{"id":10002,"date":"2011-06-24T12:02:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T16:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10002"},"modified":"2011-06-24T11:29:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T15:29:38","slug":"%e2%80%9cdamn-another-cursed-mordecai%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/24\/%e2%80%9cdamn-another-cursed-mordecai%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDamn! Another cursed Mordecai!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barbara Kay<\/a> takes issue with the token that Montreal has chosen to commemorate Mordecai Richler:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mordecai Richler is Canada\u2019s biggest claim to literary fame. If he had been born and lived in any other province but Quebec there would have been an outpouring of ideas on how to commemorate his life and achievements: perhaps renaming streets in his honour, building schools bearing his name, or erecting a statue featuring the disheveled genius wryly peering over his pince-nez at a smoked meat sandwich on wry\u2026er, rye.<\/p>\n

Instead Montreal\u2019s political mandarins have decided he is getting a gazebo — a crummy little open pavilion at the foot of Mount Royal, with no known connection to the author. A place for people to come in out of the rain. Not quite a public toilet, but close.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s like naming the change house at an outdoor skating rink after Margaret Atwood, a pellet dispenser at the zoo after Yann Martel, or a maintenance shed after Margaret Laurence. But then, if Mordecai Richler had been born outside Quebec, maybe he wouldn\u2019t have been inspired to the kind of savage indignation that made him such a household word (and often not in a good way) in his native Montreal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She provides a rather more appropriate memorial gesture:<\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s an idea: Montreal is riddled with potholes. The French for \u201cpothole\u201d is \u201cnid-de-poule,\u201d literally a chicken\u2019s nest. How about if the word is officially changed to \u201cmort-de-caille(ou)\u201d which means \u201cdeath of stone\u201d (well, death of pebble, close enough). Henceforth let all Montreal potholes be called Mordecais. In this way, his name will forever be on every Montrealer\u2019s lips, because Montreal potholes are ubiquitous and eternal, and yet not in a good way \u2013 \u201cDamn! Another cursed Mordecai!\u201d I think Richler himself would have appreciated the irony, and approved.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Kay takes issue with the token that Montreal has chosen to commemorate Mordecai Richler: Mordecai Richler is Canada\u2019s biggest claim to literary fame. If he had been born and lived in any other province but Quebec there would have been an outpouring of ideas on how to commemorate his life and achievements: perhaps renaming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,6,28],"tags":[262,446,325,651,355,113],"class_list":["post-10002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-cancon","category-media","tag-culture","tag-judaism","tag-montreal","tag-multiculturalism","tag-prejudice","tag-quebec"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Bk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10005,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10002\/revisions\/10005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}