A visit to QUEBEC!

girl friends I have to speak quietly because I managed to sneak in to go back as you know I'm banned here and so on well no of course that is not actually the case there are a lot of wild theories out there regarding where me and the province of Quebec stand these days so I just wanted to set the record straight I am not banned from Quebec I was merely denounced by a unanimous vote of their Parliament for saying mean things about the place so there was never anything legally stopping me from coming here which I did all the way here to Fabulous Montreal now I am sure you are probably asking yourself the same thing that my waiter asked me at lunch today why are you here don't you hate Quebec well no I do not hate Quebec parliamentary resolution notwithstanding what I think about Quebec is that it is obviously a very different place from the rest of Canada and I think that the Canadian government's efforts to accommodate those differences have resulted in some very bad policy but we are not talking about that today today we are talking about Montreal and Montreal is a very interesting City because not only is it very different from the rest of Canada but it is very different from the rest of Quebec - it's a very unique city whose very unique past has created a very unique present until relatively recently this used to be the biggest city in Canada and over the years a lot of Canada's leaders have come from here I would argue that this fact helps explain why Canada has some of the laws it does today as you will perhaps see so anyway Montreal was founded as a French colony back in 1642 it was originally intended to be a base for Catholic missionaries and then when that didn't really take it instead became one of the major bases of the North American fur trade as well as a popular destination for French colonial settlers located here at the base of the Saint Lawrence River which was one of the main ways European ships entered North America the island colony of Montreal was one of the most strategically important pieces of North American geography so in 1760 and the British conquered it the story then goes that the British proceeded to flood Montreal with English settlers and install an English elite to rule over it it was colonial but colonialism of a sort we don't often think about where one group of white Europeans conquers and subjugates another group of white Europeans who of course had previously conquered and subjugated a group of non-white non Europeans but at this point everybody had stopped caring about them anyway Montreal grew into the thriving hub of North American trade and commerce everyone expected it to be and one of the major cities of this continent but the bounty of Montreal's growing wealth and success was not to be shared equally there was systemic discrimination against French speakers and even Catholics and the British rigged the political and economic system in such a way as to ensure that power would continue to be consolidated in the hands of the English minority from 1800 to 1850 the population grew from 9,000 to nearly 60,000 in large part due to a huge influx of eager British settlers by the 1830s the old French settlers had been displaced and Montreal had an English majority the city was very segregated with the English Montreal is living on one half of the city and the French living on the other but the French Montreal is engaged in what would later be known as the revenge of the cradle by being super Catholic and having lots of babies the French were able to effectively outbreed the English and by the 1860s the city once again had a French majority and by the early 20th century the English had been squeezed to less than a quarter of the population I mean the fact that Montreal was such a wealthy city obviously played a role in the population growth as well as it attracted French Canadians from other parts of Quebec but the role of the Catholic Church in keeping Montreal French has also always been this very sentimentalized thing the 20th century also saw Montreal grow larger and more diverse as people emigrated to the city from other parts of the world particularly Italians Irish and Eastern European Jews in the late 20th century there was also a big influx of people from the former colonies of the French Empire including Haiti Morocco Congo Cameroon and the Ivory Coast but the dominant drama remained between French Canadians and English Canadians or as the Quebecers like to say francophones and Anglophones even though the French outnumbered the English and even though Canada eventually cast off British colonial rule the English Montrealer still retained hugely disproportionate power well into the mid 20th century a report from the Canadian government in the 1960s found that an Anglo Quebecer was likely to make twice as much as a French Quebecker and that French Quebecers were disproportionately underrepresented in executive-type jobs people came up with all sorts of unflattering analogies to describe this situation one famous guy said that the English Montreal errs were like the white Rhodesian zuv Zimbabwe while another guy said that the French were like the blacks in America except he didn't say blacks but you know Quebec was still a democracy and in 1976 the provinces French majority voted in a hardline nationalist as Prime Minister of Quebec known as rené lévesque Levesque was actually the guy that said that line about the English Montreal arrggh being like the white Rhodesian 's and he made it clear that his government was not going to do any favors for the pampered English so his administration passed all these laws making French the mandatory language in as many places as possible so the law restricts access to English schools and regulates the language of business administration laid professional corporations but pork seemed so long a plan to reconquer Quebec from the economic control of the English and then he said that Quebec should leave Canada all together and form a brand-new country run by and for the francophones no more Canadian Constitution or Canadian laws this caused a panicked outflow of English Montreal errs to other parts of Canada and helped make Montreal even more French by some estimates the English population of Montreal is now less than 15% so let's talk more about what Montreal is like today modern-day Montreal remains the biggest city in Quebec and the second biggest city in all of Canada Toronto edged it out in the 1970s it also remains the part of Canada most defined by French English drama but is also the part of Canada that is the most functionally bicultural and bilingual