Rue Sherbrooke – 2012.07.22 – 16h47Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes
Above
Part of the crowd heading back or going somewhere after the July 22 march, here on Sherbrooke near Jeanne-Mance. The police tried to tell them (well, ‘us’ actually 
) with loudspeakers to walk on the sidewalk because the street was open to traffic but they (we) ignored them. Eventually the police abandoned, since it was quite obvious that most of them were simply returning to the point of departure, at Place Émilie-Gamelin, following the same modus operandi as for the march itself, that is using the route of their immediate choice.
It’s hot, can you type it for me?
It’s very hot today (Saturday). Coming back from marché Jean-Talon I went to the weather site (at 17h15) and it said 33°C effective temperature and 40°C considering the humidex factor. Humidex is the summer version of winter’s wind chill factor, or how it feels like combined with either the humidity (summer) or the wind (winter). A good part of an air conditioner’s job is to remove the humidity, as anyone having seen one dripping knows. I used to mess around with a conversion site when I wanted to mention these degrees in Faren Heights and it just occured to me that those two little squares with a C and an F in them on the weather site were precisely designed for that function. 
So it’s also 91°F and 104°F, translated in anglo-saxon. This was a week of discovery for me since some days ago, I also found an alternate way of making those ° little circles appear on the screen. Before I had to press <^>then or and then both the ˚ and the C/F appeared together. Now all I have to do is press <;>. AltCar is also known as . And bonus of bonuses, that little circle is the real degree circle, being somewhat lower and level with the top of the C or F characters. This is the wrong circle I used before ˚F and this is the correct one °F, as a glance to the weather site confirmed. Now, isn’t all this so ever extraordinary. Not only can we talk about weather as a conversation filler on blogs, but we can do it using the right circle. Progess is fascinating.
It’s like for the Euro sign, for example. This week I had to use it in a comment and gee, how do you make it appear? I have the £ Pound, the ¥ Yen and the $ Dollar on my keyboard but no € Euro. After some instensive research, I mean a good 3 to 5 minutes, I finally found the way to write it in HTML. You have to type this, without the underscores: _&_#_8364_;_ . Not user friendly but they say it works, and it did. They also recommended using this instead of other means for blogs etc. What I gather is that like in Windows, some characters in some editors are not hard coded. They have to be recreated at display time and on the Net, this sometimes screws up. Well, no later than a half hour ago, ta-dam! drumroll! ring the bells! blow the horns! I found that my keyboard did have the € sign, it was just not printed on it. And not only that, it has two. One is <4> which gives this € and the other is which it gives this €. Frankly they look like identical twins to me. 
Why there’s two, search me (but only above the belt).
Keyboards are like pounds and kilos. For some reason that beats me, some people don’t want to make their lives easier. You can get an English keyboard which is quite limited (ok, I’ll say ‘basic’ not to hurt anyone’s sensitivities ) or you can get a multilingual keyboard which includes that very limited basic English keyboard with the same characters but with half a ton of extra characters from different languages like Spanish, French and even Scandinavian, plus a bunch of everyday practical signs like © ¢ µ ± ♪ ® and so on. It even has those kinky ⅜ ⅝ and ⅞ that only anglos use with their inches and pounds. Can’t be more accomodating than that, for gawd sakes! Sure it needs getting adjusted to, the Enter key is not the same size… which is considered like a terrorist attack reading most comments on this page. I kind of noticed that those who do or plan to communicate with other people(s), like from other cultures or continents, didn’t mind the adjustment. Goes to say…
Now, we can go a long way starting with a 33°C, don’t we? 
This is the standardized (1992 CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 standard) Canadian multilingual keyboard, with the € sign added in 1999. It is mandatory for Federal and Québec employees, and it is the one I use. On Wikipedia they say that companies use it also for its ease of operation (well, what do you know) and to standardize the keyboards they use. The wording on the keys is replaced by symbols, so it’s universal. What the symbols mean is shown in the pics below, but not printed on the keys. If you look for a DEL (Delete) key, forget it. That’s not French nor Spanish. But that symbol with three slanted bars is, in whatever language. For someone or anyone else like me who uses the QWERTY layout and who has to or wants to write in more than one of the three French, Englsh or Spanish languages, this keyboard is the best in the world by far. And I’m not even talking of all the extra characters.
