of state representative) Pierre Laporte. A ransom was put on his head but about a week later they found his body in the trunk of a car. Also the FLQ was responsible for several bombings and bank robberies. The federal gov't distraught at all the ongoings in Quebec enacted the War Measures Act (Canadian equivalent of Martial Law) in Quebec. These events became known in Canada as the October Crisis. Eventually the FLQ disbanded, some were arrested, other's ran, however to make sure that this would never happen, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau worked to make French one of our official languages, and now most gov't jobs at the federal level require a working knowledge of both languages. Despite all this, many in Quebec feel that they are far too different from the rest of Canada. To this day Quebec has not signed in to the Canadian Constitution. They do however, have their own constitution which allows Quebec to abstain from many acts in the constitution, hence the language laws, which have proven to be quite popular among french voters, but are seen by many english speaking ppl as a violation of the freeedom of speech and expression. And there are still many Quebecois who to this day would like to separate from Canada, and become their own nation.
share[deleted]
In july 2005, a sondage results said that 55% of Quebeckers want to seperate ;)
shareI am not Canadian. I have a friend who is married to a Canadian however, and she told me this joke pertaining to Quebec seperation.
" A genie appeared to a Quebecker and another Canadian. The genie said to them "" I will grant you both ONE wish, but ONE wish only"" So the Quebecker butted in and went first saying, "'I wish Quebeck was surrounded by an unmoveable and unpenetrable wall. No one gets in , no one gets out"" ( said in a French, Celine Dion type accent) and poof the wall srpung up around Quebec, sealing the citizens in forever. Then the genie beckoned to the other non- Quebec Canadian for his wish. The Canadian said ""Fill the damn thing up with water!!!"" "
Ok I am not Canadian, but I found that incredibly humorous and I had to share with others. . I am sure I offended someone ,was not my intention. Just found it very funny and thought I would pass it on. I have told many American's that joke and I get the most blank and dense look stare back at me. Many have no clue about the issues with Quebec in Canada. Sad, so many in the world know so little if anything about what is going on in other nations...especially the nations that neighbor them. Of course when I have then explain what the joke means and why it is funny to an American...it loses the punchline.
I live in Colorado, and I think if anyone understands some of the politics that go on in this state, they can appreciate me making the statement that the same joke can apply to Boulder and other Colordoans.
Saint: A dead sinner, revised and edited.
Change it to catholics and baptists or Bush and Sadaam Hussein. then they will understand it. I heard this joke years ago but canada wasnt even in it.
shareIt can only be funny to someone with misguided information or lack of knowledge of the reality of the situation. If a Quebecer was granted a wish, NO one would wish for a wall, that is just ridiculous. We might wish for anglophones to have their mouth sewn, or wish that only francophones would wish to live here, or some sort of weird wish, but a wall, that just falls very flat, because it's senseless to anyone who knows Quebec culture.
***So I've seen 4 movies/wk in theatre for a 1/4 century, call me crazy?**