yes TORONTO is such a shit hole ...give me a break,there are alot of shit holes in france,Originally Posted by Kamp Berg
yes TORONTO is such a shit hole ...give me a break,there are alot of shit holes in france,
Last edited by reggie; 09-25-2021 at 03:59 PM.
Even when the Leafs are in last place with no hope, tickets become reasonable on the secondary market. And if not all pre-sold might actually start seeing games not sold out.
TFC is suffering because they didn't pre-sell many of the tickets a year ago, as usual (well they did, but then they cancelled it - which may be a bonanza for fickle fair-weather fans - and those quite reasonably discouraged by Covid. There's a lot of fully vaxxed people avoiding such events currently - especially for less essential stuff.
Lol, I never said Toronto is a shithole! I said I would choose anywhere in France over Toronto, mainly for lifestyle, but also the environment, especially as a millionaire. There are ‘shithole’ parts in every country and city, including France and Canada. So when I said anywhere, I meant anywhere that’s not a ‘shithole’ in France, compared to anywhere not a ‘shithole’ in Toronto. Some people don’t care about lifestyle or environment, some people do, some people just want to make lots of money, some don’t, it doesn’t make anywhere a shithole.
You may well be right
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
I thought 'shithole' in France was code for too many immigrants. I'd prefer Toronto.
There is plenty of prejudice in Canada, don’t kid yourself. Slavery only ended here 30 years before the US and the racism has been continuous since then, and we continue to try to irradiate our native population, as well as plenty of anti-immigrant sentiment, hardly things to be proud of. Canada does have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I’ll give you that, but those rights and freedoms have only really started to be reflected in society en masse post gen-x, same as in France and most other Western European countries.
Last edited by Kamp Berg; 09-26-2021 at 07:01 PM.
I've lived in France, most French think Canada is a much preferable place to live than France. Of course things like family ties (very important for the French) can make living in France preferable for them individually.
Tourists tend to have a very idealized view of France that does not match reality, even though many things like the food are nice. Dealing with just the bureaucracy for example can be a frustrating experience that few Canadians can imagine how much harder it is than Canada.
My opinion is based on my values and preferences, just like everyone else. There are lots of people who find somewhere other than where they were born more suitable to their temperament or lifestyle. Objectively speaking though, there is a reason why France is the most visited country in the world. Plus my experience living in Europe is that lifestyle is of paramount importance, I have not found that living in Canada or the US.
No I don't think they should have forced SSH to take a certain number of tickets, with all the uncertainty. I'm just saying the fact that we aren't forced to take tickets means that attendance is much more fickle this year than in a regular season. Bad weather, bad performance by TFC, uninteresting opponent, and/or concerns about getting downtown & home again on a weeknight (etc.) each lead to more impact on attendance than in a regular season when SSH have already paid no matter what. In a normal season more SSH will show up because they have paid anyway.
There is - I never said otherwise. But the anti-Muslim prejudice in particular in France seems worse to me. Marine La Pen and the National Front got as much as 34% in a recent presidential election - that's more of the vote than Trudeau's party just got! The National Front has a long history of holocaust denial and Islamaphobia - there's nothing comparable in main-stream politics in Canada. It's disingenuous to imply Canada is as prejudiced as France! When was the last time you heard about racist chants at soccer games in Canada? Good grief, in this story the head of French Football Federation favours homophobic chants - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...-idUSKCN1VV1Z3
Not sure the relevance of that. In living memory France was still sending minorities to the gas chamber - sure, they weren't leading the effort - but no shortage of collaborators. France ended slavery in France in the 1840s, but it continued in French Africa into the 1900s!
Ontario was the first jurisdiction in the empire in 1797 to end the import of slaves and free children of slaves. There were never many here (most were brought by US loyalist refugees in the 1790s, leading to the law. There were very few at all left by 1833 when slavery was ended throughout the British Empire - over 70 years before all of the French empire!
Last edited by nfitz; 09-27-2021 at 04:15 PM.
If you want to believe that Canada, with its ongoing genocide/occupation is somehow better because you have some facts that support how you feel, then so be it, but I could easily argue that it’s purely exceptionalism. What I will say, is that all I said was I prefer Europe and could understand how someone else does too. If you want to take that statement as a challenge to your identity or believe in Nationalism, that has nothing to fo with me or my preferences. I’m here to talk about soccer, I’m really not interested in discussing anything else or being accused of expressing sentiments I never expressed.
yes lets talk futbol. cheyrou was offered a better job and he left,he actually liked it here and would prob still be here if we didnt have donkeys running the club
Having lived extensively in Europe, Africa and Canada... it's incomparable. I mean, you literally can't compare anywhere, because attitudes to DISCUSSING personal beliefs and biases are radically different in north America to elsewhere.
