January 29 th edition of the Free Press

6 – THE FREE PRESS – January 29, 2013 NDG NEWS
Editorial
Linguistic harmony —
in a song?
On January 17, Jean-François Lisée, the
Quebec minister responsible for
Montreal and relations with the anglophone
community, and the Quebec
Community Groups Network (QCGN)
announced a province-wide school tour of
a bilingual video called “Notre Home,”
created by musician David Hodges.
Funded by the QCGN and $20,000
from the provincial government, the
video’s message, aimed at students, is
supposed to be one of inclusion.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHLP8ej8f4)
The three-minute-plus video begins
with the sound of laughter and children
laying. Cue lyrics, which ironically, are
ostly in English. It is colourful, catchy
nd cute, but in reality, the sappy singlong
is a sad attempt to avoid addressing
he real issues at hand and assuage the
oncerns of a community fatigued by
ontinued legislative efforts to curtail its
xistence, expression and growth.
Lisée, and by extension the Parti
uébécois, needs to do more than waste
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time on window dressing, and come up
with something more concrete in the
form of positive actions to convince
anglophones that their future in Quebec
is secure.
As long as we continue to experience
small petty annoyances such as official
complaints about the size of lettering on
a bilingual sign (see language police in
NDG, story on p. 1), to potential laws that
would take away the bilingual status of
towns and municipalities (see
Hampstead mayor William Steinberg’s
column on Bill 14, p. 15), there will have
to be more than a video of dancing and
singing children and teens to placate a
nervous constituency that is dealing with
such realities as declining enrolment in
English schools, the recent proposal to
transfer the management of the Lachine
Hospital from the English-based McGill
University Health Centre (MUHC) to the
francophone CSSS de Dorval-Lachine-
LaSalle, and exodus of our youth from the
province.
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and Côte St. Luc by
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Book sharing box
Letters to the Editor
You article on Livre-service, which has a
box on the corner of Marcil and
Monkland avenues, brought to mind
what I saw in Britain this summer.
The widespread use of cell phones is
making the iconic red telephone boxes
obsolete. The cost of removing them is
hefty so rural municipalities resort to creative
ways of reinventing them. Hence
the healthy-looking telephone box library
I photographed in Little Shelford.
Thea Pawlikowska
Marcil Ave.
Cat concerns: response
In response to the letter from Leah
Socran, “Concern for cats continues in
the winter” (January 15, p. 6) regarding
the cats that were released in December, I
truly understand your dismay and
heartache when you learned of these cats
being released in December until they
can be relocated in the spring.
I too, experience this distress each time
I have to let a cat back outside. Where are
they to go? We were able to place or foster
four out of the 10 cats we caught in this
particular instance, but we do not have a
place for all of them.
We don’t have a shelter. We are continuously
looking for foster homes and
adoptive parents.
I know that some people feel these cats
are better off dead than outside in our
merciless climate, but we are not going
that route. We provide cat shelters for
them and food. We can only relocate
them (the ones in this particular instance)
in the spring, as it is a long process that
requires many hours outside, so it must
be done in the warmer weather.
People have to sterilize their cats if they
let them out. People must be prohibited
from and fined for abandoning their cat.
More municipalities have to have programs
to sterilize homeless cats and
implement and enforce laws against people
who discard their cat into the street
and those who allow their cats out unneutered.
We are little more than a handful
of people in the Côte St. Luc Cat
Committee. We are trying, but we cannot
do it alone. We need everyone’s help.
Shelley Schecter
Educhat
Editor’s note: For more on CSL cat
news, see p. 14.
Telephone booth turned book box in England.
Photo: Thea Pawlikowska
Political words and will
The charming and fully bilingual Jean-
François Lisée assured all in attendance
at the Westmount Library that their
English language and rights would be
protected. Unfortunately, his government
has shown no signs it will deliver on this
promise and many signs it will restrict it
further in education, health, public transit
and the Bill 14 cocktail.
I told him that as a spokesperson for
the ABM (Advancement for a Better
Montreal) we can all work together. Most
parents, irrespective of their linguistic
background, desire a bilingual education
for their children to reach their full potential.
I offered him the following “creative”
captions to ignite Montreal’s economy,
employment, tourism and most important,
social peace for cultural harmony:
“Montreal, the bilingual city of French
flavour” and; “Montreal, come taste the
French flavour.”
I left regretting these lyrics were not
included in the song his ministry funded
to bridge the two solitudes. I can only
expect that if he became leader of his
party he could fulfill his promises or at
minimum, his rhetoric could direct the
Liberal or CAQ to fulfill mine.
Michael Shafter
Montreal
continued on p. 7