the cassandra pages

Being North African in Paris and Montreal

This good article, from the Globe and Mail, take a first-person look at some of the differences between the experience of North Africans immigrating to France and to Quebec. (via the Montreal City Weblog)

And this one , "Could it Happen Here?"(also referenced from the same source), talks about disaffection among second-generation Canadians -- the children of immigrants, especially those seen as people of color.

She tells of being often asked: ".'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"

On her sense of remoteness, one of Prof. Reitz's findings from the data carries special weight: "Although most Canadians deny harbouring racist views," he says, "they express 'social distance' from minorities — that is, preferences not to act with members of other racial groups."

And so, Prof. Reitz says, the alienation of today's visible-minority second generation is a harbinger of the future.

What Makes Someone French?

"I was born in Senegal when it was part of France," he said... "I speak French, my wife is French and I was educated in France." The problem..."is the French don't think I'm French."

An exploration of national identity, French style, is attempted in this article, from today's New York Times. It's very interesting to me to observe the differences between the European notion of French-ness, and what is lived and breathed in my adoptive city of Montreal. I am no expert yet, but what I have sensed over the past year-and-a-half is a province and a city which truly try to embody an ideal of diversity, and where most immigrants and ethnic groups do feel very much a part of the social fabric. The diversity of the city of Montreal is a point of pride for the majority of its citizens, and it definitely is a major part of what gives the city its character. This vibrant melange of cultures and languages is overlaid on a heritage of place and people which is historically, proudly, and often defiantly French. On the one hand, there is a great desire to keep the French language and culture alive in the city (and, of course, in the province at large) and a great fear that they are threatened - both by the influx of immigrants who tend to choose English as the language which will help them get ahead, and by their behemoth neighbor to the south, whose culture  - and often very different values  - are inescapable. On the other hand, most residents would say that it is not onyl the French culture, but the vibrancy of the cultural mix that makes the place so exciting and so appealing.

At its best, the city seems remarkably successful at holding those two ideals in a fairly happy tension. Racism, though it lurks beneath the rhetoric of the old guard of the Parti Quebeçois, is not something most Canadians tolerate, and the manifestations of that are evident particularly in Quebec, where racially-mixed couples and parent/child combinations are so common as to be unnoticed. That doesn't mean racism and discrimination don't exist. But it is very hard to imagine riots of the sort that are going on in France happening in what used to be New France, and is now one of the most successfully diverse places in the world.

(Of course, as J. pointed out to me just now, for many years in "New France", it was the French themselves who felt like the racial underdogs - and who eventually rioted because of it.)

p.s. - can you spot the pun in the bakery sign?

Moose

Yesterday was a moosey sort of day. Here in the north country we get sort of sick of moose: they are the perennial, fleecy mascot stuffed-animal item in tacky tourist gift shops, where they also adorn T-shirts and baseball caps and coffee mugs; flea-bitten taxidermized moose heads leer goofily over rustic bars and ski lodge fireplaces; and huge chain saw moose sculptures stand stiffly in too many flatlanders' front yards - they're more popular and more expensive than the other favorite, chain-saw black bears. (In Maine it's even worse: there they sell not only brown fleece moose toys, but red fleece lobsters.)

It's strange that moose have this cuddly image, because when you actually see one (whch most tourists never do) they are not only much larger than you ever imagined but downright scary, especially if it's nighttime and they've wandered, myopically and stupidly, out onto the highway. There are a lot of traffic fatalities caused by moose here, and most people know someone who has had a too-close encounter with one in a car. Every summer a young one, supposedly afflicted with parasites in its ears, wanders into one of the nearby villages and roams around the green before being chased out of town or, sadly, shot by conservation officers summoned by a hysterical suburban mother.

They're also seriously hunted - which is why they were re-introduced here, in a controversial move that has pitted yet another wild beast against high-traffic civilization: the two do not mix, any more than the gun-rack-and-pickup-equipped native Vermonters do with the imported flatlanders who wouldn't dream of owning a gun.

Yesterday at the post office the two employees were talking, as they sorted mail, about things they had trouble cooking. They went through tofu and tempeh and somehow made it to venison. One mentioned a recent conversation with a hunter-customer. "He said he'd gotten a moose," she said, "and then he said he was hoping to get a deer or two as well."