People in N. America are taught to not discuss what they think and feel nearly as openly as in other countries. Most Americans, in particular, that I've met who spend any time in England or France think people are incredibly rude, incredibly biased and range from slightly annoying to overbearingly pretentious. But having grown up there, it's just that there is little to none of what they used to call "southern gentility", or "insincerity to be polite and preserve harmony." Political correctness, basically.
Having interviewed thousands upon thousands of Canadians over a quarter-century of journalism I can absolutely vouch that bigotry and racism is just as prevalent here. People just aren't open and honest about who they are.
Whether this is a vestige of religious culture, living with gun culture, survival during settlement or low population density, I couldn't say.
But I prefer, generally, the European model. At least you know fairly quickly, most of the time, who somebody really is. (Not that it isn't annoying. I consume mostly English TV and newspapers these days, and the level of snobbery and pretension, regardless of income class, is staggering compared to what it feels like here.)
Again, that changes in Canada when you really get to know somebody you don't like, which as a reporter I got to do a lot.
As someone autistic, I tend to have a fairly blank and difficult-to-read expression most of the time. As a reporter, this translated to people who'd never met me innately trusting me and telling me unbelievably personal shit. Between the ages of nineteen and thirty, I had three different women I'd never met before that night admit to me that they'd had abortions when younger, absolutely out of the blue in each case and apropos of nothing being discussed. One of them, the wife of a small city U.S. mayor, then tried to set me up with her daughter in Seattle, four states away.
This extended to interview subjects, who frequently confessed things they were ashamed of to me while being interviewed, often without any relation to the subject at hand. I got some good stories out of it, but some real hatred from the people who opened up (despite not saying 'off the record' or anything like that) after the fact.
In North America, people are only honest with people in their inner circle of trust, generally. They avoid confrontation at all costs. If they are loud and proud, it's because they're promoting a distinct political position that relates to themselves.
I suspect a lot of it stems from religious edicts. While there are plenty of religious people in most European nations, the general rate of secularism has been increasing far more quickly than here, because older cultures tend to try and abandon issues of faith more quickly.
French people aren't any ruder or more racist than anyone else. They're just more open about it.
The only solid measurement I've ever seen for hatred and fear of others -- whatever 'phobia' it falls under -- is the education level of the people who live there. The higher the education level, the more they travel and don't fear difference.
That's untrue (as far as racism goes), as someone who has lived in France and had quite a few minority friends there, France is much worse than many places in actual attitudes, not just in how they express it (although you are correct that they are very open about it). Systemic racism there is much worse too. You have no idea.
Prejudice of all kinds exists in every society, including Canada, and we should not deny it. It's a real problem here and Canadians have a history of denial about it. But people who haven't actually lived in France have little idea how difficult it is for you if you are Black, Arab, or Roma in France. To bring it back to football, Zinedine Zidane spoke quite eloquently about it after the French Men's Nation Team won so many titles about how he is loved as a French footballer, but basically is not considered part of France when he is an ordinary citizen.
As far as rudeness goes, that's mostly Parisian not France as a whole.
Last edited by Oldtimer; 09-28-2021 at 09:42 AM.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
You are absolutely right that there are problems in France that don’t necessarily exist here in the same form. But before you make a definitive statement, consider that there are Indigenous parents(citizens) here afraid to seek medical help for their children because they believe if they do, they will be labelled as negligent parents and their child will be taken from them and given to a white family. Do you think immigrant parents in France have that fear? It doesn’t make either situation worse or better, in fact it seems reductive and extremely
insensitive to me to argue about it at all. Unfortunately there is hatred and discrimination in most, if not all countries, and none of it is any ‘better’.
Last edited by Kamp Berg; 09-28-2021 at 09:57 AM.
As someone who has lived in Alberta, I think you need to spend a little time here.
As someone who has lived in rural Canada for eight of his adult years, I think you need to spend a little time there. Northwestern Ontario was as backward and racist as any place I've been in Europe. In Alberta, we've had cross burnings on lawns, racists assaults, gay bashing, all up and into this century.
In Northwestern Ontario and rural Alberta, many people still call cashew nuts "n--ger toes."
Canada viewed from southern Ontario is only seeing a fraction of this nation. As you say, we have racism here; and it's a lot more common than it is open.
ALL of that exists here, people just don't talk about it. But crimes based on race and ethnicity are a prevalent enough issue here that we've developed a separate criminal code category for them.
