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“L’autre midi à la table d’à côté”; Roy – Lafortune discussion summary – Post 3 of 3 (#149)
This post can be useful for you if you’re learning French, if your French is already at an intermediate level. In this post, I’ll offer you a summary of what the subjects of our last two posts spoke about; Patrice Roy and Charles Lafortune.
You can also listen to the conversation yourself. For learners of French: Without translating the entire show, I’m providing you with summaries of various parts of the show. The summary below is in chronological order. You can use the summary as a “crutch” to try to stay on track. It might be able to help with your language learning, and can fill in the holes as you move through the diaglogue.
The radio show “L’Autre midi à la table d’à côté” is the brainchild of François Legault. Regardless of where you are in Canada, you can listen to a new episode, with new people, during weekdays from 11:00am to 12:00. It airs nationwide on Radio Première (you’ll have to check the internet to see where Radio Première falls on your radio dial in your part of the Canada).
The web-link for the Patrice Roy – Charles Lafortune audio episode can be heard by clicking HERE.
- Charles Lafortune is introduced as having been the host of many shows; La voix, impro, comedy, variety. In his 20’s, he appeared on various youth programs (Watatatow, Tam-tam, etc.).
- Patrice Roy = the chief anchor of the Téléjournal de Montréal. (Montréal’s nightly RC TV newscast).
- Roy – Is a father with twins. Both Roy & Lafortune speak about how children tend to view the world, and how to relate the world to their children so children can understand the world.
- They speak about how growing up in working families affected their personalities.
- Lafortune said he can live with the idea of not having a job in front of the camera precisely because he’s able to take pleasure in other aspects of work. Roy agrees because he says he too loves the behind-the-scenes aspect of preparing for the work day. However Roy said he still loves being in front of the camera and presenting.
- Both agree they are under tremendous public pressure owing to the information age provides them with immediate public feedback, both good and bad. They speak about how they attempt to adjust themselves to deal with such pressures. Lafortune comically says that if someone tweets him a criticism, his way of “dealing” with it and with that person is to re-tweet it to 90,000 of his followers – which usually takes care of the problem 😉
- Roy says that when he was a news bureau chief in Ottawa, he felt the need to “shake things up”. He chose to take a flight to Afghanistan, and pursue his national reporting from there. He spoke about the fear he felt, in a very human sense, when bombs fell around him and his crew, injuring many people (including his cameraman who had to have his leg amputated). Roy had to step up to the plate to help. He also spoke about post-traumatic stress and how his thoughts have changed on numerous topics.
- Roy speaks about how his upbringing in a journalist family influenced his own work style and work values, as well as his values towards journalism.
- Lafortune speaks about challenges he has in raising an autistic child in a family environment (he has to pay attention to many small things, such as having to remain standing when watching hockey games on TV at home so as to keep an eye on what his child is doing). He talks about his biggest anxiety in life, which isn’t his television career, but rather what will happen to his child once Lafortune passes away (he’s worried it could happen sooner than later, as an early heart attack, etc.). He speaks very much from the heart about quite intimate subjects in this respect.
- They both speak about Roy watching his father’s health deteriorate and eventually pass away (his father was Canada’s ambassador in Tunisia).
- They speak of their thoughts regarding how they physically appear on television and what value they give (or don’t give) to it, and why. Lafortune’s first faced public criticism in his 20’s when he say an article about his entitled “Good Looking, but Insignificant).
- Patrice Roy admits that all television managers he knows in Radio-Canada consider viewership numbers important, and this has a bearing on individual’s behaviour and decisions within the organization, just it does in a private company such as TVA (which Lafortune discusses).
- Lafortune admits that most of the successful TV productions he is involved in are often most often modeled after those in the Netherlands and Israel (rather than being home-grown ideas. Nor are they modeled after American productions, contrary to what the public may believe).
- Lafortune speaks about the delicate situation he ran into earlier in 2014 when presenting La Voix the night before the last provincial elections. The show that night was watched by over 2,700,000 people, it was produced by Julie Snyder (the wife of Pierre Karl Péladeau, PKP), who himself was running for election. He talked of having to be very conscious on stage about how he said things (so as not to be perceived as taking political sides). (Note for reader… this whole issue regarding PKP, and the influence his role as Québecor’s owner has on the media, is currently a very serious debate in Québec. Here we hear an on-the-ground 3rd party account which shows it is a consideration which is making some pretty big celebrities feel uneasy or feeling they’re walking on egg shells).