"Why does he need more than 900 pounds of moose meat?" asked the other woman.

"I asked him that and you know what he said?"

"Because they taste different," both women exclaimed, simultaneously.

In the mail, recently, there had been a get-well card from friends in Canada which illustrated the difference between tourist-trap moose appropriation, and truly developed moose-humor. It was, actually, an official card put out by Canada Poste. "Go Wild Canada!" it read, with a subtitle explaining that it is Canada's 138th birthday. On the card was a photo of a real (I swear!) and happy-looking moose wearing a bright-colored and maple-leaf-decorated party hat - the kind with the little elastic strap that goes under the chin - bewteen his antlers, and with one of those expanding-paper blowing noisemakers in its mouth. The salutation added, in French, "Canada brings out the animal in you!" My friend had written that she hoped "cette grosse bête tu ferait sourire" - and indeed he did make me smile.

Antiwar Sermon Brings IRS Warning

A story in the L.A. Times today (thanks, M.) describes how an antiwar sermon, which was mentioned in the press, has caused the IRS to threaten that the church stands to lose its its tax-exempt status.

The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election. Rector J. Edwin Bacon of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena told many congregants during morning services Sunday that a guest sermon by the church's former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, on Oct. 31, 2004, had prompted a letter from the IRS.

Talk about a double standard! Remember the southern churches, before the same election, who were leafleting and exhorting parishioners that it was sinful not to vote for George Bush? Remember how those in-church campaigns were orchestrated directly by the president's re-election committee? How about churches which organize anti-abortion campaigns and pressure congregations to support them?

Do these people have no limits? Could I be more frustrated and furious than I am, reading this crap?

Apparently the IRS offered a deal to the church in question: it would drop its investigation in exchange for an admission of wrongdoing. The church declined, saying the sermon had been about policy, and for peace, and had been extremely careful not to endorse any political candidate - since that is the law.

The Third Age

Anyone who occasionally gets a bit down about getting older (as I do, when I've looked a little too closely in the mirror) wll be glad to read this optimistic article on what the French call "The Third Age" - starting after 50.

Salt 2

Salt 1

More Parachuting Bishops

(there's an addendum to this post, below, added in the middle of the afternoon)

While Gene Robinson is debating the consecration of homosexual bishops in Oxford, the African evangelical "mission" efforts have spread to England itself, with the illegal ordination of three deacons yesterday by a South African evangelical bishop. The African bishop came into the territory of the liberal Bishop of Southwark -  the only person allowed to perform ordinations in that diocese - and ordained the men at a conservative Anglican church in the diocese. This is the same method that has been used by the alliance of conservative African and American bishops in the United States, both to protest the ordination of homosexuals, especially an openly gay bishop, and to establish a new, conservative, parallel Anglican church in America.

Statements issued by the conservative Anglican group, Reform, in England said that the timing of the ordinations was a coincidence and not intentional. Right. The other thing that happened yesterday was that Gene Robinson met with the Archbishop of Canterbury - a meeting described as "friendly but candid". It seems clear that the conservatives are intent on making the Archbishop choose sides, and forcing the split to happen.

Meanwhile, can anyone blame ordinary people for not going to church?

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ADDENDUM:

(I left the following comment at Fr. Jake stops the World, where he and the commenters are debating the outcome of the Global South summit. Fr. Jake was impressed with Rowan Williams speech to the assembled bishops.)

I agree with that, and I hope that Rowan Williams can feel more of his backbone in addition to his heart and mind. With the illegal ordinations of three deacons by a South African conservative bishop yesterday in London, it is hard for me to be as optimistic as Fr. Jake is about the outcome of this meeting, or the intentions of the conservative faction. I feel that they are saying one thing, and doing another, while we are trying to bring both words and actions into consonance.

