For some reason, VANOC CEO John Furlong attempted to try French at the Olympics Closing Ceremonies, possibly for the first time ever because it certainly sounded like it. Too bad he chose a TV audience of billions to do it in front of, representing a nation and probably leaving it as the ultimate symbol of his legacy. I wish I had a YouTube link to it to show you had horrible it was, if you hadn’t watched it on television.
Probably pressured to include more French in the Closing Ceremonies by the Conservatives trying to get votes in Quebec, as Heritage Minister James Moore tried by speaking out after the Opening Ceremonies (CBC), John could not have faked an English speaker reading French for the first time ever any better. He read it so badly that I could have written him better phonetics than that. He abused that French worse than anything guilty Catholic priests have ever done to boys over the years!
John’s attempt at French was a disgraceful symbol of our bilingualism. Mind you, it was perhaps also an appropriate symbol of our Canadian struggle with it. Still, everybody should rightly trash Furlong for his disgusting French at the closing ceremonies. There’s a point where trying is not honourable, and that point is not trying so little you show disrespect by your lack of effort rather than lack of ability. He could have, and should have done much better. He would have if he only practiced more.
You’d think he’d have learned something about “trying” with all the inspirational athletic performances over the past 17 days, eh?
Some francophones have loudly voiced their disappointment at the lack of French at the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Well, I hope they’re happy now. If they still want something to complain about, I hope they’ll scream loudly at John. There’s nobody deserving of it any more than he did for his lack of effort, especially for such a podium as the one he at at the Closing Ceremonies. It was so disrespectful that if I were Francophone, I’d rather not have had the French, thank you very much!
Really, have you heard worst French at an international event? I am ashamed we put someone with that atrocious an incompetency of verbal French as John had tonight.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 9.6
I, for one, would be honored to study the French language under the fine tutelage of one John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympic committee.
Is this SAR-ca-SM, LoREN? It’s hard to tell in text. But if you are serious, I hope you’ll only get to use that French you learn from John Furlong on Mars… for your own protection!
That was truly embarrassing indeed. Thanks for the laugh!
Glad I found this article. That guy butchered the French language so badly… but I think you failed to point out that he put zero effort into the entire speech – he did not have any of it memorized, and the entire thing was choppy and without any emotion. I wanted to punch him in the face while i was watching him there on TV. What a disgrace to Canada….
Before you go criticizing people’s French, I’d check your English:
“to it to show you *had* horrible it was”
“especially for such a podium as the one *he at at* the Closing Ceremonies”
“Really, have you heard *worst* French at an international event?”
“I am ashamed we put someone with that atrocious an incompetency of verbal French as John had tonight.” (you’re missing several words here and at least one of the ones you did include, I don’t think you’re using correctly.)
I won’t even bother pointing out your awkward sentence constructions, your poor word choices and your utterly tasteless attempt at humour (mispronouncing a foreign language = molesting children? Really??).
The olympics were a success, Canada is still glowing, and John Furlong is a huge part of the reason why. This article, on the other hand, fails spectacularly. Nice try, though.
Anon, if this article failed spectacularly, then you are essentially praising John Furlong for his French during the Olympics Closing Ceremonies. What are you a member of the Furlongetti or something, so blindly loyal?
Or do you just have spectacularly bad debating skills you missed the point?
Or is that brilliant deception skills to use distracting elements as if it really validated your point?
THE POINT:
John Furlong’s French stank!
Between defending that and acknowledging he could have done better, if I were a supporter, I’d give him credit for being able to do better rather than defending it as a worthy effort on his behalf. That was pretty lame.
BESIDES the point:
My English has nothing to do with my ability to point out the truth and that was how badly John Furlong debaucherized the French in his speech. Furthermore, look at context. I blog for fun. I interrupted my post on the hockey game after celebrating because John’s bad French was worth making a statement about. I wrote it without an edit. My A-game for writing is worth a top 2 percentile score on the GMAT, but I save it for when it counts, like work. John’s context, meanwhile, was about a quarter of the world as an audience, with all the focus on him, representing a country and an event. If that isn’t when it counts, tell me when it does. If he can’t bring his A-jeux to that, he should say Adieux!
