Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.06.1967, Blaðsíða 16

16
LÖGBERG-HEIMSKRINGLA, FIMMTUDAGINN 1. JÚNÍ 1967
INGIBJÖRG JÓNSSON:
TOUR OF QUEBEC PROVINCE
En route home from his pilgrimage of the western
provinces, a few months prior to the Quebec provincial
elections, the former premier of that province, Hon.
Jean Lesage, stopped off in Winnipeg. During the course
of his visit he met with editors of the numerous news-
papers published in languages other than English and
French, and constituting the Ethnic Press Federation of
Canada.
Mr. Lesage initiated an invitation to these editors to
visit his province under the sponsorship of two French
language paper organizations. Expenses of the tour
were shared by the Quebec government, the federal
government, Expo 67 and Centennial Commission.
It was understood that at a future date editors of
the French press in the East would be invited by the
Ethnic Press Federation to tour the Western provinces.
The Quebec elections and defeat of the Lesage
government followed on the heels of these arrange-
ments. But his successor, the Hon. Daniel Johnson,
carried on with the plans, for their purpose was to
strenghthen the bonds of understanding and sympathy
between the multi-cultural ethnic groups of the Canad-
ian West and the French Canadians of Quebec. April,
1967, has been chosen for the western visit by the
French Canadian editors. It is hoped that they will ex-
perience the abundance of generous hospitality and
warmth as met the Westerners in the East.
While many of us flew East on Sunday, Oct. 23,
some had left the previous day. Our group paused for
an hour in Toronto, where we were joined by a large
number of fellow guests. We deplaned at Dorval Air-
port in Montreal at about 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23.
I had expected an all-French city, but soon noticed
a good many advertising posters in English an our way
to our hotel.
At Queen’s Hotel, which was to be our home for the
next two days, M. Yves Margroff, editor of the large
Montreal daily newspaper, Le Devoir, greeted the 43
guests from the West.
This included 16 delegates from Winnipeg papers
and Charles Dojack, President Ethnic Press Federation
of Canada, a man who had worked tirelessly in arrang-
ing the tour and preparing for it. There were 16 from
Toronto, five or six from Vancouver, one from Ed-
monton and several from Montreal. Here was an inter-
esting group of varied ethnic backgrounds — Polish,
German, French, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Italian,
Swedish, Chinese and many other. Ukrainians formed
the largest single proportion of delegates, though they
do not constitute a majority ethnic group in Canada.
The hotel became a babel of activity.
Of the two delegates of Icelandic descent, I attended as
editor of the Icelandic language weekly, Lögberg-Heims-
kringla and the Hon. Walter J. Lindal as editor of the
Icelandic Canadian, published in English. Within a short
while we were addressing each other in Icelandic when-
ever we met. It seemed a sort of self defence, for we
were surrounded by a sea of sound — languages we
did not understand.
Among the six or seven women representing their
publications, Miss Ruth Gordon, editor of the Canadian
Scene, appeared to be the only Anglo-Saxon. The two
of us were drawn to each other and I looked forward
to her companionship.
There was little time for personal socializing, but I
had been in touch with my friend, Miss Johanna Niel-
sen, and she was on hand to greet me at the hotel. A
Bachelor of Arts from the University of Manitoba, Jo-
hanna is also a graduate of a commercial college in
Winnipeg and is now private secretary to the president
of a large Montreal concern. Having dined well on the
plane, I passed up dinner in the hotel and spent three
wonderful hours alone with my friend.
At an evening reception in Mr. Dojacks suite, we met
Mr. Alban Daigle and Mr. Kenneth Alexander, repre-
senting the federal department of Citizenship and Man-
power, Mr. Stan Zybala of the Centennial Commission
in Ottawa. Later we were joined by Mrs. Nicole Capt
from the Information & Publicity Dept. of Quebec.
They were our constant friends during the trip, never
missing an opportunity to add to our comfort and
pleasure.
We were slightly nonplussed to discover that the
itineraries handed to us were in French, a language in
which most of us were less than efficient. The type-
written documents covered three large sheets and out-
lined our seven-day schedule in minute detail.
MONTREAL
Arriving in Montreal at dusk on Oct. 16, we had
little opportunity to see any of the city. But in my
room that evening memories of what I had heard and
read of this historic city overtook me. This, I feel,
helped me to a better understanding of what I was
about to experience.
