Good evening ladies and gentlemen !

I was looking at famous Québec videos the other day (such as Têtes à claques for those of you who know this show...) and I found an old Pepsi commercial from 2003-2004: Icitte, c'est Pepsi ! Take a look:

The ad really emphasizes how unique and authentic Québec is. It refers to the 1st of July, the day when the leases usually end and everyone moves out.  It also depicts their attachment to Hockey (Quebecker are crazy about hockey, and they support the Canadiens de Montréal). One of the guys in the ad also makes a reference to poutine, Québec's most famous dish, and another one to how cold it is there. Finally, the ad ends with a reference to the specific language of Québec (it is definitely not French !): they don't say "ici", they say "icitte" !

This ad striked me because it is so typical from Québec ! It could be a cliché, but it is not: everything they say in there is true, and this really appeals to the pride of being from Québec. This is the kind of pride I felt every day while living in Montréal: people who want Québec to be independent, people who fight to keep the french language alive in their country...

Therefore, the target is Quebeckers who are proud to be from Québec. It shows them how original and unique they are, and apparently it works ! They do drink a lot of Pepsi, and I believe Pepsi is even more popular than Coke.

Moreover, it shows that Quebeckers are unified around certain things and attached to traditions (their gastronomy, their language, the 1st of July, hockey...). 

In France, this advertising would make no sense, because it appeals to the specific culture and values of Québec. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to do such an ad in France without it being a cliché. Indeed, the french people is getting more and more diversified, and I think it would be hard to find things that unify all of us. 

Now I will let you watch the ad over and over like I did, because I know you all love the accent ;)

Have a wonderful evening my dears !

Laurie

Good evening my dear readers :)

This monday, the general elections took place in Québec, for the number of seats in parliament but most importantly, the new Québec prime minister. So I thought, it would be the perfect timing to tell you a bit more about politics & geopolitics in Québec !

Québec is kind of the "outsider" here in Canada. The french-speaking people are very proud of the french language (even more than us !), and there are several laws concerning the use of the french language in Québec. For example, in shops, salespeople have to say hello in french before saying it in english. In restaurants, the menus have to be put up in french. When you go to McDonald's, you don't buy a happy meal, you buy a "joyeux festin". All the names of the films have to be translated in french. For example Fast & Furious, which has the same title in french, is called "rapide & dangereux" in Québec. And I could go on like this for hours.

Needless to say language creates conflicts between french-speaking & english-speaking people in Québec. This is especially the case in Montréal, because those people meet all the time. St-Laurent, a big street that goes from north to south of Montréal, cuts the city in half between east & west. Historically, the english-speakers used to live on the west side of the city, & the french-speakers on the east side. This isn't so true anymore, but the invisible barrier still stands.

This is partly to "save the french language & heritage" that some people want Québec to become an independent country. The québécois I live with is a so-called "separatist", meaning that he wants Québec to be independent. He's not from Montréal, he was born in the Madgalen Islands, small islands on the West Coast of Québec. You can feel that he's very proud to be from Québec, but it doesn't seem like he has an emotional attachment to Canada.

Anyway, that subject was particularly hot during the elections !

There are 2 very big parties in Québec: The Parti Québécois (PQ) et the Liberal Party. The PQ is the one that, among other things, wants Québec to become independent. If they had won, they would probably have set up a referendum to ask the citizens of Québec if they want to be independent from the rest of Canada or not.

However, and I'm sorry I spoiled it, the Liberals won with 70 seats in the parliament (the PQ got 30), and their leader Philippe Couillard so became the new Prime Minister of Québec.

Well, I guess independence is gonna have to wait... Don't worry Québec, the arms of Mother Canada are still warm & welcoming :)

Laurie

Hello my friends :)

Don't lie, I know you missed me ! I've had a lot of work to do lately: mid-terms, papers, group works... Who said you sit back and relax while you're abroad ? Anyway, I'm back, et I'm gonna tell you everything about the crazy weekend I spent in Toronto with my girlfriends !

People here don't travel a lot by train like we do, they take coaches (buses if you will) instead. So there we were, at 00:30 on a Thursday night (well ok, technically it was Friday morning, but you know what I mean) waiting for our 7-hour bus ride.

We arrived in Toronto in the early morning. We went to the hostel to put our bags there. A really nice hostel by the way, one of the nicest I've seen so far ! We were a 6-beds female dorm with one Irish girl and one Italian girl.

