With every Guy Nantel vox pop I tell myself that we have reached the bottom of the barrel, the limit of ignorance, the tip of the tip of mediocrity.

• Also read: Guy Nantel strikes again with another of his crisp vox pops

Then each time Nantel unearths rare specimens of disconnected people who don’t know how to tell north from south and who wouldn’t be able to get out of a brown paper bag.

But where does he look for these weirdos who don’t know how to tell the time on a clock?

Don’t blame Guy Nantel. It just holds up a mirror: if you don’t like the image reflected in it, don’t blame the mirror!

• Listen to the live broadcast of the Durocher-Dutrizac meeting every day at 12:35 p.m. above QUB radio :

Inculture for Dummies

Yes, that’s possible, someone who studies politics and believes Toronto is the capital of Quebec.

Guy Nantel hit a hard blow with his vox-pop on the subject of teacher shortages, in which he asked “people on the street” basic questions to recruit “competent adults” for a classroom.

However, when I asked him the question on my show on QUB radio, Nantel confirmed that this time he had proceeded as he does with every vox pop. Two hours on a street corner, around fifteen seven-minute interviews and “Bingo!” “He had everything he needed to make us collapse with laughter… or with embarrassment.

I ask myself a series of questions:

1. How can a Quebecer have gone through the educational system and think that it was Abraham Lincoln who won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham?
2. Why do people think it’s funny not knowing which country is south of Canada when we drive an hour south and find ourselves at the Lacolle border post? And that there is a common border of 813 kilometers between Quebec and the United States?
3. How can a person who doesn’t know which country is south of Canada have an informed opinion about Roxham Road, for example? How can this person vote in provincial and federal elections with a clear conscience?
4. How can someone who doesn’t know that it was La Fontaine who wrote? The Fables of the Well Can the manifesto of the Liberals, PQ, QS and CAQ be distinguished at the next election?
5. How can someone who thinks no and is convinced that English is the only official language in Quebec be moved by Cégep Garneau organizing an “English Week” or that the new concert hall in Quebec is called “Grizzly Fuzz”? They just don’t care!

THE QUESTION THAT KILLS

We recently asked Normand Lester on QUB radio why Quebecers haven’t been more outraged by the news in recent weeks.

For example, the revelations about Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s secret unit spying on the Quebec sovereigntists. Or the returning officer’s reluctance to publish documents relating to the No camp’s spending at the time of the 1995 referendum.

But how can you expect people to rebel when, as in Nantel’s vox-pop, they don’t even know how to identify Quebec on a map of Canada?