Anglos out of work

[Re: “Bright lights, French city,” Feb. 21] I enjoyed and could relate to David Ravensbergen’s article about being an Anglo and looking for a job, but I would also like to comment that even if you are bilingual (which I am), finding work is still very difficult and, I feel, unfair at times. 

I also was attracted to this city because of its youthful, culturally rich atmosphere and the fact that I am bilingual and wanted to use my French.

Similarly to the people Ravensbergen interviewed, I am university educated with many accomplishments to my name in my field and also in random jobs, which I have had to have to support myself financially.

I am a professional actor but in the slower seasons I usually need to find contract work outside my profession to pay rent and bills. 

This is an e-mail I just received from a potential employer after my French interview:

“I spoke with Vanessa. She is lovely and she does speak French; however for the Montréal Gift Show, the clientele is very tough on exhibitors and I did find it obvious that French is not her first language. I spoke to the client and she really needs a francophone person to assist in the booth. Corey’s French is good enough to get by, but what she is really looking for is a French speaker. 

The rural attendees really do not want to do business with an English person regardless if they can speak French. I think it would be best to let Vanessa know that I appreciate her time, I think she would be great at other events for bilingual attendees, but for the Gift Show, the seasoned hardcore buyer at the show who attends this show because they do not want to attend the Toronto show just won’t do business with an anglophone.”

This job would have provided me with enough income to support me for at least a month and a half in just five days. A perfect job for an artist.

>> Vanessa Matsui

Superstar
critique

[Re: “WW JCSSD?” Feb. 21] I think Raf Katigbak’s interview with Mr. Neeley and Mr. Glover was a disgrace. He didn’t even write anything about their performances.  

>> What Do You Mean?  

Women against
Ron Paul

[Re: “Truth, justice and the Ron Paul way,” Feb. 14] Your article on Ron Paul and his supporters make him seem like a great forward thinking man indeed. Of course, no one even mentions the fact that when it comes to women, he is against abortion and would overturn Roe vs. Wade.

It’s interesting how even when we think we have covered a great distance we find that women, and women’s issues, take the backseat. 

I do not support any “forward thinker” that leaves my gender conveniently behind. Moreover, if you take a look at his campaign platform, you would find that Ron Paul isn’t all that into gay or queer civil rights either.

Anyone can thirst for democracy in the current quagmire that is the U.S. But after the eight years we have just endured with Bush, it would be nice if the person in office was fighting for everyone—not just for straight white.

>>Carolyn Zwicky-Perez

Palestinian injustice
white-washed

[Re: “No pro-Israel bias in media,” Letters, Feb. 21] “Bossman’s” personal attack doesn’t merit a response. But his questioning why Israel is criticized when other atrocities abound is a tediously familiar and transparent diversion that does.

Yes, of course, there is no shortage of grave injustices in this world, whether it is the sickening torture chambers of Arab dictatorships, the savage ethnic violence in Darfur or the medieval gender apartheid of Saudi Arabia. But I have yet to read in the Western media a single editorial, op-ed piece or even letter to the editor defending any of these practices. Has he?

The opposite, however, is true for Israel, whose collective punishment of Palestinians is regularly justified, its apartheid in the occupied territories incessantly excused and its past and current ethnic cleansing white-washed or even denied. That is the issue.

When the media in Canada begin to report how Palestinians have been expelled from their homeland, suffer under a 40-year brutal occupation and are overwhelmingly innocent victims of the vastly more lethal Israeli violence, then I will have no need to point these things out. But not before, and certainly not when Israel dares to commit these crimes in my name.

>> Mira Khazzam

WE WELCOME LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!