I Rant

Rant 7: Your Cottage Weekend Isn't Worth My Life

I live in a small municipality (that's right it's so small we aren't considered a town or village) in Quebec that is right beside the Ontario border.
I am actually looking at Ontario right now, just to give you an idea of how close I am talking.

In case you aren't familiar with Quebec politics, or Canadian ones, I will give you a crash course.
So Quebec is the only French-first province in Canada and was originally colonized by the French. The English then took over the area from the French but allowed them to keep their language, culture, and laws.
Hundreds of years later there was a separatist movement in Quebec, meaning that Quebec wanted to leave Canada and become their own country.
A referendum was held and the results were nearly 50/50 but ended up being something like 51/49 in favour of remaining part of Canada.
Since the referendum the separatist movement died down a bit but it still plays a huge role in Quebec politics and even day to day life for some.
For example Quebec has limited services in English and rules that make it so that companies have to put French first on all their notices as well as display French text larger than English text. We also have a special language police that goes around to make sure that businesses are compliant and hands out fines if they are not.

All of this has, understably, made the other provinces dislike Quebec and to an extent Quebecers (I say provinces only because I think the territories are pretty chill about Quebec). We are typically seen as Separatists even if we are not.

So now that you have a bit of the political backstory ( and hey you have free time, if you want to learn more hit up Google) of the province I can move on to the actual rant!

Since COVID-19 has been spreading quickly in places like Montreal the Quebec premier Francois Legault decided to partially close the Ontario/Quebec border crossing where I live. The bridge isn't blocked totally, and people are still able to cross provided that they have a legit reason to.
Quebec has also closed access totally to our more northern communities which is where large populations of first nation peoples live. This is to protect those more vunrable communities.
But back to the bridge (which is where the border crossing is). So the bridge is closed to Ontarians coming into the province, but Quebecers can still cross the bridge into Ontario with no issues because Ontario hasn't closed their side of the border.
This has caused, for lack of a better word, a shit show in the areas surrounding the crossing.
I have seen so many nasty comments left on the local papers Facebook posts. Comments made by people living in Ontario saying that they want us to stay in our own province, not use "their" hospital and to stop shopping across the border. All of which seem like legitament concerns on the surface but let's take a deeper dive.
I will totally admit that the shopping should stop, people are only doing it because we only have one store on our side and the prices are much higher than the Ontario side. In these times where money is tight lots of families cannot afford to stop at the one store and instead hop the border to go to Wal-Mart or the dollar store for their supply runs.
The next closest Quebec Wal-Mart is an hour long round trip drive for those of us who are closest to it. We are also being told to stay in our regions and those other stores are just outside this region's border. So basically either families drive out of the region to shop and hope that the store there isn't packed, or they have to buy the expensive food and risk not having enough. So people and up crossing. This could be easily fixed by government intervention in the store, forcing them to lower their prices. However, I digress.
The part that is really telling is that people on the Ontario side are up in arms about Quebecers using the hospital.
My municipality does not have a hospital, or for that matter a doctor's office. The closest fully functioning hospital is over an hour away near Montreal, the epicentre of the Quebec outbreak. The hospital on the Ontario side has always accepted Quebec patients as well as donations. The hospital has been funded by both Ontarians and Quebecers who use it (even I have given them money) yet now we are being told by our neighbors that we cannot access it.

All of this is because Quebec put a small rotating road check point on the bridge (that's right it's not even there the whole time) to stop visitors from entering the province.
I have seen Ontario people crying out about how it's unfair that it isn't blocked both ways. Honestly it isn't it should be closed on both sides but that's for the Ontario government to decide, not me.

People are going about this like the people of Quebec have called another referendum and that they are splitting from Canada, when in reality they are trying to protect those living in more vunrable communities (like I said we don't have a hospital or any medical infrastructure, if a large outbreak were to happen here they would have to build a field hospital for us, or find some way to move the sick into Montreal for treatment.
This disease could destroy the municipality if it were to rapidly spread here.
Due to this fact the Quebec government has also now banned people from going to their private cottages located in my region. I live in prime cottage country and every summer thousands of people come to spend time in the area. People are mad about this as well and it has served to throw gas on the already tense situation.
People have been talking about disregarding the rules and taking the government to court over this if they are prevented from accessing their cottages.
Which is ridicloious! There is a global pandemic and people are mad about not being able to their cottages. They have shown that they don't care at all about my communities health, and even scarier it is feeling like they don't care about the lives of Quebecers for the sole reason that we live in Quebec.

I am also English and have grown up in this area. I have witnessed first hand the treatment of English Quebecers in Quebec (it's not good) and it makes me worry when other provinces start saying that we don't deserve to be safe.

It's also the first time that I have witnessed the Ontario/Quebec divide to this extent, and it's shitty.
I want my neighbours to stop with all the hate, I want people to stay the fuck at home, shop local if possible, and for God sakes wash their hands.
Now is not the time for provincial infighting, or stupid old biases.

That's it for this rant cause I am just making myself more mad and sad about the whole situation.
Like I am English so I have to deal with the French separatists wanting me out of the province because I speak English, and now the rest of Canada seems to think that I should fucking die cause I live in Quebec.
Lay all this shit down, stop all the hate and petty squabbling cause people are dying. People are dying.

Stay safe everyone, wash your hands, don't touch your face, stay home if you can.
And if you are one of the people still working, holding up our country while the rest of us get to stay safely at home I fucking salute you. Thank you so much for showing up to work, thank you for risking your health for us. Y'all deserve a bigger raise.

Peace

M.Alice