"What of the sexism in the first line of the French version of 'O Canada'?"

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, March 5, 2010 at 2:47 PM - 28 Comments

There are many reasonable arguments against changing the lyrics to ‘O Canada’ to make them gender-neutral. This, from today’s editorial in the Globe, isn’t one of them:

But what of the sexism in the first line of the French version, a version that dates from 1880 and has never been changed? O Canada! Land of our forefathers.” Were there no foremothers? Forebears doesn’t really work, because it sounds like four bears.

Er, the word they’re referring to and translating as “forefathers” is aïeux. Had they run this line of argument by a Francophone, they would have quickly discovered aïeux is a gender-neutral word—think “ancestors” rather than “forefathers.”

And “forebears” only sounds like “four bears” in English, which, inconveniently for the Globe, is not the language in which the French version of the anthem is usually sung. In French, “forebears” sounds like, well, like aïeux.

Megapundit: Let's all listen to Jack Layton!

By selley - Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 2:57 PM - 7 Comments

Must-reads: Randall Denley on paying attention to the Dippers and Greens; Jonathan Kay on Gilles Duceppe’s plight; Greg Weston on maternity leave for the self-employed.

Bring out your dead!
In which Gilles Duceppe forlornly searches for the last 28 diehard separatists and Lehman Brothers employees haggle for discounts on dented soup cans.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest may privately prefer a Stephen Harper win on Oct. 14 to a Stéphane Dion win, Don MacPherson writes in the Montreal Gazette, and word has it the Liberal apparatus in Sherbrooke is actually working to get Tory candidate André Bachand elected. But by publicly denouncing the federal government’s cuts to arts funding, and promising to lay his government’s “priorities” on the line and demand a response from Harper in advance of the Oct. 1 French leaders’ debate, MacPherson believes the Premier is attempting to eat as much cake as he can at Harper’s ongoing party in la belle province.

The Globe and Mail‘s Konrad Yakabuski suggests Gilles Duceppe “has only himself to blame” for the rapidly declining fortunes of his Bloc Québécois, in that he should have realized two-and-a-half years ago “that the Bloc’s rhetoric-pro-gun control, pro-Kyoto, pro-union, pro-Afghan pullout, anti-American-was sounding increasingly foreign to voters outside Montreal,” who are now frighteningly willing, from Duceppe’s perspective, to mark their X beside the Tory candidate. As such, notwithstanding Duceppe’s well-founded fear of hats, Yakabuski thinks he probably should have taken a chance on wearing a Stetson at this year’s Festival Western de Saint-Tite.

"No, no, it's a lovely hat. But I think this strange kerchief device sufficiently underscores my proletarian bona fides." (Photo: Reuters)

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French People: They're Just Like Us! (Almost.)

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, July 11, 2008 at 12:28 PM - 0 Comments

Cretons on toast: The last vestige of the two solitudes

Quebec, so the stereotype goes, is home to two warring tribes, one big and poor, one small and rich. The former (French) has lived in semi-perpetuity under the jackboot of the latter (English), and once upon a time it would have been an insult to both to suggest that they share any sort of commonality. To be fair, it’s muted a fair bit –– the wars between the two have been about as quiet as our revolution — but we’ve nonetheless lived with the fumes of this absurdity for years. There are twits on both sides, and they continue to bitch and moan, and we continue to ignore them. To be honest, it makes it kind of fun. Beats living in Kingston, anyway.

Now, an august psychological publication has sniffed away at Quebec’s fractured psyche and discovered that, well, it ain’t all that fractured after all. In a paper published in the Journal of Social Psychology (report not available online), researchers at (the cough, cough, très Anglo) Bishop’s University surveyed 50 English and 50 French people from Quebec between the ages of 16 and 64 –– an interesting bracket, to be sure, as it includes everyone from typically apathetic teenagers to aging baby boomer veterans of the worst of Quebec’s linguistic chicanes. The results? Apart from a few minor differences, they have virtually the same values and stances as one another. Take that, Mr. Two Solitudes.

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