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Hypocrites in the building
Coming back from a quick run to the supermarket for fresh mint and bean sprouts, I found two people, a man and a woman, standing at my door. I asked them what or who they were after (suspecting already that they were pamphlet-distributing Christians), and so I let the man show his magazine and talk to me a bit (whip me now if I'm too open-minded), and only told him politely that I wasn't interested when he mentioned the word "Bible". Then they went on to try to knock on the next door. At that point, the landlady came downstairs, being on her way out, and she tried to tell them they had no right to disturb the residents of the building. The woman then became very rude and confronting, saying all kinds of unpleasant things in French. Now, I knew the landlady has just migrated several months ago, and probably knew less French than I do. I said (in English) to the woman, that she was very impolite for a Christian. She obviously understood me and went on and yelled in my face, "Vous parlez français?! Vous êtes à Montréal!" To which I responded matter-of-factly, "This is a bilingual country." Meanwhile, the landlady tried to get them to leave, and in the end the woman said they would take the stairs, complaining loudly the whole time about people who don't speak french and immigrants. This offended me enough to call down the stairwell, "Excuse me, there is no need to be racist." Of course, she went on and on ... Most people I have met in Montreal are very charitable, and have no gripes when they speak to me in French and I respond in English. In fact, they tend to be apologetic if they don't feel they speak English well. The next time someone asks me in a confrontational manner if I spoke French, I'm going to say (in French), that I speak a bit of French, English very well, Mandarin and Malay, how about you? (Kicking myself for not having thought of that at the time.) A funny thing that occurred to me later, was that the magazine the man showed me was called "Watchtower". If you are aware of what has been considered evil by Christians, you'd see the irony in this too. Posted by sniffles at June 08, 2003 05:50 PM