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I'm starting this thread to inquire more about the relationship between the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec. Let me start with some of my observations. Having lived almost 6 years in this city it seems to me that people from Montreal are pretty much split into two categories: Those who consider themselves Quebeckers (mostly francophones) and those who consider themselves Montrealers (mostly anglophones). The former seem to know a lot about the history of Quebec, while the latter know that there used to be a famous restaurant where the Hotel St-Martin now stands, and are informed of at least one major urban development on the island. I find this division to be a bit dangerous, and very similar to the relationship between Quebec and the ROC, though in a smaller scale. During my time here I have come to understand a bit more the need for Quebec to separate from the ROC (almost every person from outside of Canada has been explained this conflict as a complete joke before coming here). However I feel that if Quebec were to leave Canada, the "Montrealers" I described above would not be very happy. Not because they consider themselves to be Canadian, but because they feel Quebec has never really cared about the problems of this city as much as a province is supposed to care about its largest and most important urban centre. Do my observations make sense to you guys?

Hmmm interesting

I ended up asking this girl I like out, she's known for a while now. Her answer was something I did not really expect "I am not really in the mood for a relationship right now. Do not get me wrong I do like you, just maybe in a few months." Plus she said something else like "we can still take it slow." I have known her for a good 3 years now I think, we only started actually hanging out in November. In December when I was on vacation she asked me to go to New York with her, which we are in August. We have already made out twice in the past week give or take. So should I just keep going at the pace its going and just wait. Thing is I sort of do understand her answer seeing its summer and I guess she wants to have some fun and stuff. One thing would this be some sort of "open relationship" or something or its just whatever now and hope it works out in the next few months :egads: PLUS I am not that type of guy to just fool around. I must be the only idiot at 22 that wants an actual relationship :sad:

Pavillon 8 wins AR Future Projects award This project for the former wharf area of Lyons at the junction of the Rhône and Saône is an atrium office building composed of two blocks with a public contemporary art exhibition space on its ground floor and a restaurant floating in the river beneath four dramatically cantilevered floors of offices. The restaurant’s five bubbles are made from different cladding materials, some solid some open. The judges thought this scheme had a lovely plan, bravura cantilevers and a kinetic quality which will create a special relationship between water and occupants. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=10981

Montreal's Jews aren't going anywhere By Yoni Goldstein The history of Russian Jews in Montreal, Canada, began more than a century ago, when a coalition of Jews and Christians in the city raised funds to help Jews escape from the Russian empire in the wake of an onslaught of pogroms triggered by the assassination of czar Alexander II, in March 1881. There are widely varying estimates on the current size of the Russian Jewish community in Montreal: The local Jewish federation believes there are fewer than 10,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the city, while Russian community officials claim the actual number is more than double that figure. In either case, a community center and a Russian-language biweekly newspaper attest to the fact that Russian Jews have established a vibrant community in the city (whose total Jewish population is about 100,000). Of course, as in virtually every city outside Israel where there is a Jewish presence, life for the Jews of Montreal is not without challenges. The city has been home to some minor-league anti-Semitism in the past, and the province of Quebec is proving to be mildly hostile to anyone who can't speak in French and isn't willing to learn how. But the biggest threat to Montreal Jews, the Quebec sovereignty movement of the 1970s and then later, in the early-1990s, has more recently lost favor in the eyes of more Quebecois than ever before. Now is a good time to be a Jew in Montreal. Apparently, Nativ, the formerly clandestine organization that since the 1950s has shared responsibility for bringing Jews from what is now the Former Soviet Union to Israel, and Israel's minister of strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, don't agree. According to recent stories in Haaretz and the European Jewish Press service, having apparently run out of Jews still living in the FSU to bring to Israel, Nativ is planning to make a new push in North America to recruit Russian Jews there to make aliyah. Target No. 1: Montreal. It's a peculiar strategy: aiming to do business in a country that has two significant, settled communities of Russian Jews (the other being Toronto, where some 90,000 live); a country that is safe for Jews and where Jewish communities have long prospered; and a country, moreover, to which disadvantaged immigrants flock and where they are welcomed in droves, where they can experience multiculturalism and inclusiveness. When you're trying to convince people to leave peaceful, thriving Canada for a better life in the Middle East, you know you're in trouble of some kind. The only ones that look bad in this story are Nativ and Lieberman. The decision to recruit in Montreal is, at best, misguided. Worse, it demonstrates that the brand of covert immigration missions that were Nativ's bread and butter between the 1950s and 1990s is no longer needed. For 30 years, the organization was solely responsible for assisting countless Jewish escapees from the Soviet scourge, but that very important work is now finished. Jews who, under the hammer and sickle, were unable either to express themselves Jewishly, or to leave for someplace else where they would be free to do just that, are now at liberty to choose where they want to live, including Israel. In fact, Nativ's decision to choose Montreal's as its first stop in North America proves just how out of touch the organization is. (Already in Germany, Nativ has provoked a protest from Jewish communal leaders because of similar efforts there to lobby Russian-immigrant Jews to depart for Israel.) According to estimates from the city's Jewish federation, 80-85 percent of Russian Jews living in Montreal actually moved there from Israel. These people have already been the beneficiaries of Nativ once, and yet, at some later point, they decided that Israel wasn't the right place for them after all. There's no reason to think that they would consider moving back now, no matter how hard aliyah-liaison officers try to convince them. Nativ's venture into Montreal is doomed to fail because the organization's brand of cloak-and-dagger aliyah recruitment simply isn't suited to today's Jewish global village. Its employment of old-style Zionist tactics, which depict the State of Israel as representing the final stronghold against a world of Jew-haters doesn't connect with people anymore. There are, after all, other perfectly suitable homes for Jews. Montreal is one of those places. Perhaps the time has come for Israel in general to reevaluate its relationship with Diaspora Jewry and acknowledge that there are other places in the world perfectly suited to Jewish living. Once it takes that first step, the next job would be to recognize that the overall relationship between Israel and the Diaspora must change. Instead of looking at the Diaspora as a temporary home for those Jews who can't or aren't ready yet to make aliyah, Israel should invest in forming bonds with Jewish communities around the globe. Nativ, which has been reorganized and reportedly has a fat new budget, might even consider investing some of its cash in making those communities healthier, much in the same way those communities have long invested in the welfare of Israel. Montreal's Russian Jews aren't going anywhere and neither are the vast majority of Jews - Russian-speaking or otherwise - in North and South America and Europe. The sooner the Israeli government realizes that fact, the sooner it can begin to forge a new, symbiotic relationship with all the Jews outside Israel who are quite content to stay right where they are. Yoni Goldstein is an editorial writer at Canada's National Post, and a columnist at the Canadian Jewish News.