Montreal Then and Now

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer


On Victoria Day weekend, I attended my 50th year high school reunion in Montreal. Outremont High had been an English-language Protestant school and, with the outflow of Anglophones from Quebec after the 1970s, it no longer exists.


It was amazing to see the 200 or so graduates who returned after five decades. We even toured the old school, now a French education centre.


The school had always been a first-rate institution, and most of us seem to have done quite well in life; many of us are academics, doctors, lawyers, business people, and other professionals. At least half are retired. Only about half still live in Montreal, the rest scattered in the rest of Canada, the United States and even Europe. And the children of those still living in the city are also mostly gone.


But things are not going that well for others in Quebec. A three-month-old student strike by college and university students against the Quebec government’s plan to raise tuition fees has almost brought the city to its knees.


Students in Quebec pay by far the lowest fees in the country and as a result Quebec’s institutions are underfunded compared with those elsewhere in North America. Currently, annual tuition is $2,168 – the lowest in North America. The increase would bring tuition to $3,946 by 2019.


The additional sum the students were being asked to pay was just a small percentage of what the government itself pays for higher education. Yet this was met with massive opposition.


There have been nightly marches and demonstrations, and in some cases students opposed to the strike were harassed and forced out of classrooms by militants.


As well, in various neighbourhoods, people who support the students go outside and start banging saucepans and skillets every evening at eight o’clock. It can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.


The campaign was inspired by the pot-banging protests that shook the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the mid-1980s.


(In this and many other ways, Quebec has become more of a Latin or Mediterranean society than a North American one.)


In response, on May 19 Jean Charest’s governing Liberals brought in a law to bring the student strike to an end. As well, Montreal’s city council passed an anti-mask bylaw.


Bill 78 imposes fines of $25,000 up to $125,000 against student associations and unions. They could be charged if they do not stop their members from protesting within university and college grounds.


During a street demonstration, the organization that plans the protest will be penalized if individual protesters stray from the police-approved route or exceed the time limit imposed by authorities. Student associations and unions are also liable for any damage caused by other marchers during a demonstration.


Violence marked every night of the long Victoria Day weekend – we could hear it from our hotel on Sherbrooke Street -- and the first part of the week. The biggest demonstration yet drew 250,000 people on May 22, according to various estimates.


A day later, more than 500 people were arrested at another march, the 30th since the student protests began.


The march had been declared illegal by police the minute it was scheduled to start but was allowed to proceed for almost four hours before a line of Montreal riot police blocked part of Sherbrooke Street as the marchers approached. The arrests followed.


The student organizations have gone to court to try to get Bill 78 struck down. It continues to be flouted and some radicals have said that if talks fail they plan to disrupt various events planned for the summer tourist season. They predict a long, hot summer in Montreal.