Quebec's Big Bloopers and Assorted Nuts

One reason that I love Quebec, is because it has one of the craziest cultures in existence. It also has some of the craziest politics and politicians. Living in Quebec is like falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in a world where the Mad Hatter is King - particularly if you come from a place where politicians are viewed as demigods, instead of flesh and blood people.

In Quebec, a personal scandal or two does not a pariah make. A grandiose vision can include something only found in futuristic science fiction, while lack of any vision can cause a post-apocalyptic-like current reality.

Jean Drapeau

Jean Drapeau served as mayor of Montreal for almost three decades (1954-1957 and 1960-1986). During his reign (and it could only be called that), the city thrived. Everything that Mayor Drapeau did was done in a big way. His vision for the city was enormous. At that time, Montreal was the top city in Canada and served as a sort of cultural bridge between Europe and the rest of North America. Drapeau's goal was to make Montreal into a city that reflected it's own importance in the world.

Mayor Drapeau gave us a metro (subway) system that caught the attention of cities in the US who were entertaining the notion of building or extending their own subway services. Our snow removal services were considered among the best in the world. Every year when winter set in, and the inevitable snowstorms hit, we had crews out cleaning the streets within twenty minutes of the first snowflake landing. Once again, how things were being done in Montreal caught the attention of other countries. This time, it was the then-Soviet Union. Delegates came from Moscow to inspect and learn from our methods.

Among his earliest triumphs, Mayor Drapeau managed to bag the right to hold the 1967 World Fair (Expo '67) in 'his' city. Ten years later, though, he would pull off an even more stunning feat.

Without a doubt, the biggest feather in Mayor Drapeau's hat was landing the 1976 summer Olympics. This time, however, he stumbled a little by hiring an architect who was not used to designing buildings which would have to withstand harsh Canadian winters. But, what the heck! He was a big name from France! Between the corruption inherent in the Quebec construction industry that saw concrete being watered down, and a design that belonged on the Côte d’Azur, and not in Montreal, our famous Olympic Stadium ended up roofless for years. Temporary roofs have come and gone, while supposedly permanent ones fell apart. The Big 'O', as it is popularly referred to (though some call it the 'Big Zero'), seems to have a mind of it's own when it comes to wearing a roof like a normal building! "No!" it insists, "I will go roofless! You will not jock-strap me in such a way!"

Putting aside the wayward and unruly Big 'O', Mayor Drapeau did have a great success in the construction of the Montreal BioDome, which can be described as a showcase of various eco-systems throughout the Americas, featuring regional plants, animals, and aquatics.

Unfortunately, there was a flip side to all of these world-class successes. Mayor Drapeau had a dream. A big, futuristic dream. He wanted to enclose the entire Island of Montreal under a dome. That way, he could keep the city perfectly climate-controlled.

Well, what did you expect? He'd pulled off everything else, done all that could be done. There had to be something out there that he still dreamed of conquering.

The sad fact is that his successors in office just couldn't fill the size 750 shoes he left behind. Mayors with great vision, and a lot of nuttiness, come by only once is a lifetime, it seems, and without them, our once-beautiful city now crumbles.

By the way, it should be noted that 'Drapeau' means 'flag' in French. Kind of a suitable name for the man, don't you think?

Image: Pixabay

Parti Québécois - The Early Years in Office

The Parti Québécois' early years as Quebec's ruling party were marked by a more than a few 'most embarrassing moments'. The political party was, after all, not exactly comprised of career politicians. It was birthed from a province-wide social movement, the logical end product of what had already come to be known as Quebec's 'Quiet Revolution'. French-speaking Quebecers had some very legitimate grievances, and the Parti Québécois was created in order shake up the provincial-federal political dynamic. Love them or hate them, what they did, they did with a genuine earthy aplomb that was sometimes a little too earthy.

Almost from the get-go, the Parti Québécois leadership found itself being caught bare-assed by the public eye.