in Montreal you can go into any random store or shop or restaurant and speak either French or English and be able to take it completely for granted that whoever you're talking to will be able to respond in the same language the rate of French English fluency here is over 50% the highest in Canada just because it's so necessary to survive here but because of the politics and the history this has also led to the rise of some unique Montreal problems for example if you work at a store how should you greet a customer who walks in without saying anything statistically speaking he'll probably want to speak French but it is still very possible he could be an English Montrealer who resents having to speak French all the time now some Montreal errs will have you believe that they can tell an English speaker from a French speaker just by looking at them but most people working in the service industry here seem to find it a lot easier to just bark out a single word at every person they encounter Roger hi a combination of Bonjour and HI it's a way of signaling hey I'm willing to speak whatever but this has in turn provoked a backlash from those francophones who would not pander to the English minority so you sometimes see this sticker in the window of shops which basically means you will be spoken to in French here there is also the issue of Montreal's large immigrant community who by some counts are now close to a quarter of the city's population many of these people are much better at English than French just because it's much more common to learn English than French in most countries of the world but the government wants them to get better at French so you sometimes see these stickers on immigrant run shops which say I'm trying to learn French please encourage me then there is the sign situation because of various legislation passed by the Quebec government since the 1970s you don't tend to see that much English public signage anymore even in places where other non-english speaking countries tend to display English out of courtesy for foreigners like on highway signs or public transportation and in the rare cases you do see English in public the law requires it to be visibly smaller than the French the same goes for immigrant languages Quebecers are also fairly infamous for not even using english words for modern things where in other places it might be considered cool to do so like bubble tea or pop-up shop or laser tag or McChicken company names are kind of a gray area some chain stores just use their English name while others use a unique French name others just tack on a French word to their English name to sort of French things up a bit this whole question of how French something has to be to be legally satisfactory is still very much something Quebec's politicians continue to debate now Montreal is obviously a city defined by a lot more than just language politics and protocols and what better way to embrace that full richness of Montreal culture than with some souvenirs so I have been in Montreal for a fair bit longer than I anticipated and as a result I have bought quite a lot of souvenirs so we shall go through them and learn of them the first one is of course this poutine air freshener which is basically what it sounds like a air freshener in the shape of a package of poutine the Montreal errs have quite a proud food culture a lot of which is based around foods that are not particularly good for you so in addition to poutine the beloved Quebec dish of french fries and gravy and cheese curds the Montreal errs are also very proud of their bagels they're smoked meat sandwiches their hotdogs and of course their maple syrup Quebec is actually the main producer of maple syrup in Canada and as a result Quebecers really lean into that is one of their symbols even more so I would argue than the rest of Canada so I bought this little postcard which I thought was quite cute it is a stylized depiction of the little man on the maple syrup can longtime viewers will remember that I talked about the maple syrup can in a previous video but basically there is this very iconic can of canned maple syrup that's kind of a sort of retro nostalgia item because it's a throwback to a time in which you bought maple syrup and cans instead of little plastic jugs like you do now but the maple syrup can is still much more widely seen in this province than I had anticipated I went to one of the iconic farmers markets and you know everywhere you go you see these big tables just brimming with maple syrup cans so I thought this was kind of a cute little bit of memorabilia commemorating the Quebecer love of the syrup camp now the flag lovers in my audience as if there's any other kind will get a kick out of this this is a sticker of the flag of Montreal but it is not a sticker of the current flag of Montreal so traditionally the flag of Montreal was sort of a representation of what were at the time the sort of dominant ethnic groups of the city so we see a fleur de lys representing the French crowded out by three symbols of British domination the English Rose the Shamrock and the Scottish thistle now obviously people began to have a problem with this flag but perhaps not in the way you might be anticipating a couple of years ago folks were like hey where's the representation for the indigenous peoples of Montreal so they revised the flag and stuck a golden fir tree right in the middle of the English cross here to commemorate the indigenous peoples of this territory and now that is the flag that you see flying everywhere in public in Montreal the one with the golden tree in the middle I actually did buy a golden tree flag magnet I don't know where it went I wanted to show these two souvenirs side-by-side so now I just look like a horribly reactionary person that's buying a sticker of the old racist flag this little thing here is quite funny this is a souvenir made by the same people that made the the poutine air freshener so they clearly specialize in novelty gifts what this is is a salt and pepper shaker in the shape of two traffic cones the Montreal errs have these very distinct looking traffic cones they are very tall and cylindrical and the Montreal hours are very well I wouldn't say that they're proud of them but they are certainly ubiquitous enough to be a sort of symbol of the city and they're ubiquitous because Montreal is just constantly under construction you might have noticed that I didn't do a lot of the outdoor filming in this video and that's because Montreal is really one of the noisiest cities I think I've ever been to everywhere you go it is just like trucks