You score top 2 percentile on the GMAT and I’ll test my A-game in writing with yours any time. Your commentary punctuation isn’t even proper! And yes, John’s French was beyond the worst metaphors. That was the truth, not humour.
John’s ability to conduct the Olympics also has nothing to do with his ability or effort at French. Don’t use success in one thing to defend failure in another that has nothing to do with the success.
Nice try, though!
I agree it was nauseating to listen to and he could have hired someone to help him practice. I agree it was so bad that it made it utterly disrespectful to francophones everywhere who had to to sit through it (OIC President Rogue must have been trying not to make any faces).
But in Mr. Furlong`s defense, it is not he who has disgraced bilingualism, it`s bilingualism that has discraced him. Along the way either he himself – who grew up in the era when official bilingualism was adopted – or the people around him thought that his speech MUST INCLUDE FRENCH. And why MUST it include french – because that`s the kind of thing official bilingualism has done to people in positions of power all across Canada. He still should have known better that his ability to speak french was terrible and that to even try wouldn`t go over well. That is inexcusable. But Mr. Furlong`s ignorance was only made worse by the perverted way in which bilingualism tried to lay its roots in `English Canada`. Bilingualism failed not only because someone named John Furlong in BC couldn`t learn basic french, but because someone in his position actually thought the right thing to do was ATTEMPT to speak french, bilingualism pressured him to do as much. After all, the rule of thumb in Canada is that any address to a national audience MUST be in both languages. We can thank bilingualism for that, so we can also thank bilingualism for Mr. Furlong`s awful bastardization of the french language.
That’s a very interesting view point, Ryan. Thanks for sharing it. I really just thought John could have tried harder. I believed he could have done better if he did try harder. I will easily give him that because I don’t doubt he got to where he is with a lot of skills and abilities to learn. I just thought it was really disrespectful he didn’t try harder, especially in such an important moment representing so many people (not just himself), and that’s what I thought was insulting. But that’s just me.
“Along the way either he himself – who grew up in the era when official bilingualism was adopted”
Well, no, Furlong grew up in Ireland. He moved to Canada in the 70s, which would have put him around middle-aged:
http://www.vancouver2010.com/more-2010-information/about-vanoc/organizing-committee/management-team/john-furlong/john-furlong_88274Zn.html
And where exactly is it “not going over well”, aside from on this blog? I’ve heard a lot of anglophones who took French in high school criticizing his speech, but nothing from the French-Canadians on whose behalf they are so outraged.
The Gazette acknowledges that Furlong’s attempt was an improvement over the opening: http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010wintergames/Tragic+start+triumphant+finish/2625251/story.html.
LaPresse likewise noted that Graham Fraser (Canada’s Commissioner of Official Languages) was pleased with the added French in the closing ceremonies:
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/sports/vancouver-2010/201003/01/01-4256440-le-commissaire-aux-langues-officielles-dresse-un-bilan-positif.php
So if the guy in charge of making sure Canada is properly bilingual and two of the most major news outlets in French-speaking Canada (including a French language one) are okay with it, what’s the problem?
Frankly, Furlong (or, more likely, VANOC) made the right choice. Anyone with any perspective will recognize his attempt at French for the acknowledgement it was meant to be and anyone who gets uptight at his poor pronunciation would have found something to complain about no matter what he did.
No doubt you are a member of the Furlongetti out to get me, Ian, hehehe. I hope he’s paying you well!
Whether John “grew up” during the bilingualism era or not, he’s been here long enough to know better than to think that French he gave would suffice for the moment.
And why are people with high school French criticizing him? Cause even we know enough to know that was awful! Pick up some searching skills and look at the various stories out there.