The city is located on a large island in the con-
fluence of the great St. Lawrence River, and the Ottawa
River. In 1535 the first European, Jacques Cartier, came
to the island and found there a village of several
hundred Huron Indians, who called their community
Hochelaga. A small, wooded mountain on the island
was named Mont Royal by Cartier, and this mountain
gave its name to the city.
Many years later, Samuel de Champlain, father of
the French settlement in Quebec, came to Hochelaga,
but the village had disappeared and he failed to estab-
lish a colony, because of warfare between the Huron
and Iroquois Indians.
In the year 1642 Sieur Maisoneuve brought in a
group of pioneers and by building houses, a church, a
hospital and other necessary structures laid the founda-
tion to permanent island settlement in a village sur-
rounded by a protective fort.
The first settlers were devout Roman Catholics, who
knelt in prayer the moment they touched foot to the
new soil. Later they placed a great cross on the highest
peak of Mount Royal — their symbol of the claim
staked by the first white possessors of the island. At
the first mass, Father Vimont uttered these prophetic
words: 'What you see is only a grain of mustard seed
— but it is so animated by faith and religion that it
must be that God has great designs for it.”
This was the age of transport by the seaways, Mon-
treal lay in the centre of traffic. All rivers and water-
ways led to the settlement and within a few years
Montreal became the focal point of the fur trade.
Hundreds of canoes with cargoes of costly pelts sought
harbor in the settlement, hastening its growth and
progress.
And over this bourgeoning civilization and all of
Quebec, Frenchmen ruled supreme for more than a
century and a half. Over this era of colorful history,
the stirring accounts of French explorations and land
discoveries cast a glow of rare and lasting achievement.
They covered both sides of the St. Lawrence, the West
and the Mississippi Valley.
A new chapter in Canadian history opened in 1759,
when the English captured Quebec, and Montreal the
following year. At the end of the seven-year war, a
treaty signed in Paris in 1763 gave Canada to England,
and legend accuses Louis the Fifteenth of France as
having remarked that there was little loss in this snow-
covered desert. Of no concern to the king and his French
subjects was the fate of their kinsmen west of the
Atlantic.
This turn of fate threw together two European peo-
ples of widely different tastes, traditions and tempera-
ments whose forbears had for centuries waged war on
one another. The impulsive, passionate, artistic French
— spiritual intellectuals under the domination of their
church — had little in common with the cool-mannered,
pragmatic English with their ingrained talents for in-
dustry and business.
The Quebec treaty of 1774 shows a sincere effort on
the part of the British to bring about peace and harmony
with the French. But the tendency to use their stronger
position to secure their own interests in the new country
was natural and inevitable. Montreal’s great potential
was clear to them from the start, and as time went on,
it became a wealthy centre of Anglo-Canadian com-
merce and industry in Quebec.
The harbour is of greater importance to the life and
growth of modern Montreal than it ever was in the
past, and a system of piers covering 14 miles acom-
modates vessels from all parts of the world. Although
the city lies 1000 miles from the Atlantic coast, ships
approach it through a number of shipping canals, and
the St. Lawrence Seaway has greatly increased naviga-
tion to Montreal.
Montreal is the centre of the head offices of the
C.P.R., the C.N.R., of the large banks and various great
industries and enterprises. There too is the Canadair
factory, where the big planes flown by Icelandic Air-
lines were built.
Canada’s greatest metropolis from the beginning,
Montreal rates as the seventh largest city in North
America, with a current, fast-growing population of
2*4 million.
Only ten percent of the entire Quebec population is
of Anglo-Saxon origin, and this ten percent is resident
chiefly in Montreal. Yet this small proportion of Que-
beckers has captured relatively greater financial
strength in the province than the French. On the other
hand, the English-speaking faction takes less interest
than the French in Montreal’s civic politics and the
politics of the province. They live in comparative isola-
tion in the better districts and on the westem slopes of
Mount Royal. Many, though born and bred in Montreal,
have not troubled themselves to learn the French
language.
All this has contributed to a strong resentment of
the English by the French, who constitute 80 percent
of Montreal’s population and who are, for the most part,
said to be bilingual.
The Montreal school system does little to promote
neighborly accord. Chlidren from Roman Catholic homes
attend Roman Catholic schools, and children of Pro-
testant parentage attend Protestant schools. Thus a
division almost from infancy. Two universities serve
the two factions — McGill University for the Anglo-
Saxon, the University of Montreal for French-Speaking
Roman Catholics.
