Excellent writing, both stylistically and in content.
Please post again, Kelden.
"Air Canada executives should have known better. If the CEO can’t speak French, get someone else on staff to record a similar video in French for the francophone audience. It wasn’t hard. It was a stupid oversight. The CEO’s resignation seems like an overreaction, as this would likely have just blown over in a week or two, but the initial mistake was just that: a mistake."
Perhaps I have interpreted this passage incorrectly, but it appears to me that you are arguing against yourself. I mean that respectfully and without malice.
Yes, it would have been prudent to deliver words of solace in both official languages. However, when a tragic accident becomes overshadowed by an unending language debate, how does the resignation of a successful CEO become an overreaction?
The CEO felt the situation was serious enough that he should deliver the message personally; to me, that is a gesture far more compelling than a botched garbling of the same sentiments & words in French. Perhaps another could have delivered the words in French. Then, most certainly, there would have been the criticism that the CEO failed to ensure equal importance by delegating that task to a subordinate.
Fear not, the next CEO of Air Canada will be sufficiently bilingual to appease the linguistes and the Nationalistes. The former CEO will take his 17 hour days and accumulated business acumen and apply them at another firm, perhaps even in another Country.
We, of course, will continue to live in a Country that values optics and virtue-signalling beyond that of actual urgencies, actions and results.
I'm not sure what this is about. Multiple inconsistencies abound. 2 pilots died tragically which is what the only story should be. As for the incompetent boob of the Air Canada CEO, he's married to a francophone, he's been chastised for delivering speeches in English years before, then promised to take French lessons, yet here we are. He's not interested. So what? Turning this tragedy in a romantic notion of Canadiana is rather off putting.
I'm from the prairies- the rural prairies- my heritage is Ukrainian and it goes back ab long time- the signs in my town were in Ukrainian- French is simply irrelevant other than a parr of the history of the country. I have no use for the language police, anywhere, anytime, ever!
Excellent writing, both stylistically and in content.
Please post again, Kelden.
"Air Canada executives should have known better. If the CEO can’t speak French, get someone else on staff to record a similar video in French for the francophone audience. It wasn’t hard. It was a stupid oversight. The CEO’s resignation seems like an overreaction, as this would likely have just blown over in a week or two, but the initial mistake was just that: a mistake."
Perhaps I have interpreted this passage incorrectly, but it appears to me that you are arguing against yourself. I mean that respectfully and without malice.
Yes, it would have been prudent to deliver words of solace in both official languages. However, when a tragic accident becomes overshadowed by an unending language debate, how does the resignation of a successful CEO become an overreaction?
The CEO felt the situation was serious enough that he should deliver the message personally; to me, that is a gesture far more compelling than a botched garbling of the same sentiments & words in French. Perhaps another could have delivered the words in French. Then, most certainly, there would have been the criticism that the CEO failed to ensure equal importance by delegating that task to a subordinate.
Fear not, the next CEO of Air Canada will be sufficiently bilingual to appease the linguistes and the Nationalistes. The former CEO will take his 17 hour days and accumulated business acumen and apply them at another firm, perhaps even in another Country.
We, of course, will continue to live in a Country that values optics and virtue-signalling beyond that of actual urgencies, actions and results.
I'm not sure what this is about. Multiple inconsistencies abound. 2 pilots died tragically which is what the only story should be. As for the incompetent boob of the Air Canada CEO, he's married to a francophone, he's been chastised for delivering speeches in English years before, then promised to take French lessons, yet here we are. He's not interested. So what? Turning this tragedy in a romantic notion of Canadiana is rather off putting.
I'm from the prairies- the rural prairies- my heritage is Ukrainian and it goes back ab long time- the signs in my town were in Ukrainian- French is simply irrelevant other than a parr of the history of the country. I have no use for the language police, anywhere, anytime, ever!
well-spoken article and a balanced point of view. Hard to argue against this.
Yes, it is about a tragic circumstance, but hard to ignore the other part of the picture.