As for the newspapers, some writers have to be diplomatic on some things. It’s called not burning your bridges to connections who might serve you well in the future for information and breaking stories. I don’t need anything like that related to the stories I blog. I can tell it straight like Plushenko, not caring to stir it up if I have to cause the truth is sometimes hard to swallow as you are demonstrating by experience.
As for the choice with using French, Furlong did make the right choice. He just gave it no respect with the effort he put into it for such a big moment. If you think that was his best, you have less respect for his abilities than I do.
Can you debate anything, Ian? You can’t stick to the point and keep missing the target!
I think Mr. Furlong gave a brilliant speech and his message was beautiful. It is unfortunate that so many peopole choose to focus in on a flaw rather than the message. Yes, his French is dreadful. But, hey, at least he tried. There was a complaint that there was not enough English in the Opening Ceremony so he was trying to fix that. Most Francophones I know would appreciate the effort and not fault him so badly. Great speech John!!!
Thanks for your comment, Heather. I think John didn’t give his best effort, and given the monumental occasion, that was an insult. If you’re going to make a statement like he was trying to, make a statement, not a mockery of it.
For someone in his position to read the entire speech, looking up once in a while (like he was reading the thing for the first time)…seriously!
If this was a speech for his kids’ class or something, okay, but at this level?
Come on people! It’s truly embarrassing and denotes incompetence.
The whole closing ceremony was an embarrassment.
Oh and for those of you who take acknowledging yesterday’s failure as lack of patriotism,
I think the patriotic propaganda blog is at some other (web) address.
Alex, I wasn’t too much a fan of the music towards the end, mostly. I loved Neil and Alannis, and especially the humour, though Michael J Fox’s bit I had a little trouble “getting” in terms of merit. However, the humour I wasn’t used to for Closing Ceremonies and I thought it more than made up for some of the less glamourous bits. Thanks for the comment!
I think we should all chip in and send Mr Furlong to “speech delivery school” or Toastmasters! That had to be the most embarrassing delivery of a speech I’ve ever heard (including Grade 6 Public Speaking speeches) – in English and in French. The message was pretty good – the delivery was abysmal. Give the poor man a teleprompter and some charisma.
Therefore (neat name), I don’t know if the charisma was necessary, but I definitely agree on some more practice. It’s not like he hasn’t known for some time that he’d be doing that speech. I don’t know many other speeches where you’d have that sort of an audience, do you? Surely, that had to have been incentive enough to do a bit more. But that’s just my thought. Thanks for your comment!
Digital –
I can debate reasonable – and legible (honestly, a quarter of what you’ve written to me, I can’t even decipher) – arguments. Whether I’m missing the point – well, I’m not sure you even know what your point is. From your original posting, I had thought that the point was to chastise Furlong for being culturally insensitive by poorly pronouncing his French lines during the closing ceremonies. Your argument is that it is culturally insensitive because it necessarily demonstrates that he thinks so little of French Canadians that he made little but a token effort to acknowledge their unique culture its role and importance within Canadian culture.
I argue that it’s entirely possible he’s just bad at French. Some people just don’t have an ear for that sort of thing, particularly when they haven’t grown up learning it like many of us have. To suggest that it would have been more culturally sensitive to leave the French out – in spite of the fact that French Canadians very clearly expressed a desire for more representation of their language during official Olympic events – makes a lot of assumptions about what led up to Furlong’s speech that simply aren’t warranted, in which case, neither are your criticisms.
This latter point is supported by the fact that, again, the people whose opinions matter most (i.e., those to whose culture you claim Furlong was being so insensitive) don’t seem all that upset. (Your point about the newspapers not burning bridges is a little mystifying – who are they worried about offending, the ex-president of VANOC? Or precisely those people whom they were so strongly criticizing two weeks earlier for precisely the shortfalls that led to Furlong’s French speech in the first place?)
