Florida vs. Quebec

Steve from Rockwood shared an interesting story in last night’s Reader Tips:

During my visit, I saw some customers shake hands with their waiter, as if to say: “Thanks, I’ll have some germs for dessert,” Josh Freed writes.

While Quebec is in full confinement mode, Florida is Cowboyland, where you barely know COVID is happening, despite much higher new case and hospitalization rates than ours .

It’s lunacy by Canadian standards, but an eye-opening experience. For starters, everyone’s out and about, filling bars, restaurants, movies, gyms, and jam-packed sports arenas.

Stores and supermarkets don’t require masks but some cashiers and customers wear them, though often under their nose or chin — Florida-style. It seems a way of announcing: “Look — I’m masked!” when they’re not.

As a Canadian currently staying in Florida, I have more than a little personal insight into things here, arguably much more than the author, Josh Freed. IMO Freed is either a germaphobe and/or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Can the Montreal Gazette not afford some psychological counseling for him?

There are clearly two very different approaches to dealing with something like Covid:

  1. Lock down everyone forever, removing their humanity by insisting they wear masks over their faces whenever they exit their homes.  This is Safetyism on steroids.  It’s also emblematic of the most extreme selfishness on the part of adults who are clearly wrecking the childhoods of the youngest cohort of society.
  2. Or, treat adults like … wait for it … adults and let them make their own choices.  This is known as a concept that seems to have disappeared from the minds of most Canadians.  Let me refresh your memory: It’s called FREEDOM!

The smugness of many of the comments to Freed’s piece are par for the course of countless Canadians I’ve met over the decades: “We Canadians are better. You Americans are stupid.”  Yawn.  Boring.

Polls seem to indicate that the majority of Canadians are frightened beyond belief and fully support never-ending lockdowns.  This is clearly a different crop of folks than stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944.  It’s a group of Canadians that I choose to have nothing to do with because supporting the Permanent Victimhood of people does NOT help them.  Good luck on your chosen path to a sub-human existence for the rest of your miserable lives!

72 Replies to “Florida vs. Quebec”

  1. Florida guy here with my updated single data point.
    I remain un-vaxxed and un-sick. :o) As always I’m out and about, interacting with a lot of people over the course of a week. Today i spent some time with a group of Brazilian visitors. I don’t know their vax status and don’t care.
    Also spent time with son in law and daughter who are nurses and both got the virus from hospitals. They are fine.
    Meanwhile a third person at work did catch the virus, or at least a flu that they think was the virus. Like the other two who got sick it was no different than getting a seasonal flu. I don’t know their vax status either but I think they got the shot.
    The reason for Florida’s lax attitude is because of people like me. I’m 64 and not especially healthy in the breathing department. I’ve always had allergies and limited lung capacity.
    Even with those risk factors I don’t worry about the virus and remain healthy even with a lot of exposure.

    1. I was there too. When I did get it, I got it hard. On the bright side, now I don’t need the vax.

  2. Josh Freed is simply looking to make money off COVID. Nowhere in his story about “collective rights of Canadians” does he talk about Ivermectin, FLCCC, etc.”. Collective rights of Canadians mean “ALL” treatment options are available and used. The shotgun approach will help us find our way home.

    Think what a handful of Ivermectin tablets would do in the hands of our truckers.

    1. Freed’s stats are also in dispute. The reason Florida’s fatalities are seemingly so high is because many seniors live there. Covid appears to be more lethal to people who have lived past the average life expectancy. Some would call it a co-morbidity. Seems that Freed doesn’t take into account the difference between dying WITH Covid, and dying FROM Covid.

  3. Geez, Robert…

    Any suggestions on how a non-vaxxed anti-Canadian can relocate to Florida PERMANENTLY?

    I have the resources to move, but I’m trapped here, not being able to board a plane or a train unless I’m vaxxed. I can’t even cross a land border for the same reason.

    I’d LOVE to get out of this miserable hell-hole of a country, but like communist countries before it, I’m confined like a prisoner inside my own home.

