The language thing, again

It's an issue that gets brought up about once a month here during the hockey season. I shouldn't be surprised, then, that this year, the Quebec nationalists started bitching and moaning about Les Habitants and Québéc culture as soon as the team reconvened. Preseason hasn't even started yet. What, are the PQ training for a solid season of more bitching and moaning? Are they hoping to get better and better at it, and come June, their side will win? They insist on crying about a lack of francophone players wearing the CH, as if a political party didn't have any other issues to worry about. (In a perfect world, maybe.)

All Habs discussed this same issue earlier this week, in much fancier words than I'll be using here, since I just don't have the patience anymore to listen to any PQ-related news.

I love living in a place where it was completely normal for some children to speak two languages at school every day. However, I think it's complete hypocrisy that in this same province, there are francophones who didn't have a half-day of English class when they were kids, and either marvel at my bilingualism or criticize my French because it's not as perfect as theirs. Pauline Marois, of all people, should know that language is divisive in Quebec.

I can bring up all the same arguments that we've seen a million times over: the talent of our non-Quebecois players, some players choosing other teams over ours, league expansion... but we've heard it all before and there's something much more important than that. The Canadiens, like all other sports franchises or means of entertainment, shouldn't be politicized.

I like to think that all the PQ blowhards who keep perpetuating this so-called problem don't actually look around when they come to Montreal. Canadiens fans come in all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. It's been said already that hockey is like a religion in this city, and I'd like to be idealistic and think it's the only "religion" that can't somehow get ruined by the rest of society, but leave it to people in politics not to leave well enough alone. By criticizing the Canadiens, all the PQ is doing is insulting the very province it claims to love so much.

How about you catch up with the rest of us, PQ? There's incredible diversity among Habs fans. Oh, and they've been called the "Canadiens" for a century now, so if the name was some kind of secret nationalist code, you cracked it in record time.