Lies, Damn Lies and Journalists

One of my favorite (French) news site recently featured a link to a story on sportnet.ca, about a young Orthodox-Jew hockey player whose religious belief presented him with significant challenges. The article can be found here. It's not a happy story.

It's also a questionable story, that seems to start with a conclusion, and use a lot of sleight-of-hand and general trickery to "prove" its point. The paragraph describing Quebec culture is particularly egregious, and is what I'll adress chiefly here:

"In Quebec, reasonable accomodation is a controversial issue: the idea that government, school and companies should adjust to the cultural or religious needs of people outside Quebec mainstream".

This is simply the commentary of someone who has at best read the headlines and done no research whatsoever. There was, in 2007, a major controversy over "reasonable accomodation", that much is true. What was at stake, however, was not whether or not we should have them, but where the line between reasonable and unreasonable accomodations lay (of course there were people who thought that "any accomodation is too much", there always are. They were laughed at by most of the rest of the province).

The specific cases that precipitated the crisis were not exactly minor requests: we're talking about a debate over whether a Sikh boy should be allowed to bring his ceremonial dagger to school, several incidents where people of various faith (Orthodox Jews chiefly, if I recall correctly) refused to show any respect to female police officers (resulting in a misguided bureaucratic directive that female officers should call for male backup when dealing with those people), an incident where a Muslim man at a restaurant demanded to be served in a pork-free room, an incident where the Orthodox Jewish community requested that a nearby fitness center cover its windows to protect their children from "temptation", an incident where (non-jewish) workmen in a jewish hospital were banned from eating their (own) ham sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria, etc.

"Where signs in english are banned"

Probably the single most pervasive piece of mythology about Quebec. English is not, strictly speaking, banned (we once tried that one, backed down after the supreme court said "no"). Lack of French is. Which, given a historical situation where up to the sixties and seventies, lots of shops and companies had english-only signs in a province where 80% + of the population is French-speaking, where the official language is French, and where a lot of people don't have particularly good understanding of english, would seems sensible enough. We shouldn't need that rule: predominantly-French signs, guidebooks, product description, etc, should come by default in predominantly-French Quebec. They don't (because a lot of people seems to think "It's north of the Rio Grande, so English is good enough"), so we have those rules.

"Where a team of young girls are kicked out of a soccer league because a player wore a hijab."

As I recall the incident, it was a tournament, not a league, and the referee asked the player to remove her hijab because the rules of the tournament (based on international rules) banned scarves, earrings and other such headgears due to risks of injury. He chose to enforce that rule - something not all Quebecers entirely agreed with - and prevent the player from playing with a headscarf on. A judgement call, which one may disagree with, but which is hardly "stupid dumb racism" in and of itself.

"As Montreal author Mordecai Richler..."

This, right here, is perhaps the worst part of the text. Richler was a good author. What he was also, when it came to French Quebec, is incredibly biased (we are talking a man who routinely invoked Godwin's law on his own arguments about the Quebec independence movement). Which does not invalidate everything he said (and that anti-semitism has a long history in Quebec is the sad truth), but taking his general statements about Quebec society as basic truths is...questionable. Particularly when Richler wrote most of his texts on Quebec society several decades ago, largely based on even older experience: Quebec has undergone an extreme cultural makeover over the past half-century.

"They do not have in mind anybody named Ginsburg"

...but on the other hand, they do have in mind people named Freeman, Thai Thi Lac, Valdivia, Mourani, Jetha, Salem, Shields, Neko Likongo, Kentzinger, Johnson-Meneghini, Banolok, Kotto, De Benedictis, Santomo, McKay, Saywell, Wawanoloath...

Of course, these still represent a small minority of the independence movement, which is largely made of French-Canadians, but the fact that all of these names (English, Lebanese, Huron, Italian, Arab, Cameroonian, Arab, etc) belong to people who were actual candidate for either of the pro-independence party in the 2008 Federal and Provincial elections (some of whom were elected) is rather telling about the supposed close-mindedness of Quebec nationalism.

Now there was, and still is, a streak of ethno-nationalism to the independance movement, and there are certainly people in Quebec who will look down upon people with "weird" (read: not French-Canadian) names. But the generalization of the article are simply and demonstrably absurd.

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It is probably also worth noting that, unlike many other major-junior sports league in North America (university leagues, etc), the Quebec league is an all-out commercial outfit. It sees making money as its primary cause, not developping players or letting kids play. Which is to say that it is extremely competitive, with teams that focus on winning. Not on giving people a chance. And on playing a lot of game, which doesn't leave much room for scheduling issues (particularly with the league still beign set up to leave room for school).

That probably isn't for the best, and it's been a matter of some controversy in Quebec lately after the spectacular incident where an angry goaltender just crossed the entire ice rink to go beat up the opposing team's goaltender.

Again, this isn't to say that there aren't assholes, racists, and general twits in Québec. We have them, and they generally come out of the woodwork in these sort of situations (to the great delight of variety and humor shows, and the people who watch them). It isn't to say, either, that there isn't a highly defensive streak among Quebecers when it comes to matters of culture: we cling to our cultural symbols, even if we don't really believe in what they represent anymore (see the previous article on French Quebec and religion).

But the sort of absurd generalization, and (deliberate?) distortion of the truth present in this article both demean the story of Benjamin Rubin (and cast doubts on large part of it: if Joyce is willing to play fast and loose with the truth on Quebec society, what else is he willing to play fast and loose with in order to get a "good" story?), and is a general insult to a few millions French Quebecers.

And it certainly doesn't help convince French Quebecers that they are welcome or wanted in Canada (at least without becoming "like a proper (english) Canadian province").