Oh, great. Another controversy involving ex-Maoist Jan Wong. Wong's Saturday Globe article reported on the Dawson shootings. And she wrote this:
What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a “pure” francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial “purity” is repugnant. Not in Quebec.
...
It isn't known when Mr. Gill's family arrived in Canada. But he attended English elementary and high schools in Montreal. That means he wasn't a first-generation Canadian. Under the restrictions of Bill 101, the province's infamous language law, that means at least one of his parents must have been educated in English elementary or high schools in Canada. To be sure, Mr. Lepine hated women, Mr. Fabrikant hated his engineering colleagues and Mr. Gill hated everyone. But all of them had been marginalized, in a society that valued pure laine.
The article has earned the fury of many Quebecers and now Le Devoir has taken notice. It was a pretty sophomoric analysis.
UPDATE: You had to know this was coming -- Charest is demanding an apology from the Globe on behalf of all Quebecers. Mais notez que le premier ministre a agi seulement après que l'article causait la tumulte. Très Charest-esque.
UPDATE II: Andrew Potter has spotted more Globe nonsense.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 12:04 PM