- Roy speaks of some of his thoughts when covering political matters… and how he approaches certain issues. He also speaks of his thoughts regarding individuals he has interviewed. (It’s quite interesting to hear his personal thoughts in this sense, since he has to play a completely neutral role on air). Lafortune then jumps in with some of his own thoughts regarding how political parties and politicians tend to behave. He speaks about what gets on his nerves.
If your French is at a basic or elementary level, do not get discouraged if you find Roy and Lafortune are speaking too fast. I’ve studied a few languages, and I know that it can be frustrating when you can’t understand everything, or you feel the dialogue has left you behind as you’re still trying to figure things out. But you’ll find that, with time, the more & more you listen, the more words will take anchor in your brain, and you won’t have to always stop and try to figure out what’s being said. Stick with it and give yourself a pat on the back… after all, you’re further along than where you were 1, 3 or 5 months ago 🙂 .
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MINI “EAVESDROPPING” SERIES
Charles Lafortune – An “eavesdropping” short series: Roy-Lafortune – Post 2 of 3 (#148)
This is the second in a 3-part mini-blog series (the first on Patrice Roy, this one on Charles Lafortune, and the next one on their one-on-one intimate conversation when they say down together for a meal on the radio program “L’Autre midi à la table d’à côté”.
Interesting factoid: For several years running now (including this past year), studies have shown that people across Canada continue to remained glued to their television, and to television programs. This comes despite an enormous uptick in the space the internet takes in the lives of people across the country. For many under 40’s, television has simply moved from the box sitting in the corner of their living room, to the small screen sitting on their lap.
What has remained consistent these past years is the amount of time per week Québécois continue to watch television. Québec watches more television per week than anywhere else in Canada (sometimes only an hour more than the next ranked province, but Québec continues to watch the most television nonetheless). Canadians can expect to spend a quarter of their week, and a quarter of their lives watching television, and that is more true than ever in Québec (CRTC figures).
What this means is that Québec knows its television personalities very very well. I could probably even go as far to say that they see and follow the lives of television personalities just as much (and dare I say perhaps even more) than certain family members.
Charles Lafortune : One person who occupies a big place in some of Québec’s favorite television programs is Charles Lafortune.
My earliest memories of seeing Charles Lafortune come from when I was a teenager and he was an actor in the very popular former program Watatatow (an after-school youth TV show which could be considered Québec’s own equivalent of Anglophone Canada’s former iconic program “Degrassi Junior High”. – On that point, I have friends who live on Degrassi Street in Toronto. The first time I was invited to their home last fall, it came to me with “shock and horror” that there actually was NO high school, or any kind of school on Degrassi Street !! I drove up and down the street twice, and nope… I couldn’t find the school! I bet you 80% of Anglophone Canada would be just as surprised as I was 😉 ).
Lafortune has since appeared as the main figure in a good number of other very popular television programs with varying degrees of notoriety. He has appeared in such a variety of programs that he has become an instantly recognizable personality anywhere in Québec and in other Francophone areas of Canada.
A few programs in particular are largely responsible for Lafortune’s high-level notoriety:
- L’École des Fans (School of Fans) was an on-air children’s sing-along program on the TVA television network for 5 years in the 2000’s. You might ask “What’s the big deal about a children’s sing-along show?” Well, this one came with a twist, which drew in adult viewership numbers by the drove… The shows featured individual children singing their favorite pop-songs, but then had the actual music star join the child on stage, and sing with them. Over the years, such large names as Celine Dion, Marjo, Lara Fabien, Garou, and Mitsou appeared on the show, singing hand-in-hand with the kids.
- Le Cercle (The Circle) was a popular TVA network gameshow which ran for 6 years, which relied on rapid-fire responses from the players.
- Catherine was a popular Radio-Canada sitcom which ran from 1999 to 2003. Lafortune played the ex-boyfriend of the show’s main figure
- La Voix: Just as Anglophone Canada and other countries often feature more than one popular singing talent show at any given time (example: the “– Idol”, “ – Got Talent”, “The Voice –“ programs), so does Québec. Since 2013, Charles Lafortune has been Québec’s host of TVA’s “La Voix” (The Voice) – which was adapted from the Dutch version of the same program. Home viewer numbers of La Voix are huge in Québec; sometimes ranking among the largest TV viewership numbers in all of Canada – surpassing 2,500,000 viewers for certain episodes!! (By any standards, those are large numbers of Québec eyes focused squarely on Lafortune!).
