Through the Eyes of a Pirate

Oh Canada…

In the past few months, I’ve had some “separatist” discussions with a few anglo friends. One would tend to think that it would’ve happened before, as I have been living in the only truly bilingual city in this country for 35 years, but apparently not. I guess I’ve never had these discussions before because I am not very political, I am not a separatist, I am not whatever is the opposite of a separatist, and I tend to approach this whole masturbatory situation with a general meh attitude.

Image by Etienne Boucher licensed under CC 2.0 BY-NC-SA. Click for original.

But the topic is flaming (get it?) hot once again, for some fucking reason, and it’s been popping up around me despite my very best efforts to steer away my happy little boat of blissful uncaring from these sewer waters. And seeing as the shit storm indiscriminately rains on us all, I thought I’d put on my cultural swim-aids, plug my nose, and dive in.

So what is separatist?

To approach this from a purely grammaratatiracal point of view, the opposite of “separate” is “joint”. It implies that the opposition to the separatist “philosophy” would be one of joining us together, or at the very least keeping us together. I must say however that I see very little togetherness on both sides of this debate.

While the separatist side is fairly well defined in their intentions, I must say that I see no such clarity from the, er, Jointist(?) side. The “non-separatist” anglos do not want to keep us ‘together’ very much now do they? They want to be anglos, and only anglos, anywhere they damn well choose in Canada. So to that effect, they are just as separatist as the francophone side that wishes to remain strictly francophone.

By their refusal to learn to speak frog in a province where 92% of people speak frog, or in fact in a country where 22% of the population does, the blokes are also actively keeping the two cultures separate and should thus be also labelled separatists. No arguments, no nothing, you are separatists.

The only people in this country who can claim to not be separatists are the anglos who speak frog, and the francos who speak bloke. And it should be noted that nobody with an IQ over fifteen cares if your english is sub-par, or if your french sounds like a bad parody. In fact we should probably take some pride in all those cute and sexy accents being purely Canadian.

It strikes me as spectacularly idiotic and hypocritical that both sides should refuse to learn the other “official” language of this great country of ours.

Idiotic, because to actively refuse to expand your cultural identity is to basically be keeping yourself from growing as a person and is tantamount to saying “Yes please, I wish to remain limited and moronic.”

Hypocritical, because a lot of people from both sides will take pride in learning a language OTHER than french or english. Both sides consider learning spanish, german, japansese or whatever else as a definite plus, as something that will open doors.

To look at learning spanish as something that will open you more doors (cause y’know…one does not simply walk into more doors) is nowhere as relevant in terms of immediate usefulness as learning a language that is spoken in your own country. Simply put, any other language you can pick up and learn will help you, make you a more diversified individual.

When this big empty land of ours was colonized by Europe, they brought over their long-standing petty war with them. It was quite natural for them to do so and was probably very relevant in an age of conquest. Such mentality as stayed with us for a long time, with both sides being raised on their respective sides of the fence. This is however a bit dated now. Canada is neither England nor France, nor is it a colony of either.

Yeah yeah, some people will like to call me out on this and point to the Commonwealth and other such nonsense. To these people, I say fuck off. For all intents and purposes Canada is very much its own country despite some tenuous paperwork link to some old rotting queen across a very large pond. Again, you can fuck right off.

Is it high time friends to leave the old country behind, shape up, and grow a fucking spine. We are not English, nor are we French, we are Canadians. By burying these passé ideas in the shit pile where they belong, we will also be burying any reason to resist learning each other’s language or considering “the other side” as “the other side” when in fact, we’re all rowing in the same boat.

There is only one solution to this and its to learn both languages, and accept that there is no such thing as two different Canadian cultures. We are part of the same multifaceted culture, we share the same patch of dirt, and its time to get in bed and have some wonderful bilingual sex. Oh god yes, baise-moi!

Editor’s Note: Article has been re-posted here from James Clark’s personal Facebook page with permission. The post was copied “as-is” and thus was not subject to the usual editing process that we use here at TTEOP. We apologize if you feel offended by his use of extreme language. But as we agree with the basic premise of his article, we do not apologize if you feel your own shortcomings are being pointed out and are unwilling to find a way to grow as a result of this article.

Popularity: 5% [?]