The Editor,
Saturday morning, while I nursed a black coffee at our local Tim’s, I learned that some local coffee drinkers are racist in both official languages.
If you frequent our local Timmies, you may have detected the Franco-African accents of some of the young crew. You may have struggled to be understood if, like me, an anglophone, you struggle to explain your order in French.
But I hope there is only one of you – the older man speaking English – who invited the entire crew to “go back to Africa” as he exited, and I hope there is only one cluster of French-speaking older men that sat in a booth and made fun of the crew, erupting in laughter and suggested “bientôt ils danseront” [soon they’ll dance] and proceeded to make bizarre hooting and chanting noises en masse as they themselves erupted in laughter.
Some local grandpas, it seems, like their coffee black, but not too Black. Shame on us.
Twice I had an opportunity to address this racist behaviour on the spot and I didn’t.
Shame on me.
Kathleen Molloy
Edelweiss, QC