Behind The Curtain (19 May, 2023)
Accessible audio for this week’s Behind The Curtain will be available soon!
This coming Monday is Journée nationale des patriotes in Quebec, and Victoria Day in the rest of Canada. Of course, pretty much every Anglo in Montreal, or at least those I know, still call this Victoria Day Weekend, and would probably give you a momentarily confused look if you asked them what they were doing for National Patriots Day Weekend. This, for the most part, isn’t out of any angryphone rage or refusal to accept the statutory federal holiday’s Quebec rebranding in 2003, nor is it out of devotion to the reign of Queen Victoria, or British Colonialism. It’s simply what we think the day and the weekend are still called, or it’s a convention that we are accustomed to.
This is one of those rare occasions where I don’t care about the specific politics. I don’t have that luxury a month and change later, though. Both St-Jean Baptiste Day and Canada Day are hyper-nationalistic holidays. St-Jean is more about modern-day Quebecers’ assertion of self-determination, so fine. There are still problems with lack of inclusiveness that creep up every year, but they relate more to present-day problems with bigotry in Quebec than anything else. Canada Day, on the other hand, is unabashedly pro-colonial and nationalistic at its core. In the past few years, that aspect has become increasingly impossible to brush aside, or accept for one day, given what we have learned about Residential Schools. This was a system that started in the past, but continued until the 1990s, when Canada had a very inclusive and tolerant rep worldwide. It’s pretty much our great sin, like slavery is for the US, though the mainstream is only now getting the deets. So wearing red or orange on July 1st is unavoidably a political choice.
Fortunately, that’s not the case for Victoria/Patriots Day. Britain and France were both brutal colonial powers. I’m not a monarchist, nor am I that invested in the struggles of the Patriotes, so it’s irrelevant to me which one gets naming rights to this particular day and weekend. They don’t shove it down your throat. You don’t have to pledge allegiance to anyone to enjoy not going to work. For me, this is kind of like Christmas. I may have been baptized Catholic, but I’m basically agnostic and have been to church only a handful of times in my life, including weddings and funerals. I celebrate Christmas, which, for me, is about family and family tradition. Also, I believed in Santa Claus until the kids in school told me he wasn’t real (fucking Concordia!).
If we can celebrate certain religious holidays without being religious, then we can surely celebrate civic holidays without ascribing to their original branding, or by giving them branding all our own. Sure, Victoria Day was originally created to mark Queen Victoria’s actual birthday, May 24th, but that’s also my brother’s birthday (more on him later), so as far as I’m concerned, we could call it Joe Day. I’m all for holidays where you can ignore the reason behind it and create your own. It’s the one where you have to acknowledge the reason, or the reason is just so abhorrent, that you have to use at least part of your time off work to challenge it. Now, if only we could turn May Day, a day created to celebrate labour movements, into, you know, an actual day off work. That would be a stat holiday with a message I could definitely get behind.
NOTES THIS WEEK
NDG Bound: As I mentioned here last week (and followed up big-time on Monday with a feature!), Porchfest NDG returns full-force this weekend. One thing that I didn’t get around to doing in my feature interview with the founders and organizers is plugging specific acts that I plan to check out, especially those that are part of the FTB family, my personal family, or both. So here goes:
On Saturday, Gráinne, featuring soon-to-be FTB contributor Darragh Mondoux, celebrate one year together as a group by playing 3782 Draper at 3pm. Details HERE.
Then on Sunday, FTB Contributor Naghmeh Shafiei takes the stage at 2272 Hampton at 1pm. Details HERE. Before Naghmeh was a site contributor, she was a musician we once plugged in Shows This Week, before it was McSweeney’s List. The contributor who wrote that plug was…wait for it…my brother Joe McLean, who happens to be playing Porchfest at 3pm the same afternoon on a back porch you can get to through the alley between Melrose and Draper. You can find those details HERE. Joe may have started his Porchfest journey rocking out, but for the past few years, it’s been Family Fun Songs, quite possibly the only show that’s for the kids. He has original kids songs like the increasingly popular Dinosaurs Are Cool (because they are) and some classics, including this one where I’m featured in the video:
Manon Stepping Down: On Tuesday Manon Massé announced that she is stepping down as co-spokesperson of Québec solidaire (QS). She will remain the MNA for the south central Montreal riding of Sainte-Marie–Saint-Jacques, a seat she won first in 2014, until the next provincial election. She was the third QS MNA to be elected and was effectively the bridge between the party’s early days, where Amir Khadir and Françoise David were co-spokespeople, and its present, where she shared the spokesperson title with Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.Massé is well-respected and well-liked both in her riding and within QS, so it will be interesting to see who her replacement will be, both as co-spokesperson and in Saint-Marie-Saint-Jacques. Moreover, I’m very interested in what direction the party will go in now.
Mob War?: News broke late Tuesday that a woman was shot dead while driving in a Côte-des-Neiges parking lot in broad daylight. That’s scary, broad daylight? On Wednesday, we learned that the victim was Claudia Iacono, the daughter-in-law of a prominent Montreal mafia figure Moreno Gallo, who was killed in Mexico in 2013. Phew. Not random, just a mob settling of accounts. Then we learned that Iacono had no involvement in anything illegal and that spouses are generally considered off-limits as targets, so this might mean that things are changing and there could be retaliation. Oh shit, a mob war that has lost the plot on the horizon? Definitely not what Montreal needs right now!
Foodstuffs: Last week, Montreal lost two iconic smoked meat places. First, it was The Main on Monday, which I focused on almost entirely in BTC last week. Then, as that piece was being edited Friday morning, word broke that another icon, Quebec Smoked Meat in Pointe St-Charles, was closing down after 73 years. This week seemed a bit more positive, local food-wise. On Tuesday, Canada’s 100 Best named Little Italy eatery and wine bar Mon Lapin the top restaurant in Canada in its annual ranking. Now I hadn’t even heard of this place, let alone eaten there, and it’s probably out of my price range, but yay for the #1. Then this morning (Friday), Google made a poutine Doodle. This is to commemorate Merriam-Webster adding the dish that’s served at almost every Montreal restaurant I do know about to its English Dictionary on this date in 2014. Sometimes it’s about the small victories, and I’ll take this one!
Happy Long Weekend!. Catch me at Porchfest and/or back here next Friday.
FTB Founder Jason C. McLean will return every Friday for another installment in his series, Behind The Curtain.