August 2, 1971 ± 19:30
«Dad is dead». I was taking a nap and my brother entered the bedroom and from the doorframe brought me back abruptly to reality. In fact what he did say was «Dad est mort». We always called my father «Dad» because in those days we were second-class citizens as all Acadians in New-Brunswich who did not live in the Acadian Peninsula were, and second-class citizens called their father «Dad», not «Papa». Nowadays, no one in my family lets anyone treat us as second-class citizens anymore. This creates an extra difficulty when we refer to my father because referring to him as «Dad» is now not even thinkable, and referring to him as «Papa» makes it sound like we’re talking about somebody else. That’s what happens when you’re still there two hundred and fifty years after having been ethically cleansed. You can’t even talk about your own father to your siblings. Or even talk to him, in your thoughts.
My father never had to call his father «Dad». That’s because he came from the Acadian Peninsula, a remote area in north-eastern New-Brunswick, a region not very populated and which is almost 100% French-speaking Acadian. Why? Acadians, who were expert farmers, and who came from the Poitou and other central regions of France, had settled more south around the Bay of Fundy (the one with its famed high tides), and especially on its southern shores in what is nowadays Nova Scotia. In 1755 and until 1762, they were deported by boats, families separated, their land stolen, and were dumped all along the North England coast where no one wanted them, or in prisons in England, and some others shipped back from England to France where they were not welcomed either. Thousands died on those ships. Today, this kind of operation is called “ethnic cleansing” and “massacre”. People prefer to call it, for reasons I disagree with, a toned-down Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Upheaval). I prefer calling a cat a cat.
«American historians consider that, of a total population estimated between 12 000 and 18 000 Acadians in 1755, between 7 500 and 9 000 perished between 1755 and 1763, either by the effects of the deportation, either trying to escape it. (from Wikipedia). All this because the Acadians wanted to remain neutral in the conflict then opposing France and England (the Seven-Year war). They therefore refused to plead allegiance to the King of England when asked to.
Those who tried to escape fled north, often with the help of Natives. It is estimated that nearly one million Quebecers have Acadian roots. Some of those who were deported in New England finished by ending up in Louisiana, along with others who were sent to England and who ended up in France near Chatellerault where they didn’t know what to do with them and gave them some of the worst lands they could find. That area, called La ligne Acadienne, I also visited, this time planned, in 1993,. Eventually Spain paid for seven ships to send many of them to Louisiana, in 1785. I think most of today’s Cajuns are descendants of these latest. The others who stayed in New England tried to survive.
Even before the Seven-year war was over, the Brits realized they had sawed the branch they were sitting on. The Acadians were excellent farmers and had highly perfectionized a technique they had brought with them initially from France and which is called “aboiteaux” [1], a technique using dikes covering wooden canals blocked on the river side by an automatically shutting door at high tide, and used to dry up marshlands along rivers. Soils claimed this way are five times more productive than soils claimed through deforestation, and most of the land in those days was forests. This system was particularly useful because of the very high tides in the area. The English had no clue how these worked, and for this and other practical reasons like lack of farm workers or to whom do you sell what you grow on the land you stole if you sent everyone who lived there before to die on ships or in New England, or simply the fear of lacking the population needed to protect themselves in view of rising independence desires in New England, they offered to the Acadians to come back. Many did because it was their land and their home and they were rejected to start with in New England. However when they came back, their lands were not given back to them. Either they worked for the British now owning their lands or they headed north to regions along the shores, lined with agriculturally inhospitable lands beaten by the winds and which no one else wanted. That’s how many Acadians ended up in the Acadian Peninsula and had to become fishermen to survive. And excellent ones at that as much as they were in agriculture. Fisheries is still today the main economic activity in that region, if I’m not mistaken.
While they were in exile, and for almost a century after the deportation, Acadians lived in a social no man’s land, having no institutions or means of communication of their own and therefore were oblivious to each other. Their heritage and culture was transmitted from generation to generation, by word of mouth. In the 1880s, they were finally starting to get something together and they congregated in Memramcook, near Moncton, to give themselves institutions, like hospitals, universities, a national anthem, a flag and a National Day, August 15, Our Lady of Assumption day.
Today, most Acadians and their descendants live, like the Jews, in a diaspora. But those who are still there, in Acadia, that borderless homeland in Eastern Canada, those Acadians are anything but dead yet.
If I hold a grudge? Damn right I hold a grudge. Despite repeated requests, no excuse whatsoever ever came from the British Crown for that massacre, while some were handed out for other events of the same nature elsewhere on the planet. But also because they’re still at it today, two hundred and fifty years later. Not the Brits of course, but those they left behind. Of course, they’re not burning houses or deporting people nowadays, they are rather constantly blowing on the little cultural flame that the Acadians try to keep alive. Nothing is ever given. Every right, still today, has to be fought for. Not only to be gained, but also to be kept.
