I recently spent a few hours poring over hockey statistics with the aim of trying to establish where players were born and raised. What immediately struck me is how few players on the Montreal Canadiens actually came from Montreal. But then a larger fact struck me, P.J. Stock, statistically is surely the least-competent Montrealer ever to play on the Habs.
Er, actually, the larger thing is this: Ontario has produced disproportionately more NHL players than Quebec.
The tale of Gary Galley is telling. One day Galley, who lived on Montreal's south shore, was at his dinner table when his dad announced that the family was going to get up and move to Ottawa. The reason? Dad had gone to a grocery store and a cashier had told him to speak in French.
The encounter had so enraged him that he couldn't live another day amid these ridiculous and discourteous language tensions.
Gary Galley would later say that he would never have made the NHL had he stayed in Quebec, as the hockey opportunities were far superior in Ottawa than on south shore Montreal.
The story illustrates the differences in cultures of the two places.
Montreal, in the apt description of Leonard Cohen, attempts to attain excellence by being a sort of new Jerusalem. Every community fights to get their piece of the pie, so you end up with Greeks working hard together to flex their muscles, Italians, Jews, wasps, francophones, all doing the same and the cacophonous result is one of great achievement, but not so much harmony.
That approach has been described as ascriptive politics, defined as a system where communities battle to advance their own clannish agendas.
Alas, the depressing downside to this clan approach is being exposed daily at the Charbonneau commission, which has shown the perils of believing one's personal, family or group interests to be important enough to exempt oneself from the rule of law.
The current Quebec government, meanwhile, sends out confused messages, stressing the rule of law but simultaneously pushing for a tribal dominance of the francophone clan over the others, making for a discordant societal dissonance that hasn't been embraced by the population, according to the most recent political polls.
One useful example from the corporate world involves two children's programming animation companies, one in Toronto and one in Quebec that started out at around the same time.
Toronto's Nelvana and Montreal's Cinar both had some popular fare but were operated in diametrically different fashions.
I first sensed this in the early 90s when I hosted and organized a cable access TV show focusing on the local TV and film industry.
I immediately invited Cinar to send someone over to showcase their programs and discuss their company's achievements. My request met dead silence and was ignored.
Later on, I also asked Nelvana for an interview. I took a road trip to Toronto and was not only offered an invitation to talk to company president Michael Hirsch in his office, he even left us there alone to wander around his private office after he had to depart for a flight.
It later came out that Cinar had been cheating and breaking all sorts of rules, charges which they stubbornly fought even though the battle was futile. And of course, Nelvana - which had not been gripped by the spirit of mistrust and paranoia so common in Montreal - grew and thrived.
Meanwhile Montreal has had some success in getting a few blips on the celebrity map, creating such cultural outliers as Celine Dion and Arcade Fire, but Toronto has far outstripped us even at our own game, as southern-Ontario performers Justin Bieber and Drake have far eclipsed our bit of pop culture glory.
These examples are not definitive proof that Ontario's approach to organizing its society is better, but the fact that it has produced more outliers, while being less subject to poor management is fodder for the argument that a harmonious, rule-of-law approach is a better way to run things than the cultural competition method we have opted for in Quebec.
Er, actually, the larger thing is this: Ontario has produced disproportionately more NHL players than Quebec.
The tale of Gary Galley is telling. One day Galley, who lived on Montreal's south shore, was at his dinner table when his dad announced that the family was going to get up and move to Ottawa. The reason? Dad had gone to a grocery store and a cashier had told him to speak in French.
The encounter had so enraged him that he couldn't live another day amid these ridiculous and discourteous language tensions.
Gary Galley would later say that he would never have made the NHL had he stayed in Quebec, as the hockey opportunities were far superior in Ottawa than on south shore Montreal.
The story illustrates the differences in cultures of the two places.
Montreal, in the apt description of Leonard Cohen, attempts to attain excellence by being a sort of new Jerusalem. Every community fights to get their piece of the pie, so you end up with Greeks working hard together to flex their muscles, Italians, Jews, wasps, francophones, all doing the same and the cacophonous result is one of great achievement, but not so much harmony.
That approach has been described as ascriptive politics, defined as a system where communities battle to advance their own clannish agendas.
Alas, the depressing downside to this clan approach is being exposed daily at the Charbonneau commission, which has shown the perils of believing one's personal, family or group interests to be important enough to exempt oneself from the rule of law.
The current Quebec government, meanwhile, sends out confused messages, stressing the rule of law but simultaneously pushing for a tribal dominance of the francophone clan over the others, making for a discordant societal dissonance that hasn't been embraced by the population, according to the most recent political polls.
One useful example from the corporate world involves two children's programming animation companies, one in Toronto and one in Quebec that started out at around the same time.
Toronto's Nelvana and Montreal's Cinar both had some popular fare but were operated in diametrically different fashions.
I first sensed this in the early 90s when I hosted and organized a cable access TV show focusing on the local TV and film industry.
I immediately invited Cinar to send someone over to showcase their programs and discuss their company's achievements. My request met dead silence and was ignored.
Later on, I also asked Nelvana for an interview. I took a road trip to Toronto and was not only offered an invitation to talk to company president Michael Hirsch in his office, he even left us there alone to wander around his private office after he had to depart for a flight.
It later came out that Cinar had been cheating and breaking all sorts of rules, charges which they stubbornly fought even though the battle was futile. And of course, Nelvana - which had not been gripped by the spirit of mistrust and paranoia so common in Montreal - grew and thrived.
Meanwhile Montreal has had some success in getting a few blips on the celebrity map, creating such cultural outliers as Celine Dion and Arcade Fire, but Toronto has far outstripped us even at our own game, as southern-Ontario performers Justin Bieber and Drake have far eclipsed our bit of pop culture glory.
These examples are not definitive proof that Ontario's approach to organizing its society is better, but the fact that it has produced more outliers, while being less subject to poor management is fodder for the argument that a harmonious, rule-of-law approach is a better way to run things than the cultural competition method we have opted for in Quebec.