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General

Just give the man his baguel and no one will get hurt

By Philippe Gohier

At this weekend’s PQ brainstorming session—don’t call it a convention!—party members spent much of their time debating just how far they should extend Bill 101’s tentacles. As reported by Le Devoir‘s Antoine Robitaille, party president Jonathan Valois even made a strangely personal plea to Montreal’s wretched Anglos, whose doughy delicacies he just can’t resist:

[That French is disappearing] is a feeling many Montrealers share. Sometimes, it annoys us when I can’t buy a bagel in French. It annoys me. And that’s part of daily life for Montrealers.

It’s all true. In fact, that’s why I moved to Toronto. My last apartment in Montreal was just a few short blocks away from both St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel, and the stress was overwhelming: O lord, when will you finally deliver Jonathan Valois from the modern-day calvary that is bagel shopping in this godforsaken place?

Thankfully, where I live now, bagels aren’t worth buying in any language. Deliverance at last.