As for my assessment of your writing skills, well, my point was simply that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
But maybe you’re right. Maybe I am missing your point. Maybe I’m just reading way too much into your posting since, as you say, the point is mostly that “John Furlong’s French stank!” In which case, I must conclude that you’re simply being critical either a) for the sake of being critical or b) the sake of showing us all how clever you are or c) both. And I’m happy to call you out on it.
Hi Ian. My name is Minh. I recently removed the page about me cause, well, nobody cared to look at it so it was wasted space on the bar above.
I was being critical because John’s bad French caused a reaction in me, enough to interrupt my hockey game post that I was rather enjoying putting together. Hence the hurry to get back and not edit this post, and I’m not going to edit it now for “image”.
My point was John’s French was appalling and I was trying to figure out what led to that being allowed to happen. The circumstances were mentioned to give some context because if it were anything less, I wouldn’t have bothered to care, or blog, about it.
As for burning bridges, John has a lot of friends and supporters, many in well to do positions and who would be offended on attacks on him. John isn’t the bridge. It’s those people I’m talking about. It’s also VANOC and the IOC and others associated with his work. I don’t know your connection to John or not but you stepped up (and good for you!). It’s a small world.
As for John being bad at French as your argument, I guess I gave John a lot more credit than that. I didn’t think he could be that successful in life and either not do better, or not realize he had to step it up more to get his French better given the moment with so many watching. Might not any of his friends have told him? Thanks for explaining that to me. I think I see where we differ now. I thought he could have done better so I focused on him. You thought that was his best so you gave him kudos for it and focused on the rest of the merits of his actions additionally. I hope I got that right.
Anyhow, believe it or not, I’m really glad you wrote a lot, took the time to express your views and criticized me. I love having opposing views and hearing the views of others. I don’t always agree, and I try not to overreact (hehehe), but I think it’s great for the readers to see both sides if they care to read the comments. That’s why I leave them cause I could just throw out anything I want since it’s my blog.
Finally, as for trying to be clever? Nah. I’m Canadian. I just throw stuff on here and hope people find value in it, whether to be entertained, engaged in debate, use it like the wallpapers and printable graphics, inform themselves of something they didn’t know, or just get a chance to vent.
Ultimately, the readers decide what I write or create is worth (and I don’t mean that in dollars). I’m pretty cool with that. I’m just learning, doing and sharing. That’s why the blog moniker is the “education and participation of a citizen in the digital world”.
Thanks again!
Hi Minh,
Thanks so much for your classy response – a lesser moderator would have started censoring or let the conversation devolve into a troll-fight, but you’ve taken the high road on both counts. Good on you
Believe it or not, I have no personal association whatsoever with John Furlong – and trust me, I cringed quite a bit myself when he was giving the speech in question. And you’re absolutely right – given how diligent Canadian public (or at least political) figures are expected to be about equally representing both Franco- and Anglo-Canadian culture in the public sphere, it’s surprising that VANOC wouldn’t have taken more care to ensure that both the quantity and quality of the ceremonies’ French content was up to standard.
I guess I just figured – as you rightly summarized above – it was worth noting that they likely did the best they could with the situation they found themselves in after the opening ceremonies, since 2 weeks of preparation (i.e., the time they had to write additional content and get John prepped and practiced between the French complaints and the closing) does not a linguist make. Given that none of us know what Furlong’s language skills are like, I figured it was worth at least suggesting we give him (and the Vancouver organizers) the benefit of the doubt
But either way, your point is well taken and I think we can both agree that the French portion of his remarks was perhaps NOT a highlight.
At any rate, thanks again for the judicious response, as well as for providing “a chance to vent” (I won’t lie – part of my motivation for posting MAY have been that I was still a little revved up from the celebrations in TO the night before and I’d just finished reading a string of articles criticizing the games, which MAY have SLIGHTLY triggered my Canadian/olympic pride. Just a little :p).
