From: julie@eecg.toronto.edu (Julie Payette)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Une opinion
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:05:00 GMT
Distribution: can
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto


This may be irrelevant to the debate, but...
I am tired, tired, tired of reading Mr. Leibovitch constant whining,
("reactions de la vierge offensee") and false assertions about the
persecution of jews in Quebec. You may have had to suffer discrimination
while growing up in Montreal, Sir, but I am sorry to say that such experience,
however regrettable and distressing it is, does not make you a "special"
victim and thus, an authority figure in jewish-quebecois demographics and
socio-cultural integration. You don't seem to realise that you are not 
the only one who has had to suffer some form of injustices in your
life (I have too, yet I am francophone Montrealer --- but then again, I
am just a woman...) and you should maybe stop worrying so much about your 
state as "a persecuted jew", and (maybe, just maybe) tone down some of
your frustrated subjectivity. Yet more importantly, you do not support
you assertions about the faith of the Jewish community in Quebec with
anything other than personal experiences, which are certainly relevant,
but remain just that, personal experiences.

Examples where my sympathy for you wavers are as follows:

>> >>The letter also said "Au surplus, le Quebec serait le seul pays au
>> >>monde, a part Israel, ou la communaute juive a le droit et les fonds
>> >>publics pour gerer ses ecoles et ses services sociaux."
>>
>> This statement is full of crap. Until you can offer some evidence that
>> its conclusions are correct, I'll offer some first hand experience to the
>> contrary.
Extended, generalized, subjective, personal experience...
Mr. Leibovitch, all public schools that respect the basic curriculum set
out by the Ministry of Education (unto which they can add whatever other
educational topic they fancy) are founded in Quebec, and this
is true for jewish ones, islamic ones, orthodox ones, and so on.

>> In any event, the school where I attended for my first seven years is no
>> longer, now just an empty building for sale in the middle of a residential
>> neighbourhood.
How funny, so is mine! A French-Catholic primary school, on top of it, 
but that not the reason why it was closed (as I suspect your school
wasn't closed because it was jewish): there was just not enough
children around to justify keeping it open anymore.
It has been turn in a bingo hall...  Do I feel victimized ?

>> The reality of the suitation is that many Jews have just packed up and
>> moved away from Quebec. The Montreal Jewish community is a fraction of
>> what it used to be, and can no longer support this network of schools.
But why did they pack up, Mr Leibovitch ? Were they "thrown out"?
You imply that Jewish people were "forced" out of Quebec due to
unwelcoming and discriminatory treatment, yet did it ever occur to
you that they might just have left because they didn't want to stay
in a francophone Quebec anymore, that they didn't wish to adapt to
this new reality ? Could that be possible ? 
The Montreal Jewish Community is no less a fraction of what it used
to be than the Montreal anglophone community. Those who left, left
for political reasons, first and foremost.

>> As for cemetaries, yes there's a Jewish one in Montreal where many of my
>> family are buried. You can't miss it, it's the one off Decarie with all
>> the overturned headstones.
Such statement discredit you, Mr. Leibovitch, and add substance to my
impressions that you are just a little more uptight (paranoid?) than necessary
about your belonging to the jewish community. There are many jewish
cemeteries in Montreal (off my head, I can already think of two in the 
district where I grew up -- Ahunstic -- one on Source Blvd. and other
on top of the Mount-Royal) and it will remain so despite the
despicable, yet fortunately uncommon attempts of some "people" to
profane them.

J. Payette
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