The last two nights, I’ve been reading Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mister Fox to my youngest son. The older one, who at nine thinks he’s too old to have stories read to him, often lies on his brother’s bed with me and listens in.
Have you ever read it? It’s a great yarn. Three evil farmers, the richest landowners in the area, try to dig a family of foxes out from their underground home in order to kill the varmints who’ve been stealing their food. The foxes dig even deeper and escape, and then dig tunnels to the larders of the three farmers and steal their food. As they dig, they discover badgers, moles, and rabbits who have been similarly displaced, and all are invited to take some of the stolen food. Finally, after the secret tunnels are completed, the animals feast on the stolen food. Mister Fox decides that this situation – a simple system of thievery – should be permanent. At the end, Mister Fox gives a wonderful speech of victory.
“We will make,” said Mister Fox, “A little underground village, with streets and houses on each side – separate houses Badgers and Mole and Weasels and Rabbits and Foxes. And every day I will go shopping for you all. And every day we will eat like kings.”
The cheering that followed this speech went on for many minutes.
I went to McGill university long before the protests against the fee-hikes began. Montreal is a fabulous, sexy city. It’s home to McGill, Concordia, University of Montreal, and Universite du Quebec au Montreal (UQAM). It’s a highly liberal French city, and it shows: you can be gay, straight, bi, communist, and no one cares. You will be accepted, even celebrated.
Montreal is like a little village full of free goodies – a massive central performance venue (Place des Arts), little rentable art spaces (les maisons du cultures), famous festivals (the Jazz Festival, the Grand Prix, etc), universal daycare, outdoor film festivals, two airports, and a little-known program that gave $10,000 to quebec citizens who got married in order to make French-Canadians have more babies.(I knew a lot of gay men who married their boyfriends’ sisters).
But someone has to pay for that. That’s hard to remember when you’re young and living in Montreal.
Quebec has the lowest tuition rates in Canada because they’re subsidized. The money comes from the provincial government, but money comes from all of Canada in the form of Equalization payments, which are paid for by the Have provinces. This money pays for the socialist paradise that is Quebec, and Montreal in particular. And I’m not being sarcastic about the ‘paradise’ bit. It’s a great city to live in. I loved that place.
It’s a tunnel, a not-so-secret tunnel, into the larders of Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia. And a whole lot of students are going to interrupt classes and burn cars until that tunnel is given full protection from the bulldozers of Bunce, Boggin, and Bean. How? Someone else will have to pay for it.
Nothing lasts forever, kids. Eventually the tap runs dry. Eventually you’re going to have to come out of your underground village and pay an extra $325 a year, per year, until your at a rate that will still be the lowest in Canada.
And just a note: the rest of us don’t support you. Yes, we’re old sticks-in-the-mud. But we don’t think we should be paying for your education. We’ve got our own kids to worry about.