The deportation started in the small village of Grand-Pré, where all the Acadian men of the village were congregated in the church to be told they were being deported and their land confiscated. Today a place bearing the name of Grand-Pré still exists. Some decades ago, they built a replica (sort of) of the church, with a statue of Évangeline in front of it, that fictional character invented by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and having become a symbol of the Acadian tragedy, and its immediate surroundings is now a Canadian National Historic site. It also became a UNESCO World Heritage site about a month ago. All the area covered in that UNESCO site is a collection of luxurious lands and a superb landscape, just like it was and made so by the Acadians before their deportation started in 1755. Except that today, those who own and live very well out of them, mind you, are the descendants of those who stole them from us. And they are those who pocket the cash that tourism to Grand-Pré brings about. For me, it’s adding insult to injury. Many Acadians I know have been to Grand-Pré, as some sort of pilgrimage. Not me. Not for now anyways, still too much anger. Maybe one day, when I’ll be more serene…
The Acadians continued to be deported until 1762, one year before the official end of the Seven-Year War in 1763, with the Treaty of Paris. Two years earlier, and one year after the fall of Québec City in 1759, France sent a little flotilla to help, but it was too little, too late. They had to take refuge in the large Baie des Chaleurs (Chaleur Bay) and eventually were forced, by a British flotilla sent after them, to retreat where the bay takes it origin, the Restigouche river (Ristigouche). That is where the last naval battle of the Seven-Year war took place. Seeing they were losing, the French purposely sank most of their ships. One of them, the Machault, was recovered from the past in the sixties, probably protected by the muddy waters, and its remains are now on display at the National Historic Site, The Battle of the Ristigouche. Another one, the Marquis de Malauze, had English prisoners on board and was abandoned. It was burned and sunk by the English, after having recovered their men. Parts of if were recovered in the late 1930s by a Capucin priest who was in charge of their mission in the Amerindian reserve of Listuguj. There were many Acadians in the area at the time, having recently resettled there after having fled the deportation. They had named their settlement Petite-Rochelle, by the name of the French port city of La Rochelle, from where most Acadians had boarded to come to America. I went to La Rochelle in 1997, in an unplanned visit. I took the small pedestrian ferry going to the island of Ré. I sat looking back, wanting to see the towers of the port of La Rochelle slowly fade away, as my ancestors had seen them fade away when they left for that great unknown, in the 17th century. Can’t say it wasn’t an emotional moment.
All their houses in Petite-Rochelle were burned down by the British after that battle. Acadians were not up to their first house burning. They just spread farther, on both shores of the Restigouche river and of the Baie des Chaleurs, in New Brunswick on one side, and in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula on the other side, or in the woods. Nowadays the descendants of Acadians in the region are numerous (I’d say the majority of the population) and have brought a lot to the betterment of it. I was told last year that they were to erect a monument on the New Brunswick side, in the town of Campbellton, to commemorate and celebrate the Acadian contribution to the region. Asked if I cared to contribute financially, I sent a cheque.
Why do I have the impression I have already posted about all of this a few years back? Probably because I did. Needed to rant I guess.
My mother’s house, and the place where my family has lived since 1959, is located on top of a hill, in a town which despite being in a region overwhelmingly Acadian, has always been a shithole for them, being populated, by a slight majority (then, now it may have changed), by people of English, Scottish or Irish origin, some of whom woke up in the middle of the night to devise ways to get rid of anything French or Acadian. I exaggerate, but barely. When the drapes were closed and three or four cars lined the street in front of our neighbor’s house, we knew that they were plotting something, like making sure that if a new school was to be built, the English would get it first, stuff like that. Ever heard of the Grand Orange Lodge? It’s a soft version of the KKK. They hate Catholics, and even more when they speak French. That’s the atmosphere I grew up in back in the sixties. My music teacher supplied by the school board barely spoke French (if she even did, it’s been so long…). I spoke no English and in those days, if you did not understand English you were considered a sub something. I have no basic musical culture because of this. Nowadays it’s not as bad. New Brunswick became officially bilingual in 1969, because for the first (and last) time in its history an Acadian became Premier and despite numerous death threats, he dedicated the ten years he was in office (1960-1970) to correct some of the scandalous inequities there were between the Acadians and the Anglos at the time. Just as a side note, when my father visited the house we bought back in 1959, he had to do it by night otherwise the Anglos would have noticed and ganged up to make sure one of them bought it first. In that part of the town, any Acadian was an Acadian too many.