    1. +++fc. with you on that sentiment as most of my fellow Canadians are as dumb as a bag of rocks and less useful. I should have stayed two years ago while down on my annual winter trip, now I am screwed as an old man who will not allow the government to kill me with an experimental drug. Got lots of money? A private plane from a private airstrip. It would take years to deport you back to Canada, if anyone even bothered to try. Of course others can just walk in and get paid for being there.

    2. `fc` my sincere apologies if I offended you in any way. With my mom in Vancouver and my many friends around the country I’m much more measured with my words. It’s actually not my intention to gloat about being down here. Rather, I wanted to offer a counterpoint to Freed’s missive, which clearly supports the Fauci/Trudeau narrative = Removal of all rights & freedoms and lockdown forever … or at least until it’s not longer political advantageous, eh?! Given that most Canadians won’t push back … at all, it’s no wonder why the government has gotten away with so much already.

      I’m one of the San Francisco refugees, one of the hundreds of thousands living in California who looked around and said, “This is not f’ing normal. These rules make NO sense. Bye, bye.” Joe Rogan left the state. So did Elon Musk. More recently, David Rubin left too.. Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinksy are now thinking the same. The mentality in urban California = the mentality in much of Canada so I do clearly know what’s going on north of the 49th parallel. My only hope is that all of you there who realize that things are not right will legally and peacefully push back whenever you can.

      1. Robert

        Don’t apologize to and idiot like fc, he clutched his pearls and fell on his fainting couch when Steakman suggested a good and permanent cure for the TurD’Oh. And then did the typical bible thumper BS, mocking gay marriage. It’s fools like him who real conservatives need to kick out of our tent, as they discredit about 20-30% of the voters , with their needless attacks on gays. Yup , gays comprise about 3% of the population, but they have family and friends , who also get insulted with this STUPIDITY!

        1. beholden a grudge much, NME???

          I don’t “mock” gay marriage. I simply do not recognize it as a legitimate marriage.

          And what was Steakman’s cure? Vote for the tool! Got it!

          1. “I don’t “mock” gay marriage. I simply do not recognize it as a legitimate marriage.”

            Same here. What we SHOULD have done (and I would have supported) was the same thing all those progressive European countries were doing at the time: creating “civil unions”, with all the same rights and responsibilities as any other marriage but *just with a different name*. This would have mollified the religious people and made most of us happy. But no…the coward Jean Chretien had to punt the decision to the courts, who then forced us to use the label of “marriage”.

            (and I say that never having been legally married myself; why wouldn’t you take the path of least offense to anyone if you had the chance? Why not? What is so important about the name you call your relationship?)

            “And what was Steakman’s cure? Vote for the tool! Got it!”

            Oh HELL NO. Never. No votes for the CPC until O’Toole is gone, sorry.

      2. Not offended at all, Robert. Just jealous. Your apology was not necessary. Maybe I should be the one to apologize for tone of my post not being construed so eloquently.

        But if you do know a way into the U.S, I’m all ears.

      3. Jesus, Robert, I was about to offer you high praise for your forceful language and then you go all Canuck and offer a totally unwarranted apology.

    3. Sorry to hear that. At the moment there are a lot of Canadian visitors here. Probably the same ones who come every winter. I don’t know any to ask what their plans are.
      I am sad I can’t return to Canada. We sell refurbished electronic equipment and we have a large customer in Toronto. Before things got too crazy I went there to assist the customer. It took two attempts. The first time I got turned back from boarding a flight departing from Philadelphia. (The airline let me take the MIA to PHL leg but then stopped me in PHL) That was in spite of us calling ahead to confirm my clearance to enter the country.
      I got into Canada the second time by driving to the Niagra crossing and pleading my case. The Canadian officials were very nice.
      But now I can’t see getting into Canada anymore.
      An interesting side note, we have a friendly competitor in Toronto and we assist each other at times. At this moment, he is closed. He can’t get his employees to work or find others willing to work.

      1. Your competitor can’t find anyone to work ?
        Maybe he is looking in the wrong places.
        Maybe suggest to him he up his wages.
        I had the same problem and promptly coughed up some extra dough to keep my existing employees.
        It’s hard to live on minimum wages in TO without doing 2 or 3 jobs or have welfare as a backup.