backing up and jackhammers tearing up the street and everything is under construction everywhere blockades and you can never walk down the sidewalk because you know they're digging half of it up I mean I guess this is a personification of the fact that the city continues to grow and expand and all the rest of it but man it is very inconvenient and very noisy I know that there is some some allegations that this is not all completely on the level either there was a famous investigation some years back about you know mafia corruption and whatnot in the construction industry but we won't get into that but anyway the Montreal traffic cones I thought were pretty fun so so far I've shown you mostly sort of corny things but I did buy one nice traditional thing as well this is a french-canadian arrow sash you can see it's got little tassels at the end here this is a very sort of traditional piece of french-canadian clothing it is a sort of scarf that in the old days you know you would tie around your waist to keep your jacket on but it is sort of now become a symbol of you know like French Canadian pride French Canadian nationalism it's a very sort of historical traditionalist kind of thing just completely randomly I was googling something the other day and I came across this picture of when Nelson Mandela came to Canada and in Jean Chretien who was the Prime Minister of Canada at that time and a french-canadian he gave Mandela one of these sashes to wear around his waist and you know it was kind of a you know cross-cultural exchange the famous French Canadian mascot character bon Homme the snowman guy wears a sash like this if you've ever seen him it is quite a popular symbol of the matey people in Canada as well the people that are you know half french-canadian and half Aboriginal so yeah I thought it was kind of a nice traditional object to have is a kind of commemoration of the of the french-canadian people who I do not hate this is another little fun one this is a little the goblin guy little doll this is the mascot of the Just for Laughs comedy Empire it is a stand-up comedy show that Montreal hosts I guess every year it's a very big deal they get all of the top comedians from all over the world to come here massive sort of cultural event for the city and for the country but just for laughs corporation also hosts just you know stand-up comedy routines on television they also have something that is quite infamous I think most middle-class Canadians would be familiar with which are the Just for Laughs gags which is basically a kind of hidden-camera thing people do kind of pranks on unsuspecting people and then it's like oh no what happened you can look up Just for Laughs gags on YouTube I'm sure there's a million of them I say that they're infamous because they're all silent there's never any talking in them which makes them seem a little off and there's also something that it's just kind of culturally weird about them which you don't really understand at the time I mean I remember watching these on TV when I was a child so I didn't really quite piece it together what made them so sort of off but you know now you understand that it's because it's in Quebec and so there's little sort of cultural indicators that you perhaps don't really recognize but now you can appreciate oh it's you know it's just a very different part of the country and so that's why maybe that people are behaving slightly differently or the settings or the clothing or whatever the Just for Laughs Goblin is just kind of a little cartoon character they sometimes have little animations of him on the stand-up show or in-between the Just for Laughs gags according to this tag here his name is Victor I didn't know that a fun thing about this one is that he has a little badge on him I don't know if you can see that he's got a little badge here it has a J FL which is just for but the style in which the lettering is done is in the style of the montreal expos baseball team this was a major league baseball team that the Montreal has had until relatively recently when did that end actually when I looked that up yeah until 2004 so relatively recently and as anyone who has ever lived in a city that has lost a major league sports franchise will know as I do because of course I come from Vancouver lost the NBA team the team becomes a sort of great source of nostalgia and sort of you know bitterness and and as a result there's a lot of Montreal's Expos merchandise that is still available for sale and for sort of hipster ironic reimagining z-- like this alright and then lastly of course I could not leave Quebec without picking up my Quebec passport so of course this is a sort of cheeky symbol of the Quebec independence movement which is you know still a big part of Quebec politics to this day this is actually a cool little souvenir however because on the inside you can see it's not like a passport it just has little fun facts and information about different aspects of Quebec and Quebec history and Quebec culture and the symbols of Quebec it even has a proposed Quebec national anthem so yeah just kind of a fun little souvenir that I think everybody would immediately appreciate the significance of when they see so yes that was my trip to Montreal the longest and most substantial visit I've ever made to Quebec in general I've certainly had my political issues with the province over the years but you know no place is defined entirely by politics I've had a good time here and I hope you've enjoyed this video don't forget to Like and subscribe and I will see you all next week in which we will start talking about the big exciting Canadian election pardon me sorry I don't get it oh I'm making YouTube videos I make youtube videos yeah yeah what say I have a hundred thousand subscribers yeah can I show you my video or my channel yeah 100,000 you see yeah see this is me JJ see a hundred thousand okay where I'm from Vancouver Vancouver yeah nice to meet you sir

Channel: J.J. McCullough

Views: 342,177

Rating: 4.6747603 out of 5

Keywords: Montreal tourism, Quebec tourism, Quebec trip, French Canada, French Canadians, visiting Quebec, Canadian tourism, Quebec culture, do they speak French, French and English, bilingualism, Canadian history, history of Quebec, history of Montreal, French English relations, Bill 101, sign laws, French laws, souvenirs

Id: QSAf_Wwmq-k

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/frankIIe]

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[u/marclapin]

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[u/LeBalafre]

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