We were starving, so we decided to have a REAL Canadian breakfast... And it was totally worth it ! Check this out:

We went to Saint Lawrence's market. I still don't know exactly what it is... It was an indoor market, but it looked like an outdoor market, and there was food, and clothes, and jewellry...

After that we walked around in the Distillery District. It was a really nice place to see, one of my favourite tours of the weekend.

We then took a walk along the bay. Toronto is located right next to Lake Ontario, which is one of the five Great Lakes in North America. We went on walking and arrived downtown, right next to the CN Tower. Of course, we had to go up ! Although it is quite expensive, it is really worth seeing: the view from up there is amazing ! Take a look:

We wanted to go to the Toronto Islands, which is kind of a hippie island on Lake Ontario, but the ferry was working very slowly and we would have had to wait too long, so we headed towards Kensington. Do you know Camden Town in London ? Well, Kensington is the same kind of neighborhood. There are strange wall paintings on the houses, strange stores, strange people... I loved it !

We were almost dead at that point of the day, especially after spending the night in the bus, so we went back to the hostel, had some hot chocolate and had a little chat, you know, just like girlfriends do !

On the next day, we decided to go and see the Toronto University. We visited a few buildings, but the most impressive was Trinity College: it really looked like Hogwarts ! Look at that dining room :

So what is it gonna be ? Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin ?

And because we are girls and we have needs, guess what we did in the afternoon ? That's right, shopping ! Oh what a magic word... We went to the Eaton centre, which is a super big mall, and just enjoyed ourselves !

The next day was dedicated to the Niagara Falls ! We woke up at 5:30 in the morning (yes that's right) because we had to take a bus at 7. We had to take a cab to the coach station because, you won't believe it, the subway starts at 9 am on Sundays !! I still can't believe it, but anyway...

We arrived at the Niagara-on-the-Lake coach station at 9. We walked through the whole city (which is completely dead in the winter by the way, there's absolutely nothing to do there) for more than half an hour until we arrived to the actual falls ! However, the show was really impressive. The lake was frozen, and some parts of the falls as well,  that all made the moment kind of unique.

We went back to Toronto at the beginning of the afternoon, and then took another bus back to Montréal.

We were tired as never before, but we enjoyed every moment of our weekend. Imagine how it felt to get back to work on monday... That I did not enjoy so much. 

Never mind, I have a new objective: Bostoooooon next week ! Don't worry, you'll have all the details ;)

Bye bye, or as my friend Übercool would say: quack quack !

xxx

Laurie

Hi folks !

Lesson of the day : the social rituals from Québec !

First thing you need to know : Montréal is a Canadian city, but it mostly is a Québec city ! People from Québec don't consider themselves as Canadians, at least the french-speaking ones. Most of them want Québec to be independant.

Symbols of Québec are, of course, mooses (you see them on all the tourist shirts they sell), the flag:  and maple syrup ! They basically do everything with maple syrup here : cookies, sauces, even bacon ! I haven't tried it so far but I'm kinda curious about it.  

The Canada day is on the 1st of july. That's also the day when most people move out of their apartments in Montréal because most of the leases end on july 1st.

Québec's national holiday however is on the 24th of June, and is called Saint Jean Baptiste Day, after the Jewish preacher who baptized Jesus in the river Jordan.

Families are much alike French families. The only thing I noticed is that children really have a very high decision power. They influence a lot of the family habits, and purchases as well. But maybe that's how it is in France too right now, I'm just not up to date. 

As far as the meals are concerned (yeah there had to be something about food, sorry), people have a lot of snacks here during the day, but they usually eat dinner around 6 pm, which is a bit early for us frenchies. But I heard it's better to eat early so you have digested when you go to sleep, so I'm following the lead and eat at 6pm now !

The traditional dish in Montréal is called poutine : french fries with meat sauce and small pieces of cheese (not french cheese, don't be a dreamer). I know, this doesn't really sound appetizing. I thought I would hate it, I didn't even want to try it. But you have to taste it 3 times to like it.The first time I ate it, it wasn't as bad as I thought, but still not my cup of tea. Second time, not too bad. Third time, I loved it ! My third time was actually during the Poutine week, an entire week dedicated to poutine (it's not a joke) where you can vote for the best poutine restaurant. We waited for 1 hour in the cold in front of the restaurant to get it, but it definitely was worth it !

