DKS
Ad reinforces stereotypes, both good and bad.
Posted on: 09/16/2013 07:07
The night Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was shot and killed, my father got into a very animated discussion with some fellow Quebecois in Los Angeles.
He was a attending a professional conference and was staying in the same hotel (although a dozen floors above) the kitchen where Kennedy was murdered by a lone assassin. He didn’t know anything until the next morning. But earlier in the evening he had been to dinner with some fellow professionals from Quebec.
We had moved from Quebec in 1965 to Toronto. My father had returned to school and had taken a job there. The Quebecois gentlemen tried to convince my father that his place was in Quebec, participating in the Quiet Revolution, which was then unfolding. My father disagreed. He suggested that because he was an Anglophone (someone whose mother tongue was English), he was, by birth, in a position of privilege in Quebec and that his position of privilege would take away the job of someone who was Francophone.
My father said that his dinner companions were quite shocked that he would take such a position; the idea that one would give up power for the sake of another was almost inconceivable to them. The dinner conversation was conducted almost entirely in French; something else that initially astonished the Quebecois, but was quite natural for my bilingual father. His companions did conceed he had a point, although it was new to them.
Fifty years later, not much has changed. We have been through a couple of referendums and various government arguments over this and that. Some have been serious and some not. But over all, we have muddled through, seeking compromise and mutual recognition.
The latest round in this ongoing cultural dance is over religious symbols in public institutions. The Quebec government has introduced a Charter of Quebec Values. One of the basics of the charter is that it comes with a strict set of rules around what religious garb can and can’t be worn by government employees in publicly funded institutions.
Of course, the usual suspects jumped to their various perches right at the beginning. Politicians, both federal and provincial, made their various talking points. But as someone who wears religious garb on a daily basis, I found this discussion hitting a little closer to home.
Does my wearing of a clerical collar mark certain privilege? When I am working in hospitals or nursing, visiting my own church members, am I being too forward in proclaiming my religious faith? Should I ditch the clerical collar and clergy shirt for a shirt and tie?
As challenging as I find the argument of the Charter of Quebec Values (and make no mistake, I find the argument challenging in a broadly inclusive, multicultural society), I find the reaction to the Charter to be equally challenging. I’m speaking specifically of an ad by Lakeridge Health in Durham Region.
The ad, which is targeted at medical students at McGill University in Montreal, shows a picture of a young woman with a white coat and stethoscope around her neck. If I read the body language correctly, she has her arms crossed, which is, in western culture, position of confidence or defiance. She has a scarf on her head; one of the banned religious symbols in the Charter of Quebec Values. The text of the ad reads, "We don’t care what’s on your head. We care what’s in it."
I don’t think the Lakeridge Health ad contributes anything useful to what is, foundationally, a Quebec issue. I think the ad is in questionable taste, appearing to attempt to provoke and polarize, rather than conciliate and understand.
Having neighbours, whether they are in our community, nation or the world means there are times we have to learn to love them in spite of their peculiarities. Loving neighbours can be messy. We have to engage in dialogue and conversation. We have to be part of community. And we have to know when to speak and when to hold our tongue. The Lakeridge Health ad is badly timed and not helpful. It reinforces stereotypes, both good and bad. This issue won’t go away. But there is no need to make it worse.
Rev. David Shearman is the minister of Central Westside United Church, Owen Sound and the host of Faithworks on Rogers TV - Grey County, Cable 53.
Search
Comments
graeme
Posted on: 09/19/2013 14:26
Historically, the anglos of Quebec have NOT been rich. Their wealth has been a myth that even the rich Englisih believe. Indeed, I was taught in my English Montreal school that we English were superior to the French in business intelligence. it made me wonder why we, wieth our superior intelligence, were living in a district with all those poor, French people.
In fact, through the nineteenth century, the majority of English Quebeckers were rural and small town. There were not millionaires - and not businessmen at any level above local schop keepers.
In the twentieth century, most were moved to the city where they because unskilled labour. The majority of the English were, in fact, at the lowest level of the working class. Check the census figures.
That lasted until well into the 50s and even later. However, anglos did gain a slight advantage as office jobs grew because the English school system could take them to grade ll. The French system was far inferior, and usually ended at grade nine.
That had nothing to do with any sins of the English. The French rich (yes, there were lots of them. Where do you think Trudeau came from?) semt there own children to excellent private schools, but used their control of school boards to keep working class French in dheap and vastly inferior schools.
I grew up with the lowest level of the anglo working class in Montreal. For their snobbery and pretentions, we disliked the rich English as much as any separatist did.
And we sure did not appreciate them babbling the myth about how all the anglos were rich.
The rich anglo had the fine houses of Westmount and TMR. The rich French had the mansions of Outremont where Trudeau grew up. We, the majority of English, got the slums of Griffintown and Maisonneuve and Mile End, of little Italy and little Syria. and the north end.
I once sat at a table with a separatist premier. (We were both speaking to a gathering.) He looked at me with burning hatred, and told me how his father had worked hard all his life, but could give his descendants only his farm, house , and a couple of hundred thousand/
I thought of my father who worked hard all his life so that the dirt and rust of the factory was ground into his skin = and he left far less than a farm, a house and a couple of thousand.. And as I listened to the premier, I could only mutter "bastard".
There is an anglo Quebec that has never been heard from.