Re: Quebec %^$@&$
On a few occasions, I found the Quebeckers to be a very *racist* group of people.
Maybe *racist* is a strong word, but consider:
On one occasion, way back in high-school, we had to take French classes up to grade 11 if we wanted to get into university. Well, my appreciation for French led me to take French 12 as well. Luckily, we had a native Quebecker teaching that class. Great! I thought, we can really learn something now! Unfortunately, for one asian fellow, it meant a lot of rude remarks and racist behaviour directed towards him. One day, out of nowhere, this teacher started to pick on him by starting to speak Chinese.. without knowing a word of it. All that came out of his mouth was the words "ching" and "chong" and we all know that the combination of the two words repeated over and over doesn't really mean anything in any language. I was utterly disgusted (as was the rest of the class) at his blatant disrespect for other peoples cultures and languages. I mean, this nonsense lasted a full 30 seconds without pause or interruption. WTF? Meanwhile, the singled-out asian fellow was totally embarassed and didn't really know how to react to it. Throughout the course, this happened a couple of times more and after that, I had completely no respect for my teacher and I had a very negative view towards Quebeckers.
I passed that off as an exception to the way Quebeckers view visible-minorities until I happened to be vacationing in Banff, Alberta. When I was there, there were a lot of foreign vacationers from Asia and Europe.. which is great for the economy. I decided to try out this French restaurant located on the main street in Banff for lunch. Not many people in there as it was kind of fancy. Well, when I ordered and waited for my meal, there was a couple of Japanese women who came in and were seated. Unfortunately, for them, that was the only service they got from the place. For some reason, they just sat there and quietly waited for somebody to take their order... which never happened. After a while, they just left. I'm not sure if the people working the place were Quebeckers or not but they spoke pretty fluent French. In response to that blatant disrespect, I refused to tip the waiters and I also minused the 15% gratuity they automatically added ontop. They threatened to call the cops, and I said "Go ahead" and then they let me go.
Another exception? I hope so, but my gut feeling says that Quebeckers don't have the same respect as the rest of Canada does towards them. Nowadays, I hear about the languages laws in Quebec and the fines associated with it for non-compliance and then there are those that think Quebec is better off without the rest of Canada, etc, etc, etc. I think to myself how much more does the rest of Canada have to bend over to please these group of people?
When I look at all the incidents that have happened in the past years (including the ones I described above), I feel that I've wasted my time taking French when I could've taken something better like Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, or Italian. At least, if I didn't understand what they said, I wouldn't really care... and ignorance is bliss.
For those Quebeckers that are not like this, I'm sorry to have posted this, but the fact is, after travelling all over Europe, Asia, and North America, I haven't witnessed anything like the way Quebeckers treat other people.