When I go visit my mother, if I walk a few short blocks, here and there in between the trees and the houses, I can see the Restigouche river flowing below, the interprovincial bridge, Québec on the other side with the Amerindian reserve of Listuguj (Ristigouche) just left of the bridge, and then more to the left the area where was La Petite-Rochelle in 1760 and in front of which the Machault and the Marquis de Malauze sank. That’s where I’m heading to, most likely next Tuesday. I rented a car for two weeks so I’ll be gone possibly until August 20. On the 15th, I’ll therefore be in Acadia for our National Day, I mean the National Day of my first identity, and I will attend the unveiling ceremonies of that monument I talked about above.
I hope it’s made tough, because some day maybe it’s all that will be left. Many Acadians who lived in villages in the close-by mountains are now moving to the town, and they are slowly being assimilated. They still speak French, although littered with English words if not whole conversations, but as per lifestyles and cultural references go, they are more and more Anglos and that includes the dark side of American crapola, like an astounding rate of overweight youngsters, to name only one. I left that town in 1975 and as far as I am concerned, it’s been downhill ever since. This is absolutely not the case across the river in Québec, where Acadians are proud of their heritage and where assimilation to English is nowhere on the agenda. Of course in Québec no one is in a situation where he’s being made to think that he’d be better off and that it would be so much easier for everyone if he just melted inside the English majority. In Quebec, it’s ‘another’ majority, as we know. Stepping on your culture and joining the majority is what they call “harmony” in New Brunswick. So if you ask for your rights, you are accused of “breaking the harmony” that supposedly exists. When slaves bend to their masters, there is always harmony. It doesn’t mean it’s recommended.
In the remote case of Quebec ever becoming independent, that interprovincial bridge would become an international bridge. In many ways, it already is. When I cross it southbound, although I was raised in that town, I have the impression I’m entering another country than mine. And when I cross it northbound and re-enter Québec, I feel I’m back home. As SNL’s Church Lady would have said: «Well! Ain’t that special!» Yes, it’s quite special indeed. Not surprising. Just special.
[1] Aboiteau (plural Aboiteaux):
The principle of an aboiteau is not only to prevent the sea to invade the lands at high tide, but also and more importantly to evacuate at low tide the water accumulated through rainfall and the melting of snow. Thus, the recuperated lands are slowly ridden of their salt content, washed kind of by those repeated rains and snowfalls. The Acadian aboiteaux (this is a euphemism: aboiteaux ‘are’ an Acadian design) were generally located on the shores of rivers near the sea, or those of the sea itself, and were used to reclaim land which consisted mostly of marshlands regularly flooded by the salt water tides. They built dikes to separate the land from the water, and under them, they built wooden boxes which acted as canals and which had on the river side a clapper door that shut automatically at high tide, preventing the sea water to enter inside, but let the water flow in the other direction at low tide. This technique besides claiming land from marshlands, also produced soils very rich in nutrients. It was already used in France, but the Acadians perfected it greatly because of the very high tides (the world’s highest) in the Bay of Fundy area where they lived. This also explains the presence of so many marshlands regularly flooded by the tides. Some of these dikes were large enough to eventually be flattened on their top and become roads.
Translation from the French Wikipedia entry for “Aboiteau”: «This operating principle already existed in other parts of the world, especially in the west-central regions of France, especially the Poitou marshes which were worked in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century by Dutch engineers, called by Sully, who have drained much of the “wet marshes” of that region. The technique of the withholding valve was then known in that region from which the Acadians came mostly, but the aboiteau is a particular evolution of this system which had to take into account the particularities of Acadia and Quebec [where many fleeing Acadians settled after the deportation], namely a harsh climate and tides among the highest in the world. [..] Nobody can say who invented the aboiteau. This is probably a collective work that has been developed and improved by Acadians over several generations following trial and error experiences. .
There are pictures/drawings on that Wiki page -> here, but for the nec plus ultra on the matter, and in English mind you, I have just found this page which is so complete that I wouldn’t have bothered writing any of the above had I known its existence. Here’s that link which says it all -> Link that says it all. My French readers may just click on Français when on that site to access the original French page.