Apart from the above, Charles Lafortune has also been a popular radio host on CKOI Montréal (a very popular Montréal radio station), and has been a subject of superstar gossip tabloid magazines over the years.
The next post will give a bit of a summary of what thoughts were exchanged with Charles Lafortune met Patrice Roy. See you soon!
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MINI “EAVESDROPPING” SERIES
François Massicotte (#140)
In the last post “Rendez-vous de la Francophonie”, I mentioned that François Massicotte is one of the co-spokespersons for the event.
This actually is a big thing because Massicotte is such a well-known public figure (he was one of the people I watched on television growing up and who I continue to often see on TV as an adult).
He is best known as a (stand-up) comedian. I’d venture to say that Massicotte is as well known in Québec and other Francophone regions of Canada as the Canadian comedian, Howie Mandel, is known in Anglophone Canada (an interesting quirk… Mandel grew up only a couple blocks from where I live in Toronto).
Like Mandel, Massicotte has routinely ventured beyond his stand-up comedy mould and has filled the roles of a game show host, as well as acting roles in sitcoms and television commercials.
It’s François Massicotte’s numerous high-profile television commercials which perhaps has solidified him in the minds of Québécois as much as his comedy career has (we may see his comedy acts a few times a year, but for a good number of people, we’ve seen his commercials much more often).
He is known for using his notoriety for supporting good causes, such as La Fondation du centre de jeunesse de Montréal (The Foundation for the Montréal Youth Centre), and his support for Le Rendez-vous de la francophonie is one more cause to which he has offered his name.
Across Canada, you can often catch him on the televised portions of the Juste pour rire! (Just for Laughs!) comedy festival (which periodically airs on Radio-Canada throughout the year).
Massicotte’s official website is: http://francoismassicotte.com. His website actually is quite interesting. Unlike many other celebrities, his website offers his own short blog section in which he gives his thoughts on a range of issues (that’s actually quite bold for a celebrity). Check it out.
I’m happy to see that he’s one of the official spokespeople for Le Rendez-vous de la Francophonie – I think that speaks volumes to the type of guy Massicotte is, and it’s a great way to raise the profile of such a wonderful event.
25th Anniversary of RDI (#133)
Today is not only New Year’s Day, but it’s also the 25th anniversary of RDI (le Réseau de l’information), North America’s first French-language 24-hour television news station, owned and operated by the public broadcaster Radio-Canada, based in Montréal. It’s a CRTC designated “Category A” station, which means everyone in Canada receives it as part of their basic television bundle.
The official name is ICI RDI.
The 1990s were a period in which most regions and jurisdictions across the world were creating their own local 24-hour news channels, a trend which continues today. Countries as diverse as Albania, Turkey, Argentina, Kazakhstan, the US, India, and China (to list just a few in a very long list) all have their own 24-hour news television stations. It allows them to stay on top of local issues, in their local languages – and they play a vital role in keeping issues in the forefront.
Here at home, our 24-hour TV news stations definitely focus on local issues, and competition can be quite fierce. We now have a wide-range of such stations across the country: RDI (French), Newsworld (English), LCN (French) and CTV News Channel (English). We also have other minor, specialty, headline or opinion 24-news channels in both English and French.
RDI’s main competition is the French-language 24-hour news station LCI which attracts greater viewership numbers.
My own thoughts regarding RDI
I’m a News Junky (for those of you learning French, there actually is no direct translation in French for the slang expression “News Junky”. The closest phrase would probably be “un accro des nouvelles” or “un adepte des actualités”).
In a nutshell, I think RDI plays a valuable role, and I have a great deal of positive things to say about the station, its program line-up, its on-air personalities, and their overall product. It’s a channel I regularly watch as I’m doing things around the house (I wouldn’t have the channel on if I didn’t believe it’s worth watching). But I also have criticisms and a number beefs about the direction RDI has taken.