Canada’s other provinces should take to heart the
bitter lesson inherent in the division of Montreal youth,
and be warned not to permit religious instruction in
their public schools. That is the responsibility of the
church and the home.
JEAN DRAPEAU AND EXPO
On Monday, Oct. 17, we crowded into a large bus
and took off for the Expo site. This involved several
detours, for here pavements were torn up as if bombs
had been dropped here and there on the city. Workmen
were laying new pavements and broadening old ones at
a fast pace, and here and there new buildings were
taking shape, while in the distance such great new sky
scrapers as Place Ville Marie, Place Victoria, Chateau
Champlain and Place Bonaventure, still under con-
struction, loomed against the horizon. There is so much
creativity and construction in Montreal that the atmos-
phere seems charged with energy and excitement.
Beside the gigantic new structures stand the relics
of the past — some centuries old. ChurChes predominate
here and many are majestically beautiful — irrefutable
testimony to religious ardor that spared nothing when
building shrines of devotion. Here and there nuns travell-
ed in twosomes and there was no escape from the spirit of
the city. The face of Montreal takes its expression from
the Roman Catholic church and the great cross erected
by the first pioneers on the highest peak of Mount
Royal. This cannot be obliterated by the great strides
of modern construction or the elegance of Anglo-Saxon
homes on the slopes of the mountain.
“Look at this handsome young policeman,” said my
seat mate as we drove through heavy traffic. The young
officer reminded me of Montreal’s famous mayor, Jean
Drapeau, who is said to be the main force in the re-
generation of his city’s progress. He also has another
claim to fame, the purging of crime and vice from
Montreal, with the assistance of his young and energetic
police force.
Despite Father Vimont’s idealistic dreams of the
restraining influence of the Mother Church, Montreal
became, for a time, the Sodom of the country. Criminals,
gamblers and dealers in vice flourished there almost
openly in the shelter of the police, which had become
corrupt and receptive to bribery by the underworld.
Drapeau, a lawyer by profession, vehemently at-
tacked the evil with the support of his friend, Paci-
fique Plante, during the first years of the war. The
story will not be told here for it is well known to
readers of newspapers and magazines. But the object
was near achievement when Drapeau was elected for
a second term as mayor of Montreal in 1960 and many
of his friends and supporters were also elected to the
city council. He immediately hired a high ranking mem-
ber of Scotland Yard in London, Engíand, and another
from the Paris police to re-organize Montreal’s police
force. These outsiders had no scruples about weeding
out undesirables from the old force, replacing them
with young and unspoilt men. They initiated a strong
“flying squad” to combat the worst criminals with the
result that crime in Montreal was reduced to half its
former volume and remains in steady retreat.
Jean Drapeau is considered something of an autocrat.
From a 48-member city council he chose a 6-member
executive board, which has his trust and confidence and
shares his decisions, taken without sanctioning votes
from the citizenry. Drapeau contends that if his rule
does not satisfy the public, it can be put to an end at
the polls on election day.
His first concern when he took the reins of office in
1960, was to act on an issue that had been under dis-
cussion since 1920, to build a 16-mile underground rail-
way beneath the St. Lawrence to the south bank. Metro,
as the subway is named, was opened the day after we
arrived in Montreal — at the precise time promised by
Drapeau. Unfortunately, we did not have on opportunity
to travel in the new underground train.
But we have now reached Expo and an explanation
of the fair is in order.
After the great world exhibition in London, England,
in 1851, nations of all the world’s continents began to
plan similar fairs, resulting in much confusion until
representatives from 31 countries met in France in 1928
and agreed on a set of rules governing world exhibi-
tions. They formed a board with headquarters in Paris,
which issues permission to hold these fairs at several
years’ intervals. These fairs are not only trade fairs, but
are designed to reflect the civilizations and cultures of
participating nations.
In 1960 the Soviet Union sought permission to hold
the 1967 World Fair, for that is the 50th anniversary of
the Russian revolution. Canada also applied in order to
incorporate the event with the celebration of the lOOth
anniversary of Federation. Both Toronto and Montreal
were mentioned as probable sites, but as Toronto is the
locale of the annual Canadian Exhibition. Montreal was
granted the honor, an appropriate gesture, since the