In February of 1977, Premiere René Lévesque accidentally ran over a homeless man. The man, who apparently lay in the street as a way of getting himself a bed in a hospital for the night, was killed. Lévesque ended up being fined for not wearing his glassed while driving, though many people opined that his attention was likely more fixed on his secretary (who was in the car with him at the time), than on the road in front of him. The scandal was resolved the old-fashioned way: he divorced his wife, and married the secretary.

Cabinet minister Claude Charron took his turn in the spotlight of embarrassment when he was caught shoplifting a fur coat from the Eaton's store in Downtown Montreal during February of 1982. At the time, as I remember it, he was in the company of his boyfriend. This proved to be a double bonanza for the nightly news! Mr. Charron, meanwhile, blamed this incident on his disappointment over the government's failure to win a 'yes' vote in the 1980 Quebec Referendum.

But the fun didn't stop there! It was eventually discovered that another cabinet minister, Claude Morin, was an RCMP informant. Would you trust an agent of the federal government in your nationalist cabinet? Apparently René Lévesque did, since there is evidence to the effect that he even asked Mr. Morin about it at one point.

Image: Pixabay

Oh!! Those Trudeaus!!!

One cannot talk about Quebec's assorted nuts without talking Trudeau. Period.

What needs to be said about Trudeau Sr.'s time as Prime Minister, beyond 'Rolling Stones' and 'Digital Salute'? Well, I suppose there were a lot of big and little bloopers in those years, but these two really stand out among them.

Papa Trudeau long had a reputation as a ladies' man, even before he married Margaret Sinclair. The marriage between the older Trudeau and the quite young Sinclair was not without its ups and downs. It was just unlucky that they lived in such a public arena. Sinclair's behavior over the years was often quite erratic, so I guess not too many people were all that surprised when she abandoned husband and kids on the couple's sixth anniversary and took off with the Rolling Stones rock band. I certainly wasn't anymore.

Obviously, Papa Trudeau was the one who got to keep the kids.

Speed along to August 8, 1982, when father and sons are on vacation and passing through Salmon Arm, British Columbia in a private railway carriage. Protesters gather at the station, and hurl anti-Francophone abuse, as well as assorted vegetables at the carriage. The vacationing Prime Minister peers out the carriage window, and proceeds to give the protesters 'the finger'. The media, not knowing how to politely describe this incident name it 'the digital salute'.

No, not the 'Salmon Arm Salute', or even the 'Trudeau Salute. It was christened far-and-wide 'the Digital Salute'.

We also had Trudeau's famous pirouette performed behind the back of Queen Elizabeth during a G-7 conference.

Image source

Trudeau Jr. is a far cry from his father when it comes to scandals. However, he does make up for it in stupid suck-ups that even annoy the people he's trying to suck up to.

Justin Trudeau somehow managed to put even the nationalist Parti Québécois to shame by refusing to answer in English to a question put to him in English, about access to services in English, at a town hall meeting in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Never before had any politician pulled that one in Quebec. Not even our most hard-core sovereigntist Provincial ones. This put Quebec's political elite over the unenviable barrel of having to condemn the Prime Minister for refusing to speak English when addressing anglophones in Quebec.

It was almost as awkward as having the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec nationalist political party, acting as the official opposition in Canadian Parliament. I have to say, the Bloc did a lot better than Trudeau Jr. did.

And that is the odd thing about Quebecers. When the Bloc found itself as the official opposition, it took defending the interests of all Canadians quite seriously. For that brief time, it put aside its own agenda and fought for all of Canada because that was the job it somehow, inexplicably, landed in. There is a certain honest pragmatism in the Québécois approach to politics, even when they find themselves out in the Twilight Zone.

You've just got to love how weird things get around here.

Image: Pixabay

French-language links:
Claude Carron

http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/2/rene-levesque-a-t-il-su-avant-1981-que-son-ministre-claude-morin-collaborait-avec-la-grc-l-histoire-s-ecrit-lentement