As a Radio-Canada channel, RDI has a few hundred journalists at its disposition, a network of a few-dozen overseas and pan-Canadian news bureaus (which all belong to CBC and Radio-Canada), it’s part of a billion dollar television corporation and thus can do things many smaller stations never could. Along with this comes all the power that stems from the notoriety of being one of Canada’s main news networks (if RDI asks a major politician, business person, or other news-maker a question during a news conference, they’re going to get an answer).
Because of this, RDI keeps politicians on their toes, it has the power and ability to investigate economic, societal or political issues which may otherwise go unnoticed, and it can shape public opinion (which has both pro’s and con’s).
As someone who goes back-and-forth between our nation’s two languages, cultures, and even physically between Québec and the rest of Canada (I’ve lived all over Canada, including Québec, and I have business in Québec through my own business ventures), I pay attention to how equitable RDI’s reporting is in a national sense. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that their news headlines seem to cover more and more pan-Canadian news. In the early years, this didn’t seem to be the case (or at least it didn’t feel like it was the case). I can recall living in provinces other than Québec, turning on RDI, and hoping to hear news which affected us in the provinces where I was living. Yet, most times I was greatly disappointed (almost as if RDI was ignoring news stories elsewhere in Canada). That has now changed somewhat. A perfect example: I am right now visiting Alberta for a couple weeks, I turned on RDI this morning, and the hours’ top news story (broadcast from Montréal) was about a crime that occurred in Calgary, and the second story was about another crime that occurred in Edmonton (both cities are here in Alberta). In this sense, I commend RDI for having made improvements in the way they balance out their pan-Canadian reporting.
If you were to watch Radio-Canada’s main competitor, LCN (owned by Québecor and Pierre Karl Péladeau), you would generally not see coverage of pan-Canadian issues (LCN is a private network, and Péladeau’s interest is to probably not have LCN to focus on pan-Canadian issues).
With that being said, if I were to rank a station on a scale of 1 to 10 (with “1” signifying its reporting as being completely geographically equitable regarding issues across Canada, and “10” being completely Québec-Centric, with no coverage of anything outside Québec), I would nonetheless rank RDI as a 7.5, and its competitor LCN as 9.8. Neither of these are good scores. This is a the beef I have with RDI.
RDI is supposed to be Canada’s French-language 24-hour public news broadcaster (funded by my and all of my compatriots tax dollars, regardless where they live in Canada), yet I’d only give them a 7.5 for being geographically equitable in their news reporting. That’s actually quite sad, considering they have access to reporters, hundreds of millions of dollars in resources, and 30 news bureaus all across Canada. If you live outside Québec, it kind of makes you say to yourself “So much for my tax dollars serving me”.
The 7.5 score I give it for geographic equity becomes even worse if you factor out top-of-the-hour news reports. Once you look at the programming in remaining 45 minutes between the news headlines, my 7.5 score quickly becomes a 9.5 or worse (just like LCN).
My thoughts on four of RDI’s main anchor-programs
RDI has 17 programs and information segments, all of which can be viewed on their main website. Of these, four stand out as being very Québec-centric (with the others kind of being everywhere on the Québec-centric scale, depending on the topics being discussed). Below are my thoughts on the four most Québec-centric programs on RDI (which, happen to also be some of RDI’s highest rated programs).
One of RDI’s anchor-programs is Le club des ex, which is a political commentary program – but focused almost 100% on Québec related politics. If all they talk about is Québec provincial politics, or how Federal government decisions affect Québec, what good is such programming to anyone in Ontario, the Atlantic provinces or the Western provinces and territories? I have a strong suspicion that the three main commentators would not even be able to name opposition leaders in any other province, let alone reflect many of the political issues important to Canadians outside Québec. This isn’t a cultural problem or cultural difference… rather it’s 100% a management decision problem. However, the host of the program, Simon Durivage, I think is one of the best reporters, anchors, and most well-informed, dedicated journalists in all of Canada. I think it’s completely unfortunate that he’s not playing a much wider journalistic role in RDI. It’s obvious he knows the issues across Canada, and I think Le Club des ex is actually too narrow of a role for him and could be considered beneath him (this is actually a huge compliment to Durivage). But, aside from the Québec-centric nature of Le Club des ex, it is a very good program, it’s host does a tremendous job, and the format is quite unique.
