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The Official languages are english AND french but...
Hi Nic - Good evening
Thanks for the cool words. You know, I never knew that we Scots actually invented the monetary system! I'll have to do a bit of research into that one. I reckon you know that we have a misguided reputation for keeping our sporrans tightly buttoned up...that's nae true....it's all an evil English attempt to denigrate this fine northern race! ;-)
I tell you what....I have just come in from a whole day dressed up as Pudsey Bear along with most of the rest of the staff in our store collecting money for Pudsey's Children in Need Appeal.....it's been one real good fun day and the Scottish people (and others, let's be fair!) have been more than generous with their dosh. We must have collected thousands during the day in this part of Edinburgh, like everywhere all over the UK I reckon. So that Scottish slur is a load of (bleep)!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey
Cheers! ;-)
Congratulations Damian, good stuff! You must have been really hot dressed up all day in that outfit, thank goodness you had fun being Pudsey Bear along with the enjoyment of collecting for the kids.
Adam, but if no one at all cared to vote in future elections, then the next election wouldn't come. I guess the current leader would just stay in office indefinately. Maybe the people running things would be the police, the army, judges, thugs...
Nic, I imagine that your reply was tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, it would be nice for a world free of propaganda but our countries' will still have the same people saying and doing the same things they did and also those who can talk with their large sums of money. There will always be people who can pull strings to get things to happen as they wish.
To Jean Luke and his peer who's also concerned about the sucking maintenance of commonwealth nations-- I know mastering languages without obscene mistakes can be trying for all of us, and your gracious attempt at offering your balls in honour of Canada's Sugaring-off tradition was touching, but the snowballs must be maple syrup covered.
Damian,
You are welcome, as you know i like Scotland and its inhabitants. Some of the most welcome people i have ever met. Your misguided reputation is wrong, i don't know why and were comes from that reputation.
Long life to Scotland!
Lims,
I enjoyed your message posted to Jean Luke, great one!
Let's get down to business, as they say in English.
You can communicate in English quite well with very few words,
as long as it is on an agreed upon subject.
And yet English is not iminical to the introduction of new business jargon.
For Business purposes this is all that is needed.
Exact translations are usually not difficult, because English has a huge word stock and borrowed a lot of foreign words throughout its history.
There is a saying that, "The Greeks have a word for it".
Yet in English they say, "That Greek to me." or unknown.
English both has the word, and is somewhat more accessible than Greek.
Getting back to the Canadian history subject, someone earlier asked whether Canada officially recognizes the French Kings that ruled over the country before the British took over.
Interestingly enough, this story ran in the Montreal Gazette this morning. It shows how the Canadian Parliament recently began displaying portraits of 5 French kings in the Parliament Buildings.
Portraits of French kings to hang on Hill
The Montreal Gazette
Portraits of five French kings have joined those of British monarchs in the halls of Parliament Hill.
The effort is a labour of love by Quebec Senator Serge Joyal, who spent thousands of dollars of his own money scouring the world for the portraits of Canada's monarchs -- both English and French. He is responsible for the acquisition of eight of the 14 royal portraits now in halls of the Senate lobby and the Salon de la Francophonie.
France's kings financed the early expeditions that led to the discovery of Canada by Europeans. They gave the country the civil code, its first government and one of its two official languages. Over the years, however, there have been very few tangible signs of those early monarchs in Canada's Parliament.
"There are many elements of our system today that came from those 14 kings and queens," said Mr. Joyal.
The project began when Mr. Joyal, an avid collector of art and antiques, was sworn in as a senator in 1997. He looked around and realized that while there were a few portraits of Canada's British kings and queens, there were large gaps between rulers and no portraits of French kings. To Mr. Joyal, that seemed at odds with Canada's tradition of constitutional monarchy.
"The principle of constitutional monarchy is that there is no interruption in the succession."
Mr. Joyal approached Senate colleagues but got a mixed response. While they gave him the green light to acquire the portraits, they weren't willing to authorize any money.
Mr. Joyal already had a portrait of George IV. That portrait, along with the others, was donated to Parliament through the Canadiana Fund. The fund accepts donations of Canadian furnishings, paintings and objets d'art, and issues tax receipts to donors.
However, the real challenge for Mr. Joyal was to track down suitably sized portraits of the French kings.
"They're unfindable. Don't go tomorrow morning to the Canadian antique shops or even the Boston or New York shops or the Paris shops. This is very rare."
Some French kings rarely commissioned portraits. Many of those that did exist were destroyed during the French Revolution.
Francois I, who personally financed Jacques Cartier's voyage to the new world in 1534, was tracked down in Paris. Francois died in 1547 and the four kings who followed in the next 42 years failed to sponsor any more exploration in Canada.
The portrait of Louis XIV -- the "Sun King" who built Versailles, spent money from the royal treasury on New France and promised 800 new colonists a year -- was found in Sweden.