Other well-known dishes are smoked meat and bagels.

There are a lot of cultural events taking place in Montréal : music festivals such as the igloofest uon january or the francofolies in june, the fête des neiges in january, the Just for laughs festival in july...

I hope I raised your interest on Québec and that now you can't wait to come over !

Take care :)

Laurie and Übercool

Hi folks !

Do you know what JMSB stands for ? 

Hint : it is NOT "je me sens bien" ! But I do feel good, thank you for asking :)

No, seriously, JMSB stands for John Molson School of Business. JMSB is to Concordia what ESDES is to the Catholic University of Lyon, to give you an idea. 

It was named after a businessman called, oh what a surprise, John Molson ! The school ranks among the top in Canada and just so you know, the dean is Dr. Steve Harvey.

There are two Concordia campuses in Montreal : Loyola Campus, which is situated in the West of Montréal, and Sir George William (SGW for the intimates) Campus, which is situated downtown.

JMSB is located on the Concordia Campus downtown (so SGW for those who follow).  The Molson Building, in which we take all our classes, communicates with all the other Concordia buildings via underground passages.

There are 6 or 7 buildings on the campus, but we just use 3 of them : the Molson Building where all of our classes take place, the Henri Hall building where the international students office is located and the Library Building, where the Library, bookstore and students office (where we do our student ID card) are located. Concordia is such a huge university that it has its own bookstore ! They sell Concordia clothing such as hoodies and joggings, all sorts of accessories (Concordia coffee cups, keyholders...) and class material (calculators, pencils, agendas...)That's where we went to buy the 4 super-expensive books we need for our classes.

Apart from the bookstore, Concordia offers a lot in terms of student services : you can rent laptops and study rooms for free, there's a computer lab where you can print out and/or scan documents, the library is open 24/7 (that means you can study at 3 in the morning on a sunday if you want to, isn't that awesome ?), there's a gym only for Concordia students that offers sport courses 7 days a week at more than affordable prices, and there are Subway's, Starbucks and Tim Horton's (which is a local cheaper Starbucks) inside of every Concordia Building. 

We only have 12 hours of classes here, which is really nothing, but we have a lot of personal work to do, especially read specific chapters of our textbooks to prepare for each class. The way classes take place and the atmosphere in the class are really different from what we are used to. First of all, you're never with the same persons in your courses, because everyone picks different courses, so it's really hard to meet people this way and honestly, classes are not the place where you can make friends here. Moreover, the people are very respectful and quiet during the classes, teachers don't need to tell students to shut their mouths. And there's interaction between the teachers and the students, students are always willing to participate during the classes.

I take 4 classes here :

COMM 212 Business Communication : we learn how to communicate with business partners, which communication channel to use, when and with whom, and we're also going to improve our oral communication skills by doing a solo oral presentation and a group presentation in front of the class.

COMM 223 Marketing Management : it's basically an introduction to marketing. There are notions I have already seen in my first and second year in France, but there are new notions as well. It allows me to learn the vocabulary of notions I already know in french, but the most interesting thing is that we see them from a canadian point of view, which is not quite the same as the french point of view.

COMM 320 Entrepreneurship : we are trying to get to know entrepreneurs (understand who these people are, what they do), and then we will put knowledge into practise by designing a business plan for a company that already exists. I assume this will be very helpful in the future, and a great experience.

MANA 343 Negotiation and conflict resolution : we will try to understand what happens when we negotiate (because we do it all the time), learn tactics and do negotiation simulations. 

Last but not least : integration !

We're lucky to be at JMSB, a school in a school, because it allowed us to be integrated twice !

We took part in an integration day with CISA, the association who takes care of international students for Concordia, to get to know other Concordia international students. We had a tour of the university, did a few games together and then went to a pub crawl which was a looot of fun ! CISA organizes parties and trips during the whole semester, and I'll try to attend most of them, for example we'll go to a trip to Quebec City by the end of the month !

We also took part in an integration night with an association called JIC, which is basically the same as CISA but only for JMSB students. I was assigned two "buddies", JMSB students who are supposed to introduce us to the Montreal life. I only met one of them for now, she's called Alexandra and is really such a nice girl ! I'm looking forward to meeting the other one.

Keep it up :)

Laurie, and Übercool