Good luck in grad school and keep up the good work – blogs aren’t easy to maintain and you’re doing a great job with this one
Cheers,
-Ian
Hi Ian, thank you for YOUR classy response. Sorry for the delay in getting back. I stepped away to get a life for a few days (hahaha) and come back to find out things did get a bit out of hand on the responses. I have a tendency to sometimes come back to post something that gets me up enough to post, but not check comments if I don’t have time to respond rather than have a comment on my mind to respond to. I’ll have to see if there needs to be any tempering of other comments.
I was only kidding about your association with John. I got a little carried away as well, though usually in the form of sarcasm for the fun of it, but I realize that’s hard to tell in text. I think we’ve come to a nice point of agreement John’s French wasn’t a highlight. But I’m on the hook for the criticism now as various high profile sources have linked here as a reaction from the blogosphere. Oi!
Thanks for the comp on the blog moderating but grad school? What grad school?
I believe John Furlong was hired as VANOC CEO for his management skills, not his language skills. Personally, I’d rather have an enormous event such as the Olympics headed by a well-qualified project manager, than some renowned linguist.
Criticize all you want for Furlong not taking language lessons, but have you considered what kind of workload he may have had as CEO? Somehow I just don’t see “take french lessons” as top priority on the “to do” list of an event involving managing hundreds of thousands of people.
So that leaves us with 3 options:
1. Furlong gives a speech only in english.
2. Furlong tries to include some french, as best he can.
3. Appoint someone else to make the speech.
All of them have their disadvantages though.
Option 1: The francophones would have cried even more than they already do because “le francais was ignored”.
Option 2: This web log clearly illustrates the problems with this option.
Option 3: Questions would have been raised why the CEO, one of the most important people in the Olympic event, did not make a public appearance. (I would even say there is a bigger obligation for the CEO to say *something* to the public, than for closing speeches to be bilingual!)
So b*tch all you want; No matter how you cut it, you can’t please everyone. The real problem is not John Furlong. The real problem is that some people place such importance on this failed concept of bilingualism that they lose sight of the more important qualifications for a job.
As the old adage goes, “A jack of all trades is a master of none”.
If you think only CEOs that can speak fluent french are appropriate for the job, then you may not find your master of management.
Justin, you missed the point.
I don’t think John’s attempt at French was the best he could do. I’m giving him more credit on ability than you are and calling him out on his lack of effort. You think a guy as bright as John could not do better? I’m not expecting anything near perfect French, but I do expect something that sounded better because it was that bad. As a CEO, he must know that quality of French wasn’t good enough. As for French lessons in his schedule, two things.
If he didn’t plan to be speaking in French since 2004 when he’s had this job (which would have been short-sighted), he shouldn’t try within two weeks. A good skill everybody should have, management or not, is knowing his/her limits. This is more important the more power one has so I expect more of John as CEO in that respect. And if he wasn’t going to speak in French, he could have asked Jacques Rogge to speak mostly in French during his part. Now, if John got asked about not speaking in French, what’s wrong with saying “I would have but I wasn’t satisfied with my ability to do so without disrespecting the language”? EGO? It’s not that hiring a master of all trades will get you a master of none, Justin. It’s John who tried to be a master of all trades and flunked badly on one. Don’t spin the argument from what it is.
Now, if John did plan to be speaking French, he would have had time to get in some French lessons. Don’t give me that excuse about lack of time. How many parties do you think he’s attended that he couldn’t have gotten out a little early for some practice? How many flights has he taken where a little privacy time couldn’t have hurt? Absolutely no time? No way. Not a chance! And given the moment, if that didn’t take precedence over some things John would have had to deal with in six years, he needs a modification to his decision-making mechanism.
So I don’t think your argument is all that valid, Justin. The French ability does not have to be a vital part of the hiring process. Someone who prioritized things a bit better and made a better judgment call on the moment would have been ideal, and I think that’s called “management skill”, since you were basing your argument on that. Now, to be fair, it was one failure among John’s many successes on the job. However, it was pretty darn symbolic and high profile a moment, and he and others should be ready to admit it wasn’t a good call and effort on John’s part, rather than try to spin it on character, job record, management skill and hiring theory, etc.