Another anchor-program with similar problems is 24/60, hosted by Anne Marie Dusseault. It’s an opinion-maker program (which I often feel has a slanted political agenda – but I can live with it because it’s important to have exposure to multiple political and social views). But again, you can’t help but feel it ignores anything occurring elsewhere in Canada if the issues cannot be related back to Québec. A prime example: Dusseault recently took her show to Vancouver for one episode to interview Robert Latimer (the Saskatchewan farmer who euthanized his mentally handicapped daughter because she was suffering terribly from a debilitating disease). During the interview, Dusseault constantly steered the issue back to Québec; what Québec should do, how Québec should react, how aspects of Canada’s overall politics may be at odds with some people in Québec, etc etc. Here she was, reporting on something very important to all of us in Canada, even travelling all the way to Vancouver to interview Latimer (who has likely never even been to Québec himself), but yet her focus was Québec, Québec, Québec. Latimer simply couldn’t address her questions properly because she kept venturing into unknown territory for him. It just wasn’t fair for him, and I believe it was really poor reporting in that sense.
RDI Économie is another anchor-program which is quite Québec-centric. However, this one is different from the above two. Like Durivage, the host of RDI Économie, Gérald Fillion, is someone who I hold in high esteem. I believe he’s one of Canada’s best economic television journalists. He knows his stuff, and he knows the issues across Canada. Yet, I get the impression he’s boxed into a corner because his program has to generate Québec-based ratings. Thus, the programs remains heavily Québec-centric.
RDI Matin is the morning news and variety-information program. Yet, as you’re preparing to leave your house for your commute to work in Winnipeg, Victoria, or Halifax, they’ll warn you about traffic congestion going into downtown Montréal, or over the Champlain Bridge in Montréal, or an accident in Laval just outside Montréal. The weather report might give updated temperatures in Québec City or Ottawa, but then they may simply say “it will be an OK day in Saskatchewan” (does that mean cold? Or hot? And will it be the same weather in Saskatoon as Regina?). It’s kind of insulting if you think about it. Combined with Montréal-centric news and events, you sometimes get the feel you might as well turn the TV off if you’re living somewhere other than Montréal.
In the end, you’re left with the impression you’re watching RDI-“Québec”, despite the fact that RDI’s mandate and tax dollars are supposed to provide people across Canada with access to their news in French.
Why might there be this disconnect?
I’ll be the very first person to say that Anglophone media does just as poor a job reporting on issues in Francophone parts of the country. Québec garners lower national coverage, than say Ontario. Acadia does too, as well as Francophone Ontario (which is pretty much all of North East Ontario and an important chunk of Eastern Ontario). In Canada’s Toronto-centric Anglophone media, these places might as well not even exist, and other aspects of Francophone Canada are ignored out of existence (I also feel that Anglophone Atlantic Canada more than often also gets the short-end of the stick from Toronto-centric Anglophone media, so it’s not just Francophone Canada which gets short-changed).
Remember, the word “Two” exists in the expression “The Two Solitudes”… it takes two to tango (the reason I say Anglophone media can be just as guilty as Francophone media in not covering events across the language divide).
Now that I’ve layed out my beefs, at the end of the day I’m a realist and I get why this situation exists. And in the end, my overall views about RDI are not as harsh as they may appear from my above comments.
When you’re a media company, it means that you rely on ratings for survival — period!. No ratings = no $$ = no existence.
The majority of RDI’s viewership is derived from Québec. So you have you ask yourself if you can swallow the Québec-centric nature RDI’s programming in exchange for justifying its existence. (Despite the fact that RDI is a public corporation, it is still heavily dependent on advertising dollars, which are dictated by ratings).
Another reason for this disconnect is because of the competition RDI faces from online and social media news. The age of instantly-available news makes it so that television news has to focus more and more on
- analysis programming, and
- commentary programming
(both of which are types of programming online and social-media news have more difficulty competing against).
Commentary programming often focuses on politics (the easiest things to comment on), and the general public tends to bend their ear towards, and be better-informed about local politics than the politics of other jurisdictions. Because RDI is leaning quite heavily on political commentary programming to garner ratings (much more than many of Canada’s other news networks), they have to keep the topics local to maintain viewer numbers.
The general public in Québec wouldn’t have a clue what’s being talked about if commentary programs discuss politics in British Columbia (BC) or Prince Edward Island (PEI) for example. However, there is room for “analysis programming” to pick up the slack and narrow the gap in this realm. The general Québec viewer perhaps wouldn’t understand commentaries on BC or PEI politics, but if the issues were explained to them through an analysis program, they then may take an interest (analysis programs are shows which explain the issues, versus commentary programming which simply comments on the issues and presents opinions).