From that site, this paragraph. The bold characters are mine:
Starting in the mid 1760s, Brithish authorities allowed Acadians to return to Acadia, from which many of them had been exiled. By then, the marshes that they and their ancestors had drained with the use of aboiteaux were now owned by Anglo-American or British settlers. Ironically, in 1760, Governor Charles Lawrence was obliged to put the Deportation on hold, for the hurricane of November 1759 had greatly damaged the aboiteaux and levees of the Acadian marshes and the governor had great need of the remaining Acadians and their knowledge of the aboiteau system. Hence, many Acadian families ended up in Port-Royal, Pigiguit and Beauséjour as prisoners of war. Many Acadians had to work on mending and building aboiteaux and levees for the benefit of the new owners of their former lands. By showing them how the aboiteau system worked, they forfeited to the invaders what was left of their former life from before the Deportation. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the Deportation because, not only did they lose their property, the Acadians were forced to reveal to their usurpers the secrets of a technology developed and perfected by their forefathers.
If I hold a grudge? Don’t ask.
Da food section
I had four or five pics for this section but I don’t have the time to upload and comment them now. Maybe tomorrow if I have the time, but I doubt it. Besides, it was all very ordinary.
Elections
Quebecers have been called to the polls for September 4h. It’s gonna be a nasty campaign. I’m glad I’m getting away from it for a while.
Mascara
This week it was Divers/Cité week in Montreal, a word play about diversity using diverse and city. We have two gay pride weeks here, the official Gay Pride days later in August, and this one which is LGBT and whatever other letters there are. This was the twentieth edition of DIVERS/CITÉ. As is customary in Montreal, it also has major free outdoor events. One is 1, Boulevard des Rêves (1, Dreams Boulevard), a variety show (13th year) featuring mostly singers of differents genres (that was on Thursday). Another one was, yesterday, the fifteenth Mascara, La Nuit des Drags (Mascara, the night of the drags). Its organizer, drag queen Mado Lamotte, says it’s the largest drag queen show on earth. I wanted to attend, not because I’m that fond of drag queens, but because it really is quite a show, but more so because this year Divers/Cité moved from Place Émilie-Gamelin and its Gay Village surroundings to set stage smack in the center of Old Port in old Montreal, on Quai (quay) Jacques-Cartier. Just seeing all those tourists and visitors to the old port with their kids strolling by and seeing this show would have been a delight all by itself. I didn’t go to any show because I was caught doing other stuff, like editing this for example. I have to say that it’s so hot and humid these days that one does not feel very inclined to roam the streets of the city. I read that they had better attendance than past years. I’m glad. I was afraid the move far from the Gay Village would hurt the event, but apparently not. I kind of like this city. Don’t know if I mentioned this before.
Rant on rent
I have to be at the car renters place at 9h00 tomorrow to pick up the rented car. I’ll go by bus (20 minutes). Having had a car since like forever, I never had to rent a car in my whole life except when there was a family reunion for my mother’s 80th birthday in 1984 and my car was not fit for the trip (800 km one way). Brakes had to be done and other stuff. I had reserved a small car, especially because they drink a lot less gas and on this kind of trip, it’s a major concern. When I got at the car renter to pick it up, they had no small car, nor intermediate, nor full sized. For the same price, they offered me one of those huge SUVs that make about 2 miles a gallon. I politely told the guy he could go fuck himself and I had to make the trip with my own car, praying most of the trip that it would tough the run. I didn’t have time to look elsewhere, I had to be at destination that same day. Considering I suffer from anxiety somewhat by nature, and that if you have 3,000 people in a room and there’s a bad luck to be drawn, the chances I end up with the winning ticket are 2999 to one, I’ll only be at ease when I leave the car lot and everything is under control. But first I must make sure to wake up in time.
Marilyn
I clearly remember when Marilyn Monroe died, fifty years ago to this day. We were at our summer cottage on the river and I remember hearing about it from another kid I was madly in love with. I was 12. For some reason I thought I was older. Then again, I can also see in my mind the outside speaker of the small boarding school I was attending a little more than a year later, when it told us that Kennedy had been shot. We did not know then that Kennedy had an affair with the late Marilyn. Not me at least.
We also went at the Pain Doré bread shop and I bought a round loaf (miche) of “pain à l’ancienne” (old style bread). I usually never buy it sliced mostly because their slices are too thin, but this time around, I figured it would be less trouble, considering my limitations. I also bought two pastries, a chocolatine (they call this pain au chocolat in France) and a torsade which is a longer than wide pastry using the same flaky pastry as a croissant or a chocolatine but which is twisted on itself and contains fruits, in this case cranberries..
All in all, I must be on the right track of recuperation since my whining function seems to be pretty well up and running again. 
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