        1. I don’t know him well enough to know what he has tried. What he needs is people who are reasonably competent at setting up and troubleshooting battery backup power supplies. I do know it is a relatively low margin business, but it was a profitable one pre-covid.

      2. @Robert F – “But now I can’t see getting into Canada anymore.”

        Go to Roxham Road, good chance the cops will carry your bags to the Chinese owned Radisson where Trudeau has made another taxpayer deal with the CCP.

    4. “can relocate to Florida PERMANENTLY?”

      Fly to Mexico. Walk up to the southern US border and say hola.

        1. Via private plane direct. Will cost some xtra daneiros, but if the move is permanent, who cares!
          That’s my plan, given time and IFs.
          If Trudeau remains PM indefinitely.
          If 3 shots is the new “fully vaccinated”
          If Bonnie Henry remains Fuhrer of the Fourth Reich.
          If there remains lockdowns and discrimination through the end of 22.
          Then we sell everything off and make the move, first to Mexico, to a settlement of other Canuck and US ex-pats, just to decompress and live for a few months. Then, decide on the next landfall. Right now, the top three are Mexico, Spain and Panama.
          Can’t wait for the insanity of the USSA to dissipate, 3 years is too long, especially when retirement is in the headlights. Every year from here on out is precious and special
          Gulag Canada.

    5. I’m in the same boat. I’m slowly buying dividend stocks on the US markets to convert my retirement income to USD. This country is a meme. I think the brain drain after this debacle is going to make the 1980s look like a stroll in the park. I for one cannot stand earning and paying taxes under this government, but to have my constitutional rights pissed on by the likes of Christia Freeland and The Faggot is too much to bear.

  4. Some of the sneering sounds like what one hears here in New England- here it’s disdain for southerners- you know, the kind of people whose idea of a good time is a jug of ‘shine and a bunk up with one’s sister. (Phrase stolen from Mark Steyn, who I believe is one of your chaps)

    Massachusetts could be a Canadian province- much of the state is like it was a year ago, two years ago, mask mandates, remote learning (three colleges in my area are beginning the semester remotely) vax cards, people driving alone in their Teslas all masked up, the whole deal! Last night I was going to go into Boston to the UMASS at Northeastern hockey game ; SORRY, no spectators allowed.

    ( as an aside, I know you frostbacks like your hockey- if you ever get a chance, assuming they ever allow spectators again, you should try and catch a game at Mathews Arena at Northeastern- Wonderful place to watch hockey, especially from the balcony- reminiscent of the old Chicago Stadium or Boston Garden.)

    At least we’re not as bleeped up as New Zealand. Someone from down there has to explain how someone as unbalanced as Jacinda Ardern could get that high up the food chain. We North Americans would never elect people to high office who are so obviously unfit…

    1. I think the full Steynian phrase is “stump-toothed losers (or gap-toothed, can’t remember which) whose idea of a good time is a jug of shine and a bunk-up with one’s sister.”

    2. Going to the Frozen Four is a fun experience too. I did it a number of years ago and at least at that time your ticket got you into both semi-final games. There was about a 45-minute break in between the two and since regulations required no booze be sold in the arena quite a few people ran out to the nearby watering holes to grab a beverage or two and came back. One team, basically the Cinderella, was from a school which was so small they asked a local school with the same colors if they could borrow the latter’s band. The answer was yes, and a big reason was they had been a Cinderella in another NCAA event several years prior, and had played in the same arena. I can say the majority of the crowd was cheering for them.

      (I should add the respective teams were Bemidji State and George Mason.)

      1. I’m assuming this was 2009 in DC- It was Miami of OH , not George Mason, as GM doesn’t have DI hockey. Bemidji State was there.

        Memorable final- Boston University vs Miami: BU, down 3-1, pulled their goalie and scored 2 in the last minute to tie the game, and then won in OT.

        A cool event- I generally go regardless of whether my team (s) (Minnesota and Massachusetts) are there. Many Canadians poo-poo NCAA hockey, but it’s a lot of fun. And produces a lot of talent for the NHL.

