Where Is Herouxville?

Herouxville is a small town in the Province of Quebec and has been in the news quite a bit recently. The reason for being in the news aren't particularly good ones. The town enacted a set of standards for newcomers. Now Herouxville doesn't currently have any migrants but I doubt that anyone would want to go live there.

"The provocative statement issued by Herouxville says that a “woman can drive a car, vote, sign cheques, dance, decide for herself, speak her piece, dress as she sees fit ... walk alone in public places, study, have a job ... However, we consider that killing women in public beatings or burning them alive are not part of our standards of life.”

The statement explains that townsfolk listen to music, drink alcohol and decorate Christmas trees. Boys and girls play games together, men and women ski on the same hill, and “if you came to my place we would send the kids to swim together in the pool”.

“Don’t be surprised, this is normal for us,” the declaration says. It seems that Herouxville, a town with no migrants but in need of immigration, has been watching events unfold in Europe. Mayor Claude Dupont told one newspaper that the standards are “saying out loud what some people are thinking quietly but don’t have the balls to say”.

Herouxville has become famous, they are writing about it in the Australian news, where the above quote comes from. You can read it in it's entirety here.

Also recently there was a real issue with the local YMCA had to frost their windows so that the Hasidic Jews walking by outside wouldn't seen lycra clad women doing pilates. I wrote about that in a previous post. There have been numerous small things I guess that scratch away at Canadians, who then begin to wonder about whether or not multiculturalism was really such a good idea.

I have been wondering that for a long time and I am an immigrant child. The problem is that you cannot please everyone all the time without changing what Canada really is or was. I recall back in the 70's when the Toronto School Board decided in their wisdom to offer after school language classes to their immigrant children. Problem was the languages being taught where Greek, Portuguese, Chinese (3 different dialects) not English.

That left out a lot of other immigrants, Polish, Ukraine, German, Swedish just to name a few. Was this discrimination? I remember being incredibly annoyed at the time, I would have loved to have my offspring in German classes at no charge. Alas, it was not to be, if he was going to learn it I would either have to teach him or send him to private school at my expense. Something was wrong with that picture.

Now even though I wear a cowboy hat in my photo, I am not a redneck, sorry Alberta, in fact there was a time in the 70's when I was NDP leaning (far left). Slowly as I got older I went more to Liberal (mushy middle) and now tend to lean more to the right but with a social conscience.

My problem with multiculturalism is that it is exclusive with each culture demanding their ways be accepted here, such as sharia and modes of dress. They live in their own neighbourhoods which then become ghettos, in my view and do very little to blend in.

Which begs the question, why in the world did they want to come here in the first place? I know why my parents did, they adapted to their new homeland and didn't expect it to conform to their old one....what has happened to our society to produce the attitudes as in Herouxville? Are more people thinking the same thing but not verbalizing it.... back to my knitting.