Of course we are called to see Christ in all persons: I am called to see Christ in George Bush, Bishop Akinola, and many others with whom I disagree and who I believe are harming others. I can and do pray for them and for myself. I pray for forgiveness. But to hold together at all costs, with two completely different standards of behavior, two different interpretations of what it means to be Anglican -- why? The only compelling reason I can see is that staying together might mean that the conservatives would be exposed to progressive thinking about women, about gays, about marriage, and we can be challenged to keep digging down deep to find ways of connecting and understanding. But doesn't that imply a hope for coming closer, or at the very least, less insistence that the other side change? Have their attitudes changed toward women, for example, since 1974? Not that I can see. In fact, they have become more vociferously strident and insistent, while the moderate and progressive churches wring their hands and lose members who can't bear the politics and the emphasis on internal wrangling. Is this really what it means to be faithful?

Conservatives Press for Further Censure

The Anglican primates (archbishops, basically) of the Global South, meeting this week in Egypt, have, as predicted, upped their calls for repentance by the North American churches and said that if they do not change their position on gays, the communion will divide along pro-/anti-gay lines and will "walk apart". Stephen Bates is following developments in the Guardian; this article at gay.com (UK and Ireland) says that the conservative bishops "want Robinson stripped of his position", but so far I have not been able to confirm that specific wording, which goes well beyond the terms of the Windsor Report. It will be very interestign to see if Archbishop Rowan Williams decided to meet with Gene when he is in London later this week; it's about time for him to decide which side he's really on, and I'd think the rhetoric and actions of the Global South primates this week would have helped him make up his mind. Of course, that woudl indicate that moral and ethical concerns are a greater priority than preservation of this last vestige of the British Empire.

It's clear now that the North Americans and liberal European Anglicans interpreted "repentance" euphemistically; what was meant by the conservatives was a wholesale change in both attitude and policy, and nothing short of that will satisfy them. Western progressives and moderates continue to talk of reconciliation; it's time to let that idea - and the conservatives - go, and get on with the work we need to do in a modern world where real people are suffering because of exclusion, narrow-minded bigotry, hatred, and hypocrisy.

Yesterday, November 2, was the second anniversary of Gene's consecration in New Hampshire. I'm proud to have been there and to be writing about him, and to be part of worldwide religious progressivism.

Several weeks later, as Gene looked at pictures of the consecration, I asked if he had felt small, with all the bishops around him, pressing on his head. “Very small,” he replied. “Truth be known, the standard joke is that when the bishops gather around you, what they’re doing is removing your spine – which is a comment on how wimpy some people get when they become bishop. So I immediately thought of that, because they were pushing so hard, it was all I could do to remain upright. So, I thought, quite to the contrary of removing your spine, if you didn’t have a spine, you couldn’t withstand the pressure.”

Dyeing to Try It

In my renewed quest for calm and relaxation, I've picked up my needles again and started some knitting. Knitting is only one of many textile-y things I like to do; I grew up in a household of women who knit, crocheted, sewed, tatted, embroidered, quilted, and appliqued, and when they weren't doing that, it seemed like they (well, we) were cooking, reading, painting, or cutting up and pasting paper for some project. I liked sewing best: sewing projects were pretty defined, I could plan them and get them done and have the gratification of wearing what I had made - in fact, I was most likely to plan the project a week before an event and use all my free time to get it done. Sewing was both precise and creative, and I figured out that if you got a good pattern, learned how to alter it for your own body, chose an appropriate fabric, and actually followed the instructions, you'd get a good result. There was no stigma attached to home-sewn garments where I grew up; lots of people, including girls my age, sewed, and we just knew we were saving money and having fun. (The saving-money part isn't so true anymore, especially if you're buying wool.)

My mother and grandmother both liked to knit, and they were way faster than I was and happy to make things for me, so I never really got into it when I was young. Later, though, I found that knitting was the perfect fit for my lifestyle - I could stop and start, and take projects with me - and in the past decade I've barely sewn anything, except a quilt, but have started (and actually completed) a lot of knitting projects. And, although Í haven't yet allowed myself to truly indulge, I now happen to live just a few blocks away from arguably the best yarn store in Montreal: a seduction and incentive rolled into one.

The internet, too, is filled with knitting blogs and knitting magazines, most of which I've never explored. One I do like a lot is knitty, and browsing there yesterday I was stunned to come across this, which immediately connected the present to the backyard of my past. Why didn't I know about this when I was young? The perfect project! The possibilities! Who knew??