6 ms·
There are no elite Universities in Quebec (McGill is pretty good, but not French), and there is zero access to networks from elite schools among Francop
by mablap 10y ago
There are no elite Universities in Quebec (McGill is
pretty good, but not French), and there is zero access to
networks from elite schools among Francophones.
Another blanket statement. What constitutes an "elite" university?
The Francophones in Quebec have traditionally been, as a population, mostly against making "big bucks". One of the reasons was the religion. The other was that the anglophone ruling class were more than happy to (read "actively engaged in") suppress French success in general.
A lot of things changed in the last century. There are a lot of first generation University students in Quebec today, most of them French speaking. Naturally, the wages in general are expected to be lower. But one has to make the distinction about cost of living. It's lower in Quebec than in a lot of other places. This would explain the relative lower number of French Quebecois who "sign checks" - although they do exist.
Do you have any idea how big is the "circus"? There are some interesting documentaries/reporting on YouTube. Worth checking out. Another big company is the Desjardins bank, which was ranked #1 strongest bank in North America last year IIRC.
Success is relative, it depends on your social status and on what your peers define as being successful. Sure you can apply the SV VC definition of successful to mostly anywhere in the world, and you won't be much impressed. That doesn't mean the locals aren't successful. For a example, for a long time in Quebec the definition of being successful was becoming a pharmacist, doctor, dentist or lawyer. That's something that is being felt today still: a lot of potentially great scientists/entrepreneurs just want to become doctors, because doctors are successful.
Arguably this is no different from elsewhere, but combined with the general population lagging behind the rest of N-A with regards to accumulated wealth and level of education, the net effects are bad (IMO). But the gap is lowering, and I know plenty of young people with big ambitions. Time will tell, but I'm an optimist for the future.
- edblarney 10y agoYou're taking this personally, which I think is clouding your view. You don't need to lecture me on the history of Quebec, I'm well aware. Harvard and Stanford are 'elite' schools. U. Laval is not. "Do you have any idea how big is the "circus"?" - it's somewhat less than $1 Billion revenue - which is not that huge. Desjardins? Ha ... I use Desjardins as my main account - it's backwards and the most 'behind' of any major bank in Canada. I can't get a Visa Debit - among other things. Desjardins is '#1' in stability basically - because they are like a franchise and each branch is separate bank - they have extremely low lending leverage. This gives them a high degree of 'stability' (but also underperformance). Don't be personal about it, I sense from your writing that you already know Montreal is not a 'winning city' and is not really moving in that direction. Obviously I'm not 'anti Montreal' or I wouldn't chose to live here. It's a great town, even a great town to build a startup in, but the people here have little interest in building industries, in the classical sense.
- mablap 10y agoI appreciate that I may come across as personally irritated - I am indeed a bit. Quebec bashing does get tiring, and your condescending tone and seemingly facile arguments did annoy me. I don't understand the logic of people who hold the arguments you bring forth. It's as if because you're not "elite" (whatever that means) now, you will never be. Yoshua Bengio's dream (if I may) is to make Montreal a global hotspot of AI research. That's all. Now you (and others) can bash it all you want, blame the local population, blame the language, blame the education system - whatever. To me, the fact that some people are reacting the way you are is actually confirmation that things are doing well - quite contrary to your frankly misguided assumption that I have a defeatist opinion of the city and the province in general.