Reasonable or not?

I’ve always thought of Montreal as a good melting pot. We have a very varied population, and we seemed to get along. Yes, there are language issues, but that’s always been there and I think it will always be. Growing up we used to fight; the blokes vs. the frogs. That was normal, for me at least, growing up in Little Burgundy.

Lately there’s a lot of talk about “accomodement raisonnable” (I don’t know the exact term used in English to talk about this, “reasonable arrangement” ) . About a month ago, a local survey showed that 59% of Quebecois thought they were racists. I’m not really surprised by the results (especially not after this year’s experience for the Christmas Basket); they just reflect the issues we might be having towards some minorities. I’m wondering if we are really racists or simply fed up of trying to accommodate different ethnic groups. These issues have been getting to a lot of us. Are we scared of giving up too much, of losing ourselves in this process of accommodating the new comers to Canada? I realise that the events of September 11th affected a lot the way people see Muslims or at least, people from Muslim countries. We have these misconceptions about them all being terrorists. We watched a show about the survey results and the different issues Quebec’s population have with different ethnic groups. It was interesting (for lack of a better term) to see what people thought and what disturbed them.

A Muslim woman, wearing a veil, had a valid point: whom does it bother that she wears a veil? Some were saying we are a culture where women has reached a certain point in society and for a woman to cover her head is like taking a step back vis-à-vis men in general. If that woman had green hair one week and blue the following nobody would be offended or threatened by it, so why is the veil so upsetting? On the other hand, when asked why she was wearing the veil she couldn’t really explain it besides saying it was her choice and belief (not very convincing).

We recently had a case in Montreal where a Muslim woman swimming at a public pool, asked the father of a child who was taking a swim class at the same time, to leave the pool. She didn’t want to swim in front of him, for religious beliefs. The man refused to leave. And I think he did the right thing. Cases like that are more and more heard of.

There is this feeling, this anger brewing around that is making a lot of people uncomfortable. Some push it to the limit, like the town of Herouxville who came out with their set of rules forbidding the weirdest things, in case some immigrants chose their town to immigrate to. Hearing the City Counsellor talk about it made my skin crawled – so much ignorance is scary, and yet some of his points were valid. (Read more about it, here)

Until recently I didn’t really care about the separation of state and church. Now I do. I’m realising that too many things we do are related to religion and often we don’t even question it. I believe in respecting others and their beliefs. Most importantly I respect the fact that we all are different. I actually love that diversity. I’m curious about other cultures, religions and would love to know more about them.

If only we could all agree to disagree and try to adapt. Like Ceasar said so well: “When in Rome, do as the Roman do...”

What do you think?

Image: Hate