And even in places in Canada we see as tolerant, communities are often silo'd by the argument that maintaining distinct cultures in Canada is preferable to the "melting pot", so in large parts of this country, young people from various ethnic backgrounds are pressured to not associate outside their community.
That's not even getting into the native American situation, which is as bad or worse than most countries' aboriginal problems. Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited the Osnaburgh First Nation in the nineties (and it hasn't gotten much better on many reserves) and called it "Worse that Soweto."
Older cultures wear their bigotry openly and France more than most. But that's not the same as there being "more" of it. And maybe there is, marginally, more there than here. But in reality, we're pretty fucking bad too, and don't kid yourself that we're not. I've had East Indian friends who were born and raised here be beaten up on a Friday night and called dirty Pakis, so we're hardly immune.
The most prominent white supremacist website in the world was developed and run from Oliver, B.C. until about a decade ago. The interior of B.C. is INCREDIBLY racist. So is much of Saskatchewan. Ask an Asian person in Winnipeg how often they get pissed on because "there's too many Chinese."
I've lived all over this country, from PEI to the west, and it's fucking racist. Don't kid yourself.
(I once broke up my band after bringing in a black rhythm guitarist only to find out my drummer and vocalist were both entirely, utterly racist. That was literally two of five, people I thought I knew well. I can take multiple social occasions in Alberta where we've had about that many people around a table and, when they think you're safe and trustworthy, that sort of ratio saying something entirely racist is not uncommon).
And as you say, Paris and other large centers likes Marseille that have mass immigration are the worst there -- but they also take in FLOODS of refugees that we don't, so people are constantly facing a shifting demographic. Move to a similar place, like Fort Frances, Ont., in that they have a reserve of 3,000 first nations people next to a town of 8,000, and the racism is open and virulent. You cannot get through a Friday night of drinking without being lectured about shiftless, lazy Indians.
Last edited by jloome; 09-28-2021 at 10:19 AM.
Maybe the best summation for this thread is that there is significant racism anywhere there are significant numbers of people. We are a sad, paranoid species.
Good grief.
Hmm ... I wonder if this is related to the incessant need I've noticed - particularly out west, to compare themselves and diss Toronto ... that we aren't white enough for them.
Given that all hatred is generally grounded in a sense or direct misperception of insecurity, I would guess that’s part of it. You’re just different, is all, and that’s part of it, to be sure.
I've lived in Texas -- pretty similar to Alberta.
You are only seeing the Canadian side of the equation so you can't really compare. You are basing a popular stereotype of France with Alberta reality, I don't want to get into comparative horrible stories but you really have no idea what you are talking about. Sorry, no offense meant. Ask any black French footballer playing in North America if they prefer France. They'll tell you the truth.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I grew up in England. I've spent weeks, on multiple occasions, in Paris, on route to Africa, where I was born and then later returned and lived for seven years. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've heard it from Africans living in France... and living in England. And in North Africa.
I just think it's worse everywhere else than you're aware of, not that it's great living in Saint-Denis.
I mean, it's probably statistically apples and oranges based on something like bureaucratic difficulties in reporting, but there were 2,400 hate crimes reported in France in 2020.
There were 2,600 in Canada and we have a population half theirs.
Again, the absurd disparity has to be down to more reporting here and probably a lower standard to qualify. But it illustrates the point that things here aren't rosy.
And in both countries, the number of incidents of hatred against people for their religion dwarfed that of crimes based on race.
Additionally, if you read the Wikipedia section on racism in France, you'll find 8% of French people when polled anonymously in 2016 have overtly racist beliefs about Africans. A Statistics Canada poll here last year found FIFTY PERCENT of Canadians thought it "okay to privately hold racist thoughts"
and nearly 25% thought it was okay to do so publicly.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5262461/c...sm-ipsos-poll/
Probably that's just more self-awareness on our part. Again, both polls were anonymous so while people there may be self-deluded by a sense of superiority, there's no overt reason for either side to have been lying.
In a similar poll in 2020, 76% expressed solidarity with the statement "there are too many Arabs in France," which when you drill down in the poll is clearly about Islam, not them being Arabic. That figure has been pretty stable since 1990, when they began polling those particular questions.
So your perception does not seem to be supported by the public record.
Also, when you say "I don't mean to offend, but you don't know what you're talking about," you're just saying you know you're being offensive. Perhaps a position with a modicum of humility would be "this is my perception, yours is clearly different," not "even though I clearly know nothing about you, I'm going to assume your life experience."
Last edited by jloome; 09-29-2021 at 12:42 AM.
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