if i ever write something set in the united states im just going to do zero research whatsoever and make stuff up to sound cool it’s equality
the lush impenetrable jungles of massachusetts
try driving through the historic part of Boston and you’ll see that this is true
New England was heavily forested, its major utility on behalf of Britain was producing wood (incl. large old-growth trees for unspliced masts) and sap-derived tar for sealing ships (also ashes for lye production!) it was essentially a EUIV Naval Supplies province.
Like, we chalk “Mongols knew how to tap and drink the blood of horses to sustain themselves in desolate terrain” up to Mongols just being a very horse-centric culture, have you ever thought about what it means that New Englanders make maple syrup by tapping and drinking the blood of trees in snowbound winter?
* even longer, colder, and wetter winter (starting any day now)
* professional hockey players beating the living shit out of each other while millions of Canadians yell encouragement in the middle of their work day
* huge construction boom in the downtown areas of major cities with underground parking, because we’re still dealing with the 2008 crash and there’s almost no money for new transit lines or transit-friendly neighborhoods. I’m sorry, but there’s only so much we can do with all the skyscrapers we already have
“Going to eat some canola? You may as well be eating granola” (this is 5 years after granola is also found to have been poisonous)
If we wanted to sour its reputation we could just start calling it “rapeseed oil” like everyone else (“Canola” originally meant “Canadian oil, low acid”)
So do people complaining about Canada’s “MAID” thing with doctors essentially prescribing suicide to tough-luck “no particular sickness, life just sucks” cases want to return to the status quo ante of “doctors see them, acknowledge that there are no immediate or even intermediate expectations their life will become net positive, and tell them to come back next year”?
(The American status quo without universal government-funded healthcare is “lol those people don’t see doctors”)
Or that they should instead somehow treat the life-suckage, even where it essentially comes from being down-and-out or superfluous? Cause the people I see pushing this line don’t normally seem like “the problem with Canadian single-payer healthcare is it’s not backed by a full-spectrum government welfare state or reconstruction of the social order” types
Canadian health-worriers like “we need mask mandates back!” and like, yes, pediatric respiratory disease is in a surge this year that is already far exceeding hospital capacity and if not somehow suppressed will see many children die who within capacity were saveable.
At the same time, last time we gave those public health types an inch they took a mile. Remember “two weeks to flatten the curve”?
Canadian pediatric hospital system at point of collapse, I hear.
I seem to remember they have less hospital capacity than America with their public healthcare – in the US 20th century up to the 80s hospitals were the ultimate profit point in the healthcare system (at which point insurers started to get the upper hand) so they were built out more here
(This is distinct from the American rural hospital crisis – Canadian population is more concentrated close to the border or coastlines)
Quebec’s majority government has adopted its contentious language bill overhauling the Charter of the French language, in a vote that lasted only minutes at the National Assembly this afternoon.
Dissent over Bill 96 had escalated in recent weeks with thousands holding protests, denouncing the bill for impeding on the rights of anglophones, allophones and Indigenous communities.
The bill is large in scope, limiting the use of English in the courts and public services and imposing tougher language requirements on small businesses and municipalities.
It also caps the number of students who can attend English-language colleges, known as CEGEPs, and increases the amount of French courses students at the colleges must take.
Two opposition parties voted against the law. The Parti Québécois said the legislation did not go far enough in protecting the French language in Quebec, while Quebec Liberal Party Leader Dominique Anglade denounced the bill’s use of the notwithstanding clause, saying it goes too far.
The notwithstanding clause allows a province to override basic freedoms guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Instead of just applying the clause to specific parts of Bill 96, the government applied the clause to the entire bill, making every aspect of the far-reaching law immune to legal challenges based on the charter.
Fuck la CAQ. Fuck Legault. Fuck le PQ qui voulait une loi encore plus draconienne. Fuck les unilingues francophones qui veulent que le reste de la province soit aussi insulaire et isolée du reste du monde qu’eux-autres. Fuck you all, gang de crisses!
This bill is dangerous. It goes far beyond language and is going to put peoples health in danger, people will lose access to justice and it abandons vulnerable refugees.
I know. Framing this as “just 3 courses in Cegep” has compmetely blinded most people in Québec and outside of it to the actual impacts this will have, to just how far-reaching and incredibly reckless, racist, and xenophobic this truly is. The CAQ has lied to Québecois, and misrepresented facts at every turn. Anybody who read the bill and its various amendments as it trotted its merry way through the latest session at l’Assemblée Nationale could see it plainly for what it was: using the supposed decline of French in the province (it isn’t actually declining - only unilingual use of french is declining, more people in Québec speak french than ever, but more Québecois speak other languages as well, which is the part the CAQ does NOT mention when they talk about “le déclin”) as an excuse to erode the rights of non-unilingual-french Quebecers, establish a system of second-class citizens by law, and discourage most of the world’s population from settling down in Québec.
Just imagine, for instance, telling a refugee that they have to get accustomed to a new place, get their paperwork in order, find a place to live, find work, find a family doctor, contact all of the support groups they may need, AND learn a complex language they may have NEVER heard before. In six months.
I took French for 9 years. 9 YEARS.
I couldn’t pass the language requirement to even apply for residency.
Honestly one of the most interesting things in vidya politics in the 2010s since the birth of vidya verticals and GamerGate as the first sign that millennial media was going rancid, was Ubisoft going in with Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed on this specifically Canadian vision of the open prairies and English industrialism and French equality
Wait does Canada call it canola (Canadian oil, low acid) because they’re too immature to admit the crop is called “rapeseed”?
My understanding is that the most direct reason is brand differentiation from unrefined rapeseed oil, which emits fumes that can have negative effects on heart and lung health when used in cooking (hence the “low acid;” erucic acid is the dangerous chemical in question), though I can’t imagine they were sorry to have an excuse to switch to a name that didn’t have “rape” in it.
Anyway, the name originated in Canada, and only became a generic term elsewhere later on.
