AH Vignette: Quebec

Revolutionary Avocado

G.Washington_Fuckyeah said:
Vive le Québec libre!, if you please.
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TFSmith121 said:
Nicely written. The "la" vs "le" thing jumped out at me, though...
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Sorry! French is definitely not my first language, so I didn't catch it when editing.

Where does Leonard Cohen go in "this" Quebec?
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I'm guessing he moves to Toronto. His music probably takes on a more directly political edge, and he may retreat into a monastery earlier. An interesting possibility would be for him to become a Hassidic Jew.

El Yanqui said:
Lovely stuff, as always.
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Thanks!
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Everybody knows...

azander12 said:
Sorry! French is definitely not my first language, so I didn't catch it when editing.

I'm guessing he moves to Toronto. His music probably takes on a more directly political edge, and he may retreat into a monastery earlier. An interesting possibility would be for him to become a Hassidic Jew.

Thanks!
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Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows...

Toronto? Maybe...my guess is he heads for the Village. There's this guy named Bob Zimmerman...;)

Best,
 

Revolutionary Avocado

TFSmith121 said:
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows...

Toronto? Maybe...my guess is he heads for the Village. There's this guy named Bob Zimmerman...;)

Best,
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I love Leonard Cohen, his music is brilliant. It's often quite fatalistic though, at least about politics. He's a philosopher, not an activist.

And yeah, he probably heads to Toronto, if he doesn't leave Canada all together and go to NYC. Collaborations with Bob Dylan would be cool.

Mordecai Richler is definitely Toronto-bound. I'd expect there to be a Little Plateau neighbourhood or something in Toronto somewhere.
 

Japhy

Banned
This is a marvelous piece. Its very easy to pretend that things like The Troubles in Northern Ireland are a rarity that can't happen here/there/wherever. But there are plenty of times that the fuse was lit and could have blown up. And the result very often can be just what this is, a bleak, damaged setting, a sad coda to movements that should have done better.

These shorts you've done are fantastic at showing us real divergences, I'm glad that they're not just straight up political divergences, and I hope to see others.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Fatalistic?

azander12 said:
I love Leonard Cohen, his music is brilliant. It's often quite fatalistic though, at least about politics. He's a philosopher, not an activist.

And yeah, he probably heads to Toronto, if he doesn't leave Canada all together and go to NYC. Collaborations with Bob Dylan would be cool.

Mordecai Richler is definitely Toronto-bound. I'd expect there to be a Little Plateau neighbourhood or something in Toronto somewhere.
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Well, he is a) Canadian b) a Quebecer (more or less) and c) Jewish, so that's sort of the fatalistic trifecta;)

AIGF.

Cohen and Dylan collaborating would be something; similar voices, but Bob is a bit more optimistic....

Best,
 

Japhy

Banned
Part of me is distressed that you guys are only going to talk about pop culture, but then again, I'm not surprised.
 
Callan

Callan

Very well done. I agree with Japhy about that whole "It can't happen here" thing; It's jarring to think of this to happen in Canada of all places, when of course it could have easily. My mother has memories of going to school in Ottowa during that whole FLQ crisis, passing Tanks and soldiers in the streets.

I imagine ITTL, Montreal is basically a ghost town.
 

Revolutionary Avocado

Daltonia said:
Very well done. I agree with Japhy about that whole "It can't happen here" thing; It's jarring to think of this to happen in Canada of all places, when of course it could have easily. My mother has memories of going to school in Ottowa during that whole FLQ crisis, passing Tanks and soldiers in the streets.
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Thanks!! My family is all Torontonian, although I spent the last four years in Montreal. It's a wonderful place. My parents remember the October Crisis, but it was sort of far away from them. Trudeau's whole "Just watch me" schtick cemented him as a badass for a generation of Canadians.

I imagine ITTL, Montreal is basically a ghost town.
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Unknown said:
Yeah, I agree with you, Daltonia.

Wonder where the population of Montreal went.
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There are still plenty of French speakers in Montreal, which is smaller than OTL but still the largest city in the Republic of Quebec. It's a fairly poor place, although better off than anywhere else in the country except Quebec City, with all its government largesse. Westmount is a tiny enclave surrounded on all sides by Montreal, serviced primarily by air (although Quebec now allows most stuff through) and defended by a full battalion of the Canadian Royal Army. It's a poor, empty place maintained as a gigantic middle finger to the government in Quebec City.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yes, a nasty little insurgency in Canada would be

Japhy said:
Part of me is distressed that you guys are only going to talk about pop culture, but then again, I'm not surprised.
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Yes, an insurgency in Canada would be unpleasant all around. Am I reading it that the author thinks the Dominion (federal?) government would hold Quebec through force?

Best,
 

Revolutionary Avocado

TFSmith121 said:
Yes, an insurgency in Canada would be unpleasant all around. Am I reading it that the author thinks the Dominion (federal?) government would hold Quebec through force?

Best,
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They do. It's easy to justify, especially because there are a lot of Francophones who try to keep their noses clean and stay out of politics who the government can claim to protect. It sort of just drifts towards rule by force (it starts with crackdowns on terrorism, with the legal mechanisms to suppress such activity sticking around, plus escalation, and new tools for law enforcement, and escalation...), and for the most part looks like The Troubles in Ireland. Little mass violence, just a constant low-level hum of terror, retribution, and repression.

The conflict lasts into the early 1990s, when a peace accord is signed and a referendum held. Quebec leaves in 1995, although borders and the status of the Nunavik Autonomous Territory (basically, the northern 2/3s of Quebec) aren't completely worked out until the late 2000s.

Chris Oakley said:
Who cares? Dude can't sing a lick.
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Take it back, right now.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
Okay; does Canada of the point of departure have the

azander12 said:
They do. It's easy to justify, especially because there are a lot of Francophones who try to keep their noses clean and stay out of politics who the government can claim to protect. It sort of just drifts towards rule by force (it starts with crackdowns on terrorism, with the legal mechanisms to suppress such activity sticking around, plus escalation, and new tools for law enforcement, and escalation...), and for the most part looks like The Troubles in Ireland. Little mass violence, just a constant low-level hum of terror, retribution, and repression.

The conflict lasts into the early 1990s, when a peace accord is signed and a referendum held. Quebec leaves in 1995, although borders and the status of the Nunavik Autonomous Territory (basically, the northern 2/3s of Quebec) aren't completely worked out until the late 2000s.



Take it back, right now.
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Okay; does Canada of the point of departure have the military and police/security capabilities to do so?

The order of battle was what, like a mechanized brigade in Europe and two or three infantry brigades in Canada? Including the Francophone brigade?

Best,
 
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