        1. Sorry, I’ll clarify: The school band that Bemidji State borrowed was George Mason’s, because both schools’ colors are green and gold and GMU is in the DC suburbs so they didn’t have far to travel. GMU was a Cinderella in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament a few years prior.

          Yes, Miami of Ohio was there, and off the top of my head the other two were Vermont and one of Bostons (College or University).

  5. “This is clearly a different crop of folks than stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944.”

    This is the crop of people who were occupying the beaches of Normandy prior to the Allies storming them.

    1. Wish I’d said that- I’ll be stealing it, thank you very much.

      Juno Beach could not be taken today, neither could Omaha and Utah. It would be interesting to see if the First Mechanized Hairdresser Battalion could storm Pointe du Hoc.

      (HT to blogger Severian for that nifty coinage)

      I’m guessing the same applies to Gold and Sword Beaches as well.

    2. YeahWell, “This is the crop of people who were occupying the beaches of Normandy prior to the Allies storming them”.

      I have to disagree….This is the crop of people occupying the beaches of Normandy prior to the Germans arriving at their leisure and placing their towels on the loungers…

    3. Are you kidding? German soldiers were real men, tough as nails. But we killed them all. They were left with the nutless cowards who rule Germany today.

      1. Someone once said that if you want to meet real Germans, look for the Auslandsdeutsche who left after WW II. They kept what was left of the old traditions.

    4. No, a great deal of this crop’s forefathers were tending rice paddies or harvesting jute at the time.

  6. At this point of this plan, and that is what it is, planned, if anyone, is still spending one cent on a newspaper, or listening to one second of local/national “news”, be it radio/tv. that person is being programmed, to act like the automaton sub human, they are. The concocted “news” is the enemy of the people, there is more truth, in the comment sections of any blog like this one, than any front page fairytale, on any “bought and paid for” media. Yes the commenters have their idiots, and bought shills, but the alans unmes etc, are as easy, as any TheeBThee TheeTV montreal gazette radio newscast or any city sewer plant smell, to ignore.

  7. I grew up in Minnesota- a lot like Canada in many ways – cold weather, lots of hockey, plenty of socialism- I love the place, and hate what it’s become. The St. Paul I grew up in, where I could ride my bike anywhere in the cities- to school, to the big parks, even over to the lakes in… gasp… Minneapolis, ride the bus downtown alone as a 10 year old, not lock the doors- mostly gone. Next stop, Detroit. Sad

    I imagine many native Detroiters feel as I do- I’d bet Detroit in the 50’s and 60’s- at least until ‘67, was a great place to grow up.

  8. He went to Florida to get away from what’s been going on in Quebec, and outright admitted it. I highly doubt he didn’t know in advance much of what is going on there in terms of masks, dining, public gatherings, etc. Sounds a bit to me like the column is at least partly an attempt at a mea culpa that he went there by using the Cowboyland phrase to make it sound like FL is filled with a bunch of uneducated rubes.

    Also, people can wash their hands after they shake other people’s hands.

    As well, how many seniors, including those with co-morbidities, live in Florida? Quite a few.

    But he does make an important point in his mockery of what the Americans he talked with thought about what was going on in Quebec: Explaining the individualism vs. collective mindset can and is a pain in rear end, especially if you’ve lived in and been taught all your life that one is superior to the other one. I once had a discussion with former university classmates about the 2nd Amendment, and they could not wrap their heads around why the Founders thought it was necessary as a mechanism to protect individuals from the government because why should that be needed?

    1. Canadians are taught to believe that government gives them their rights as long as they are obedient to politicians. America’s founders understood that governments will take your rights away and citizens must make politicians behave.

  9. I think much of the anger, bitterness, resentment and hostility from people like Freed is because they fear that all the sacrifice and harm from the covid policies they support has been futile.

    What if the trampling of civil and human rights, the explosion of mental illness, the missed cancer treatments and cancelled surgeries, the economic pain and the deep divisions created in society were not just unethical but unnecessary? What if such people had to consider that they may have been manipulated into being cruel oppressors to fellow citizens for little to no benefit to the trajectory of the virus?