I’m one who will accept RDI’s Québec-centric nature if it means that it remains on air. RDI does still report on issues across Canada, and that’s important to me and many others. I wouldn’t want it to become any more Québec-centric — but I have a hunch it will continue to move in the direction of more geographically-equitable reporting with time. I say this because I see excellent journalists like Fillion, Durivage and many others who have the knowledge and capacity to deliver analysis-based programming rather than commentary-style programming.
It might take a while to get there, but with added pressure to compete against internet and social-media news sources, RDI will have to shift to more analysis programming rather than relying simply on commentaries to compete (to put all your eggs in one basket, ie: too heavily commentary-based, is just bad business basics and practices). I’m optimistic they will continue to diversify into the realm of analysis programming, which holds more promise for pan-Canadian reporting of issues.
In the end, the news junky in me is just happy that RDI exists (glass half-full…) 🙂
RDI’s official website is http://ici.radio-canada.ca/rdi/.
Their website has streaming video, news, program info, etc. Check it out.
Happy 25th RDI !
Tonight’s 2014 Bye-Bye Celebration (#132)
This will be a quick post… (Lots to get ready for New Years tonight! Just drove back 5 hours from Banff and Calgary, things to arrange here in Vegreville, then off to Edmonton in a few hours for New Years, taking buddies to the airport tomorrow morning, then I fly back to Toronto on the 2nd… Phew! The next post may not be for a couple more days).
It has become a huge tradition in Québec to watch the annual Bye-Bye comedy celebration on Radio-Canada. It’s a comedy show which people watch in the hour running up to midnight. When people are celebrating New Years at home with family and friends on New Years Eve, it’s almost a guarantee that the Bye-Bye will be playing on the TV screen (if not taking centre-stage in the room, it will at least in the background). Everything comes to a full-stop the seconds before midnight for the final countdown as everyone turns their heads to the TV and raises their glasses of bubbly (just as many people in the US watch the apple drop in on TV in New York, or others in Anglophone Canada watch the major fireworks live on various stations).
In 2013, almost 4,000,000 people in Québec (and elsewhere in Canada) watched it (with over 5,300,000 overall viewers, including later re-broadcasts on the web, etc.). That makes it one of the most watched annual television programs in Canada.
It’s in French, of course. If you’re a learner of French, the style of speaking might be a little quick, and a little bit “slangy”, with fair doses of Joual. But even if you’re a beginner learning French, give it a shot… the comedic scenes which you can watch sometimes carry the punch-lines in and of themselves.
There are going to be some major cast changes in this year’s Bye-Bye. Louis Morissette and Véronique Cloutier will not be part of the cast, but Morissette will nonetheless be a producer of the show (so it’s guaranteed to be funny).
Here are some links to articles with info on tonight’s show:
- Véronique Claveau : la petite nouvelle du Bye bye
- Bye bye 2014 : Louis Morissette promet une soirée de défoulement
- Le 31 décembre : les rendez-vous télé et web à ne pas manquer
The last link above has Radio-Canada’s entire New Years Eve line up (I’m providing the Radio-Canada line-up since it’s watched more on New Years Eve than the TVA line-up… plus everyone in Canada, regardless if you live on any of the three coasts, all gets Radio-Canada and the Bye-Bye). Check out the last link… there are a number of New Years specials you can watch all evening.
- The Bye-Bye starts tonight at 11:00pm in your own time zone (regardless of which of Canada’s five time zones you live in).
- There are re-runs on January 1st at 9:00pm on Radio-Canada.
- If you’re not in Canada or are not in front of the TV, you can watch the Bye-Bye live online at the official website (Canada’s Ontario/Québec Eastern Standard Time zone, same time as US Eastern Standard Time, ie: New York).
The official Bye-Bye website is: http://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/bye-bye/2014/
I’m unfortunately not going to be able to catch it tonight (I have four different house parties in Edmonton tonight), but hopefully you’ll have the chance to check it out. If it’s you’re first Bye-Bye, you’ll be in for something very special and quite unique. Enjoy it! It has become a BIG part of Québec’s and Canada’s culture — and thus yours’ too!
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Will see you in 2015!
Quebec Culture Blog 