Respectfully Jason,
If John Furlong was hired for his management skills (presumably that includes leadership skills, and inherently “leadership” includes being able to communicate with, and address, people) then he is sadly lacking in a large part of the required skill set.
In the 10 years since VANOC was awarded the 2010 Olympics, one would assume that part of the preparation for those games would include coaching and readying the CEO of VANOC for the World stage … in both official languages. The IOC includes English and French as official Olympic languages, so this is not just a Canadian bilingual issue.
John Furlong was simply ill-prepared for a large part of his CEO job and sadly, the whole world was watching. I remain embarrassed … for his weak effort on the entire speech set.
~therefore
Thanks for the weigh in, “therefore”.
I won’t question John for his entire skill set, but at least on the matter of making the decision on the French speaking, whether preparation or to do it or not, I would agree it was poor. I can’t even say for the rest of the speech because the French traumatized me enough to wipe the memory of the rest and just blog furiously the moment I heard it. Can you believe I stopped blogging my post on Sidney’s goal and Canada’s gold medal hockey win for that “French”???
This isn’t really about official bilingualism at the national level, it’s also about official bilingualism at the Olympics. You hear French at the opening and closing ceremonies not because Canada is an officially bilingual country, but mostly because the Olympics is an “officially bilingual” institution. Even in Beijing 2008 the Beijing Organization Committee’s chair had to muster a few words in French to keep with Olympic protocol.
Why is this? At the time of the Olympics’ founding, French was the ONLY official language – because it was considered the most prestigious language in the world back in its heyday. English was only added later as its prominence grew. Now it has surpassed French as the World Language and the French is only there now more or less as a formality.
Of course, we can’t discount the fact that French is still quite influential. Next to English, French has the highest number countries speaking it as an official language, most of them in Africa.
Thank you for that insight, JWF. That is true to a point, but I think the extra amounts of French John delivered was due to national bilingualism. Do you have any what the BOC chair’s French was like? Was it better than John’s? That would be interesting to compare.
I thought his French was terrible but then again the whole speech was lacklustre.He could have taken some pointers from Obama on how to deliver a real speech.
Thanks for your comment, Tim. Obama’s a pretty high standard to live up to. Obama is currently my golden standard for a real high profile public speaker when it comes to speech delivery.
Does anyone have a link to that speech? I cannot find it on youtube and would really like to see (and hear it) after reading those comments. My students of French thought it was very funny.
AMTCHIM, YouTube has sold out on its generation by succumbing to corporate and legal pressures of the IOC. They pretty much banned any official broadcast clips, even if you videotaped it from a camcorder from your TV screen and not even direct. They still are even after the Olympics are over. I just demonstrated it in a post with the Sidney Crosby Golden Goal.
Mr. Furlong’s French, if it can indeed be called that, was truly abominable. Someone should have least helped him to do it phonetically. Still, we shouldn’t lose sight of one remarkable thing: the actual addresses he gave were excellent. Unusually so!
My take: http://memestreamblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/golden-olympics/
Thanks, MBJESQ. Thanks for weighing in and sharing your take on the situation. I like it!
John has done a truly outstanding job organizing the Olympics. I never thought these games would be so fun and so full of Canadian pride. I have to say his French pronunciation just has me laughing with joy. It’s not an insult. We’ve all heard equivalently bad English accents. I bet he has a terrible Newfoundland accent too! We’re all Canadian: we don’t need to get uptight. I love all parts of this wonderful country.
Thanks, John B! You get my vote for Most Canadian response to this hotly debated issue!
And if the VANOC people had been brilliant enough, they’d have claimed John Furlong’s bad French was part of the humour theme of the night where he was poking fun at himself for how bad his French was! But alas, pipe dreams only happens when smoking pipes full of weed, which I’m surprised was not in the Closing Ceremonies.
Speaking of pipe dreams, if I were rich enough to give you a prize, I’d give you a sloop, John B!