    Attacking places like Florida- who didn’t support discrimination, segregation and oppression- simply reinforces their conviction that all of the horrible things they supported in Canada were worth the human cost. Otherwise they might start to see themselves for the monsters they have become.

    1. I disagree. People like them celebrate the human cost, as they admit to on Twitter or op-eds.

    2. I wonder if the blood-thirsty residents of Salem, Massachusetts looked at other places and thought “Why aren’t those fools killing their witches?”

      Did they celebrate the human cost of what they’d done after the hysteria and insanity had passed?

      1. Actually a few years after the witch madness there was a reckoning about what had been done- fasting, prayer, etc., unlikely the folks that foisted all this on us will do the same.

  10. I have an elderly neighbor that I take treats to regularly, she’s been house bound after a stroke for two years thanks to covid. I took her a plate of cookies and some perogies, knocked on the door, tried to open the screen door it was locked. Her son came to the door and informed me that no one was allowed in the house, well dah no one but me visits the poor ole soul. I left the food on the step and came home. She called me later and apologized, she was in tears I don’t know what one can do when another family member spends years covid terrorizing an elderly Mom. Some people are getting worse not better, they are obsessed with their covid health but smoke, drink and are over weight.

    1. A while back I read a story about a woman who was so paranoid she had essentially kept her kids stuck at home for 2 years and got them tested regularly. One day her daughter, who I believe was 12, went outside and down the street to hang out with a friend. Mom freaked out and she put the kid in her bedroom to quarantine for the government-approved number of days, and of course, more tests were coming.

  11. Huge protest march in Toronto this morning about the COVID control be governments. See a few F*** Trudeau signs, good for them,

    My friends and family who refused the vaccine are hanging in there. Hopefully this will end well.

  12. Quebec, the province with the harshest lockdowns, is also the province which has the largest number of its residents spending winters in Florida, many of whom have been known to be collecting unemployment insurance from Canada while they are there.

  13. A good friend of mine just died of cancer in Florida. We served together in the military. He was an major in the RCAF. I’ve had a number of friends/relatives die from cancer over the past few years. Don’t know anyone who has died from the China virus. They are shipping his body here, so at least I can attend his funeral. I have great memories of our friendship.

    1. Didn’t the rank of major in the RCAF used to be Squadron Leader?…but then I’m dating myself.

  14. I lived in south Florida for several years, well before the pandemic. There were many people there from Canada.

    When I went to a doctor’s appointment the parking lot would usually be full of “Je me souviens” license plates. In the waiting room, I got into a conversation with a Quebecois. I asked him why so many of his countrymen were here to go to the doctor. He responded “Because they have to wait six months for an appointment in Quebec.”

  15. In 1919 they didn’t cancel the Stanley cup final until both teams were too sick to put teams on the ice. Seems we were made of stronger stuff back then.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Stanley_Cup_Finals

    “The sixth and deciding game of the series was scheduled for April 1, but an outbreak of influenza caused several players on both teams to become seriously ill.[2] With Lalonde, Hall, Coutu, Berlinguette, and McDonald of Montreal hospitalized or sick in bed, with fevers between 101 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, game six was cancelled just five and a half hours before it was scheduled to start.[10] Kennedy said he was forfeiting the Cup to Seattle, but Pete Muldoon, manager-coach of the Metropolitans, refused to accept the Cup in a forfeiture, seeing that it was catastrophic illness that had caused the Canadiens lineup to be short of players. Kennedy asked to use players from the Victoria team of the PCHA, but president Frank Patrick refused the request.[20][1]

    Four days later, Joe Hall died of pneumonia brought about by the flu.[21] His funeral was held in Vancouver on April 8, with most team members attending,[22] and he was buried in Brandon, Manitoba.[21] Manager George Kennedy also was stricken. His condition declined, and his wife arrived from Montreal to be with him.[23] He never fully recovered from his symptoms and died 2 years later.[2]”

  16. “Florida more per capita cases than Quebec”

    Then he says. Can’t get testing kits in Quebec. But our cases are low. Since there is no/little testing. ( Insert smug Canadian here)

    Then …Florida tests everyone everywhere for free quick and easy……and….they find positive cases.