In one case, the portrait owner didn't even know what they had -- but Mr. Joyal did. In Boston, he located the portrait of Louis XV -- whose reign saw the loss of the fortress of Louisbourg to the British in 1758 and the loss of all of France's Canadian colonies on the Plains of Abraham in 1760. The portrait was listed simply as a portrait of a nobleman by an unknown artist.
The hardest to find was the circa 1630 portrait of Louis XIII, under whom New France's fur trading economy began to grow.
"It's very rare to find a period portrait of Louis XIII," said Mr. Joyal.
The portraits include a bronze effigy in profile of Henri IV, whose reign saw the exploration of Samuel de Champlain, who became known as the "father of New France."
John McClelland, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said royal patronage was behind many of the pivotal events in Canada's early history.
"Jacques Cartier's first exploratory voyage was at the initiative of Francois I," he said. "Champlain's founding of New France in 1605 at Annapolis was at the initiative of Henri IV. These kings have some claim to be founders of this country."
Mr. Joyal is discreet when asked how much it has all cost him, saying only that acquiring the eight portraits has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This spring, once the portrait of Louis XIII was finally on the wall, Mr. Joyal finally considered the collection complete and turned his attention to drafting a pamphlet highlighting the portraits and describing how each monarch had contributed to Canada's evolution.
This time the Senate finally reached into its own pocket and authorized $4,000 to print 20,000 copies.
While the pamphlet has only been available for a few days, Senate officials say they are already busy answering requests for it.
While the effort has taken years to achieve, Mr. Joyal says it's worth it -- especially when new Canadians visit Parliament and can now see the evolution of Canada's tradition of constitutional monarchy from its earliest roots as a French colony.
"When they visit Parliament they will understand that for 230 years we were a French colony and that has given us a legacy and that legacy has been integrated into the country that we are today."
This reaffiirmation of a colonialist and imperialist past is quite politically correct because the French in Canada have the dual status of oppressive majority in Quebec and historically oppressed minority in Canada. Once you have achieved minority victim status "tout est permis".
C'est énervant, n'est-ce pas mon cher Steve? I agree that two colonialists and imperialists pasts shouldn't be politically correct. Even if one of the two is still very much alive. After all, the French got rid of their monarchs back in 1789.
i don't know about any of you, but i phantasize every day about becoming dictator (with superman-like powers of course) and fixing all the stupidities of the world. i mean this is just a dream (sadly), but this is how i think it should all be:
world citizenship, unconditional linguistic and cultural identity for all people, end to religion (blow up the whole israel palestine region if you have to in order to settle things), disputes settled through rational talks (or if there has to be a war then let it be a football match)...
i mean i feel as though i am sounding really stupid and naive at this point, so i'll just stop right now, but it just frustrates me...how easy it is to run a world if people weren't idiots.
Dictator, everybody has probably had this temptation/desire/wish at least once in one's life. But you can't fix people's problem without their consent. Morevover, you're less likely to find the proper solution that will equaly satisfy everyone if you force it on them rather than making them partake actively in its elaboration.
A Mr Bush is trying to force is way on everyone else and we can clearly see how counter-productive it has been so far.
There are indeed a lot of problems that remain to be fixed in the world, but you shouldn't forget the fact that literacy rates are growing everywhere. Literacy, not war, is what makes the peoples able to understand the world they live in, and what will eventually make them want democracy.
So, if you want to do something about people being "idiots", as you put it, then do something to help global literacy improve.
My two euro-cents worth. But hey, it's already more than two USD cents ;-)
Nic, thanks! Glad it humoured you.
Speaking of <<French in Canada have the dual status of oppressive majority in Quebec and historically oppressed minority in Canada.>>
This was in the news:
Quebec may unleash language police
QUEBEC CITY - Quebec's premier may unleash the language police to crack down on the growing use of English in workplaces around the province.
A report released on Monday found English continues to gain ground in the province. Premier Jean Charest says he favours doing whatever needs to be done to promote the French language and culture.
INDEPTH: Language in Quebec
That could include asking Quebec's language watchdog to tighten up enforcement of the rules, he said.
Under Bill 101, the controversial language law passed in the 1970s, the Office de la Langue Française, can order businesses with more than 50 employees to translate all internal correspondence into French.
"The English language has become very much – throughout the world – the language of business," Charest said.
"So the constant pressure will be there."
The report, released on Monday by the language watchdog, says the French language is in a "precarious" state in Quebec as English usage continues to expand.
It says efforts to require businesses to comply with language laws aren't halting the trend.
The report also finds that although immigrants are still more likely to learn French, English is the language of choice for more than half of all new arrivals to the province.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/11/23/quebec-language-041123.html
Enforcing language laws could well further erode French. Perhaps it's an Anglophone plot to eliminate French using reverse psychology.
I have no problem recognizing that 'Canada' was a colonial creation of two European nations.
If we are going to give status to the rulers of one colonial power as having some historical link with this country, we might as well recognize them both.
The idea of two founding cultures is part of the Canadian cultural myth.
Lately, however, there has been a move to recognize the contributions also made by aboriginal cultures (North American Indian and Inuit).
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