    Josh is such a typical reporter idiot he can’t make the connection between…

    No tests= no cases. Success!

    Testing all the time= positive cases= failure.

    He should get a quality control job in a Russian tractor plant.

    1. I should have picked up on that point. Guess I had other things on my mind, like wondering where my next bag of groceries are going to come from.

  17. “the majority of Canadians are frightened beyond belief and fully support never-ending lockdown”

    Same in Australia’s capital city Canberra, which I visited yesterday for a funeral. The place is not locked down but It is heavily masked . Couldn’t get over the number of people I saw masked up outside or driving alone. So many of them heavily overweight with apparent gender dysphoria.

  18. We were in Kalispell in December. Except for a handful of 60+ and the odd store employee, no masks. No restrictions or having to “show your papers”.
    It seems that the only counties in Montana that had a high number of cases were the blue ones like Missoula. Back in Alberta it was back to restrictions and “must be kept safe from the evil Joos”, I mean unvaccinated.

  19. I’m amazed at how little mention there is of treatment. My wife was scheduled for hip surgery on Friday but on Wednesday she got a positive covid test. Came home and took ivermectin( horse paste) she never even noticed a difference. Even the bad taste of ivermectin is masked with a little jam.
    Treatment is cheap fast and effective.

    1. Well, the Omi hit our home this past week.
      Adult son came home from work Thursday, he was at a party the weekend before. Buddy called to tell him, he was ill with Omi.
      Son had a headache, and sore throat and malaise.
      So, we talked it over and decided, since it’s so contagious and hard to avoid, and probably already exposed, didn’t make our son isolate.
      Symptoms? Friday, I had a scratchy throat, nothing more. Wife, a little less.
      Saturday, wife was tired and some muscle soreness. Me, tired and feeling a bit off. Slept a couple of catnaps during the day. By evening, feeling normal, same with son and wife.
      I’ve had flus, particularly one when I was 30, that wiped me out for 5 days, TOTAL wipe out.
      THIS IS A NOTHING BURGER!
      But, I keep seeing anecdotes, that if one is jabbed, Omi is Bad.
      Of Course, Bonnie Nazi says the opposite, as usual, lying filthy thing.
      FYI, taking the Zelenko protocol of vitamins, supplements and minerals, plus NAC. Doubled my VitD and Querectin as well. Highly recommended!

      1. Same here with a few sniffles, sore and tired, someone here said “you had a little cold NR.” It was a nothing burger, certainly not worth getting an ‘injecticide’ that they are offering for free that might wreck you for the rest of days.

      2. Exactly the same story here… we hotboxed Omi too. Absolutely a cold and a mild one at that. And no, it wasn’t because ‘we were vaccinated.’ My dad, unvaccinated 80 year old man, got it and “went to bed early” a couple of nights in a row. My triple vaccinated, fully indoctrinated wife got it and had the worst symptoms by far. But still it was nothing more than a cold.

        We’ve been seriously misled.

  20. Josh Freed is one of Anglo Montreal’s best and well known satirists. He’s a regular Canadian born dinosaur who has been there forever. Essentially Josh’s trip to Florida was to mock Quebec. He is a little more subtle than Mordecai Richler ever was, a regular diamond in the rough. Inside, I suspect, he has a heart of gold and is crying like Marvin Gaye when he sang, “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)”

    Read his stuff, there’s a ton of it on the web. Years ago I enjoyed these:
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2059012.Anglo_Guide_to_Survival_in_Quebec

    ” My Messy Life”
    https://vimeo.com/23292198

     He writes things like:

    “I figure what’s going in inside my body is my body’s business and the rest is unknowable, except for the fact:
    “You are 23 words from the end of this column…make that 13. Push on — you’re improving.
    Next, you can count the bats in your castle.”

    I would love to spend an afternoon, having coffee, talking to this man.

  21. Canadians know SO much that they would rather never use Ivermectin the way the “quaint” Japanese have.

    Because they’re better somehow.

    You simply can’t tell Canadians anything.

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